Website Grader

Search engine optimization has become one of the most important and blatantly juiciest parts of the Web 2.0 movement.  Since massive changes in the way search engines work and with the help of Googles part in sparking the movement there has been a wildfire of new strategies for reaching the #1 spot on search engine result pages.

Some can agree that back in the day when AOL 3.0 and Dial-up was running the show that the most important parts of a website that mattered were speed, optimization, and relevant material.  One: I didn’t want to wait 20 minutes to download these 100+ pages of Goldeneye 007 gameshark codes; Two: I didn’t want to spend 5 minutes waiting for a website to load and then find out it’s not what I was looking for.

The Website Grader gives your website a score by, you guessed it..grading and giving scores to various categories and sub-categories of your website (or someone elses) for a complete average.  Basically, you end up with a test score.

The various subjects and categories it grades on include but are not limited to:

• Content and Blog Analysis, Grade, and Recent Articles with Retweets and Inbound Links.
• Optimization Tips based on Metadata, Headings, and Image Summery showing how many images your page contains.
• Domain information.
• Promotion and Marketing information including del.icio.us bookmarks, Link Tweet Summary, and a Twitter Grade.

Each of these, including the ones I didn’t mention can all contribute to the usability and promotion of your website which could ultimately lead up to more traffic and useful input.  Keep grading, keep optimizing.

http://www.websitegrader.com - The Website Grader

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Reconstructor

Once again another free (up to a point) web application for use for customizing a Linux distribution for whatever you want.

Reconstructor isn’t as pretty as some of the other Linux distro customization services I’ve seen but it gets the job done.  You still have the ability to customize the way it looks, operations, modules, addons, etc.

For the amount you can do it is certainly useful.  Not to mention it has been around since before 2007.

Reconstructor is a GNU/Linux distribution customization and creation toolkit. It allows for the customization of the Ubuntu andDebian GNU/Linux distributions. Customizations include boot logo image and text color, wallpaper, themes, icons, applications, and more.

To start using Reconstructor (it’s free) go to https://build.reconstructor.org and signup.

The reason I said it is free up to a point is that they do charge for the service but they give each account a $5 limit per month (for free).  Anything over that will have you paying up front for it.

Here is an overlook of their “Fees” page…

Fees

The following are the fees for using the Reconstructor services. Please note: each account balance will get up to a $5 credit each month (ending balance after credit will be no more than $5). Each transaction will deduct from your account credit. To add more funds, click the “Add Credit” button in your account details window (accessed by clicking your username in the upper right after you login).

• Upload and store a project file: $0.02 per MB per month
• Build a project: $0.30
• Download a built project: $0.45 per GB
• Priority build service: $5.00 (enabled for one month) Note: This charge is prorated based upon the remaining days in the month.

Project Hosting

• File storage: $0.45 per GB per month
• Download: $0.35

So yes for a one or two time use I would say the service isn’t that bad.  There’s still a lot of customization you can do and a lot you can get out of it.  However, the entire fee thing isn’t really the best but you have to understand the kind of loads you can put on servers when doing these kinds of operations.

Reconstructor

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Here are some good Photoshop brushes I have come across.  Some are from deviantArt while the rest can be found out on the blogosphere.

Ink and Paint

3D Halftone

Coffee Stains

Hi-Res Splatter

More brushes are available for download.  Just click the “Continue Reading” link below.

(continue reading…)

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Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

Who doesn’t love being on the latest social networking site?

That’s what I thought.

…but, if you are one of the millions that are on Facebook, Myspace, twitter, and wish you had never joined; don’t worry.  There is hope.

A friend of mine was going out for a job interview with a very important company.  Of course he had a profile on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and a few others.  Being worried about evidence of activities they wouldn’t like for obvious reasons he had to go through and scrape as much of his pictures, status updates, friends, etc that he could.  My friend spent a good day removing whatever he could find. Of course, this could have been easier..

The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine will take care of all the work for you.  The automated website / script will login to your accounts, remove all your friends, remove all status updates and tweets, and make your profile and information completely private and removed.  Basically, it kills your “social network” profiles.

If you watch South Park at all, you already know about this and probably wondered, “Hm…I wonder if it’s real” and I can assure you it is.  The only difference is you won’t be sucked into a Tron 2.0-like Facebook internet mall environment where everyone ignores you while you are transported by Facebook-Guards.

If you are wondering which episode of South Park this was featured on follow the link below to download the episode via ThePirateBay.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5505157 – South Park : Episode 04, Season 14 :: “You have 0 Friends.”

Commit Web 2.0 Suicide Here

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Apache is probably the number 1 web service hosting software ever created.  With that said I get a lot of people always asking how to install it or some variation of.  Here’s an easy tutorial on it using CentOS 5.4 Linux using a Rackspace Cloud Server…

1.    SSH into your Server

2.    Make sure you are root user.

3.    Update Yum with command : # yum update

4.    Download and install Apache with command : #  yum install httpd

5.    Set chkconfig run levels to ensure that apache starts up even if the system is rebooted with command : # chkconfig –levels 2345 httpd on

6.    Start Apache or httpd service with command : #  service httpd start.

7.    Flush your IP Tables and add port 22 for SSH (unless you changed it’s port) and also allow port 80 for apache/http connections.  I have also deleted the “RH-Firewall-1-INPUT” chain and set the default INPUT policy to “DROP”.

#  iptables -X RH-Firewall-1-INPUT

#  iptables -F

#  iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –dport 22 -j ACCEPT

#  iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –dport 80 -j ACCEPT

#  iptables -P INPUT DROP

#  service iptables save

8.  Congrats, you now have a basic apache install.

Notes : Apache’s configuration file is /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and the default place to put all of your websites files are in /var/www/html/

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