Google Adsense Referral Ad Changes

On Tuesday, Talia Brodecki from Google Adsense Product Marketing, announced that two impending changes to Google Adsense Referral ads. If you, as the publisher, live in North America, Latin America, or Japan, there will be no more sign-up bonus and less earnings for referring a user to Adsense. Check out the link above for more explanation.

The second and more relevant change to me is that publishers outside of the three regions listed above, you will not be able to promote Adsense as referrals. When this change takes effect at the end of January, you may still continue to promote referrals for other products listed in your account under "Adsense Setup" -> "Get Ads" -> "Referrals" (see below).

I have been showing referral ads for third-party advertisers using this sort of Adsense ads, and I have to admit they have not been successful at all. Perhaps the conversion criteria of advertisers have never been met as they usually require the visitor to purchase products or signup for services. Thus, I prefer to show Google-related referrals, such as Adsense, AdWords, Google Pack, and Firefox plug Google Toolbar, because their conversion is more attractive and their target audience is more global.

Getting visitors to switch web browsers from Microsoft Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox is the most satisfying because I've been a strong advocate of Firefox. If you're not on Firefox, you're missing out on the superior page rendering and extensive functionalities of this open-source browser. Click on the link on the right to download Firefox!

Back to Adsense referrals, unless you have a blog topic related to helping publishers monetizing their sites, I'd recommend you avoid promoting such referrals at all. Google Pack is a good choice as the software pack is very useful for common Internet users.

Technorati Tags: google, google adsense, advertisement, referral, referral ad, adsense referral, make money

Speed Up Performance of Mozilla Firefox

There are some tweaks that you can put in the Mozilla Firefox web browser to speed up your web user experience. Pages will render faster using more simultaneous connections, prefetching and other tricks.

In a blank Firefox window, enter "about:config" in the location bar. Some of the preferences below already exist, and you can check if they are there by typing the beginning in the "Filter" line. If a preference exists, you can change its value by double-clicking on it in the list. If a preference does not exist, right click on the window and select either "New", then the appropriate "Type". Enter the value and press "Enter".

No.	Preference	Type	Value	Description
1	network.http.pipelining	boolean	true	send multiple http requests before receiving any responses
2	network.http.pipelining.maxrequests	integer	8	as previous
3	network.http.proxy.pipelining	boolean	true	as previous
4	network.dns.disableIPv6	boolean	true	disable IPv6 DNS servers' bug of returning IPv4 addresses for IPv6 requests
5	content.interrupt.parsing	boolean	true	allow browser to respond to UI events by interrupting parsing of a page
6	content.notify.interval	integer	750000	as previous
7	content.switch.threshold	integer	750000	as previous
8	nglayout.initialpaint.delay	integer	0	set time delay from initial page loading to the first page that is rendered
9	browser.cache.memory.capacity	integer	65536	memory size used for storing pages for instant recall

Restart Firefox to make the changes take effect.

If you are not comfortable with messing with the above and/or want more complex enhancements, try the Fasterfox extension for Firefox. It can prefetch links, tweak network settings, and block popups created by Adobe Flash.

List of options in Fasterfox (bold means described earlier):

• Enhanced prefetching
• Page load timer
• Memory cache
• Disk cache
• DNS cache expiration
• DNS cache entries
• Max. connections
• Max. connections per server
• Max. persistent connections per server
• Max. persistent connections per proxy
• Pipelining
• Pipelining first request
• Proxy pipelining
• Max. pipelining requests
• Initial paint delay
• Submenu delay
• Disable popups from plugins

Related post:

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 Web Browser Released
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/12/mozilla-firefox-2001-web-browser.html>

Links:

Fasterfox
<URL:http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/>

Download Firefox
<URL:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=187103&t=213>

Technorati Tags: firefox, mozilla firefox, web browser, firefox hacks, firefox tips, speed up, fasterfox, pipelining, prefetching

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 Web Browser Released

Mozilla Firefox (FF) 2.0.0.1 has been released on December 19 2006. The second release from 2.0 has 8 general bug fixes and many new features.

Among the fixes, the five critical ones are:

• MFSA 2006-73 Mozilla SVG Processing Remote Code Execution
• MFSA 2006-71 LiveConnect crash finalizing JS objects
• MFSA 2006-70 Privilege escallation using watch point
• MFSA 2006-69 CSS cursor image buffer overflow (Windows only)
• MFSA 2006-68 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.9/1.8.1.1)

Click on each of them to view details.

New stuff I haven't seen before are:

Live Titles - Allows you to create bookmarks with microsummaries on the bookmark labels that can be regularly updated, as opposed to a static label. Web site owners can quickly put bits of updates on their site <title> tag without having to implement a RSS feed.

JavaScript 1.7 - New scripting language version includes support for generators, iterators, array comprehensions, let expressions, and destructuring assignment. More ways to complicate browsers and confuse visitors :P

Client-side session and persistent storage - Online transactions that make use of client-side storage for document and mailbox management can now store large structured data. Useful for websites like Google Docs and Spreadsheets http://docs.google.com and online banking sites.

New Windows installer - Uses the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, which is neat and stable. You may have probably seen it used in Winamp.

