This post was written to support the ‘Adsense Target‘ WordPress Plugin

Introduction:

This article provides a very brief overview of how contextual advertising works and then illustrates how a webmaster using section targeting can have more control over the advertisements served by Google Adsense. Specific recommendations for bloggers are made on how best to use ad section targeting code to maximize profit. » Read the rest of the entry..

Plagiarize me once, shame on you. Plagiarize me twice, shame on me.

On Halloween I filed two DMCA notices with the Google Adsense program. My goal was simple, stop known plagiarists from profiting from my words. Yesterday, Google got back to me regarding the notices I faxed in:

We have received your DMCA complaint dated 10/31/06. We are currently reviewing the complaint and will contact you when we have completed processing the request.

We appreciate your patience during this time.

Regards,
The Google AdSense Team

Today, I checked the two sites I caught stealing from me and I could not find a single Adsense ad. I did see the spaces where the ads used to be. » Read the rest of the entry..

These Web 2.0 icons were created by Utom and look like chewy candy — delicious! You can download them in both PNG and ICO format from UtomBox and they are distributed as “free.” Utom is a talented graphical designer and has created a number of great looking WordPress themes in addition to these fine icons.

I recently wrote about how Utom had his great looking U4 WordPress style ripped off by plagiarist Karthik Kastuary of 33rockers.com, its an example of how bloggers can sometimes help each other out.

Web 2.0 is the supposed second-generation of Internet-based services (such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies) that let people collaborate and share information online in ways previously unavailable [wikipedia]

» Read the rest of the entry..

Abstract

33Rockers.com is a website created, written, and developed by Karthik Kastury — or at least that’s what he’d have you believe. His website has risen in the ranks and gained some notoriety since it’s inception due to the quality and insightful articles published online. Turns out that Karthik Kastury has been stealing not only other people’s words, but their blog designs as well.

The following post is written in the spirit of education. By making an example and exposing Karthik Kastury for the plagarising blogger that he is, I hope that others can learn why his actions prove not only unprofitable today, but stupid in the long run due to pagespank as a result of public shaming. I hope other bloggers learn that stealing content and claiming it as your own original work is foolish and possibly detrimental to your future career.

Full Text

Karthik Kastury is a plagiarist. Consider his most recent post, “The Hottest Map Based Mashups” posted on November 2, 2006. Here is a small snippet:

Of late, map mashups, applications based on on-line map services, have gained considerable attention. A map mashup integrates user-data on top of a geographical map pulled from an on-line map service such as Google maps and Yahoo! Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/). Several such applications are being rolled out daily.

Wow. Pretty good stuff. Unfortunately, its been stolen from an article entitled, “Location-enabled webfeed holds promis,” found at www.m-indya.com. The original author is one J. Murali and he posted his article on October 30th, 2006. Here is a snippet from his article: » Read the rest of the entry..

My parents have the cutest dog ever. Bold assertion, but its the truth. The dog, Leo, has black fur so soft that girls can’t stop petting him — and he loves it. When he wakes in the morning he groans like an old man, rolls over and literally tries to rub the sleep out of his eyes while he awaits his tummy being rubbed. If he wants attention, he will come right up to you and put his head on your lap and stare with soul melting eyes until you give in to his demands. He prefers ice cubes from a scotch glass and will knock the glass to ask for some.

Imagine going through life with the ability to make everyone you see happy instantly, Leo posses this gift. The only thing that is not perfect about him is that he gets a little worried when people leave. He likes companionship so when my parents leave their house the dog will sometimes have a lot of nervous energy.

Recently, while my parents were out, he started to chew on a book they had purchased. When they got home, this is how they found the book: » Read the rest of the entry..

Paul of 2pt3.com just released his custom icon set, twotone. It’s 100% free for any use, comes with every icon in both PSD and GIF format, and also includes one large PSD file so you can manipulate them all as you see fit. Its a great package!

Paul is also a designer at twothirty.com — “we design websites, applications & identities.”

what’s the catch?
there isn’t one. no licensing, no legal, just do whatever you want them. and if you want, post a link the comments if you do use them on a public site, so i can see where they’re being used and how.

Subscribe to MaxPower: keep up to date about free icons

Also view the compendium listing of all free icons currently catalogued for use.

» Read the rest of the entry..

Using Owen’s fantastic WordPress plugin antileech, I have successfully taken control over new posts appearing on a splog intent on copying them. Instead of getting actual post content, the splog gets a message written by me. Right now that message advocates gambling and buying firearms, two things expressly forbidden by the Adsense TOS (read Fight dirty by entrapping splogs using antiLeech).

If you could publish any message you wanted on a splog that was stealing your content, what would it be?

Rules:

• The splog removes all markup — no IMG’s and no links.
• There is a 140 word limit. The splog doesn’t like to post long entries and truncates after about 140 characters.
• The splog makes new categories based on the categories that the post came from. For example, if I put this post in a category on my blog called ‘eat shit and die’, the splog will make a new category called ‘eat shit and die’ and put whatever message you would like in the post content.
• Like categories, the splog accepts tags and creates new ones as they come in.
• The splog takes the real post title, regardless of fake content.
• The splog takes the real author name (at the time of posting) and links it to the original post.

The overall goal should be to get the splog’s adsense account yanked for violation of terms (see the bulleted list 1/3 down for some ideas on what constitutes a violation in Google’s eyes). Secondary goals are possible as well, one example would be to get the splog booted from their webhost (dreamhost). However, I feel it is important to first make sure that the revenue stream dies. If something else happens along the way, great.

Anyone care to share their splogging revenge fantasy?

If you’ve ever tried to use the popular image manager plugin or the digital fingerprint plugin at the same time as the immensely popular Adsense Deluxe plugin then you’ll have probably run across a perplexing problem: some buttons won’t show up in the post and page editor. Seemingly, Adsense Deluxe doesn’t play nice with the ButtonSnap Class Library created by Owen Winkler. ButtonSnap makes it relatively easy for plugin authors to insert customized buttons into the WordPress post and page editor regardless of the users editor preference (WYSIWYG vs rich editor). For an example of how this works see the Sawchuk Buttons plugin and the corresponding Tutorial on how to write your own button functions using ButtonSnap.

With hundreds of plugin writers and authors contributing to the WordPress community there is bound to be some conflicts between plugins. The method that the Adsense Deluxe plugin uses to create it’s button in the WordPress post and page editor stops any plugin which uses the ButtonSnap class library from producing it’s own button in the editor. The two just don’t work together.

In order to get around this, I suggest a simple workaround to the Adsense Deluxe plugin until a more suitable solution can be found: disable the part of Adsense deluxe plugin that produces the button in the post editor. Its easy: » Read the rest of the entry..