Personally, FF 1.5.0.8 has been very stable for me. Although I have more than 10 tabs and 10 extensions installed, it has crashed no more than a few times since I started using it.

Click on the download link below to get this release.

Update (21 Dec 2006): If you are still on 1.5.0.x like me, you should get the update to FF 1.5.0.9 which contains the almost the same set of bug fixes as FF 2.0.0.1. The download should be about 510KB.

Related posts:

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 Web Browser Released
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/11/mozilla-firefox-1508-web-browser.html>

Mozilla Firefox 2 Web Browser Released
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/10/mozilla-firefox-2-web-browser-released.html>

Firefox Into The Sky!
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/05/firefox-into-sky.html>

Links:

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 Release Notes
<URL:http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releasenotes/>

Download Firefox
<URL:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=187103&t=213>

Technorati Tags: mozilla,, firefox,, mozilla firefox,, web browser,, 2.0.0.1

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 Web Browser Released

For those Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x users who are cool with their version and can wait for 2.x to be downloaded automatically, your browser will probably be downloading 1.5.0.8 right now.

This version resolves three bugs and improves the update feature for it to download lean and custom FF 2.0 installation instead of full installer.

FF 1.5 will be supported and updated until April 27 2007. Although most extensions work in FF 2.0, your only reason to stick with FF 1.5 is the themes, unless you can find FF 2.0 versions.

I'm giving one last chance to FF 1.5 not to crash occasionally when I open a link in a new tab...

Meanwhile, let me recommend a really fun extension, called StumbleUpon. It is a social bookmarking service which lets your surf to pages recommended by others. You can share interesting pages that you have visited and give reviews. Pretty useful extension when you have been surfing for eight hours already and can't seen to find any more and will crash and die of fatigue. Check it out using the link below.

Oh, FF 1.5.0.9 and 2.0.0.1 are planned to be released on Dec 14 2006. So, you got some time to really think carefully if you want to move on to FF 2.0. ;)

Related posts:

Mozilla Firefox 2 Web Browser Released
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/10/mozilla-firefox-2-web-browser-released.html>

Firefox Into The Sky!
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/05/firefox-into-sky.html>

Links:

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 Release Notes
<URL:http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/releases/1.5.0.8.html>

Download Firefox
<URL:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=187103&t=213>

StumbleUpon
<URL:http://www.stumbleupon.com>

Technorati Tags: mozilla, firefox, mozilla firefox, web browser, 1.5.0.8, ff, ff 1.5.0.8

Mozilla Firefox 2 Web Browser Released

The world's best free web browser has been upgraded to version 2 and released on October 24 2006.

The list of new features in Firefox:

• Improved tabbed browsing
• Spell checking
• Search suggestions
• Updated web feeds
• Identity theft protection

I have used a beta of version 2 before. The major peeve for me is the changes Mozilla made for tabbed browsing. The width of each tab is fixed, which is a benefit as you will be able to read the title of the page all the time. However, this results in tabs that are not able to fit in the width of the browser window and you will not be able to guage the number of tabs that are currently open and not be able to see the next tab that you are about to switch to. Having a button that lists the open tabs doesn't appeal to me because I prefer to use the keyboard (ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab) to navigate them. I suppose there is a key that I can set to change the behaviour of the tabs.

If you happen to accidentally close a tab, Firefox 2 can recall it from the History menu. My favourite add-on, called Session Manager, can save and restore the list of tabs when the browser is restarted, so you can resume your browsing when you turn your computer back on. This also has been integrated in version 2 and is known as Session Restore.

Identity theft, or phishing, protection is a very useful feature. Firefox 2 will warn you when you visit a web site suspected of forgery and is out to maliciously capture your secure information.

Some of Google Toolbar's features have also been integrated natively into Firefox 2. You will find spell checking in forms and search suggestions in the search toolbar in this browser. However, Google Toolbar is still good to have for features such as AutoFill, AutoLink, PageRank, Word Translator and Highlight Search Terms.

Go ahead, get yourself a better web browser. Click on the "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar" or the links below.

Update (30 Oct 2006 1047hrs):

To revert the tab behaviour to pre-version 2.0, type "about:config" in the address bar, press "Enter", look for or create (if it does not exist) the setting "browser.tabs.closeButtons" and set its value to 3, set or create the setting "browser.tabs.tabMinWidth" and set its value to 0, and install this style. For more information on new or upgrade installation issues with Firefox 2, go to this thread in the MozillaZine Forums.

Links:

Download Firefox
<URL:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=187103&t=213>

Firefox 2 Press Release
<URL:http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2006-10-24.html>

Firefox Into The Sky!
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/05/firefox-into-sky.html>

Technorati Tags: mozilla, firefox, mozilla firefox, firefox 2, version 2, browser, web browser, new version

Firefox Into the Sky!

Firefox 1.5.0.3 is out. Take it and sock it to Mr Gate's face.

I personally use these extensions. Give them a try here.

• Adblock Plus
• Adsense Notifier
• Download Statusbar
• Fasterfox
• Google Web Accelerator
• ReloadEvery
• SessionSaver
• Update Channel Selector
• User Agent Switcher

Mozilla Firefox is a much better web browsing experience. Just like how you felt when you sit in your colleague's bigger car.

Technorati Tags: firefox, mozilla, browser, extensions