This century has been named the age of technology or even the more famous  term Digital Age by many note worthy people. We have been hearing about many strange events taking place due to all the technology available today.

A recent article published by CNN about a novel written completely by text messaging caught my attention. The novel is titled “The Last Message” and it’s about an IT excutive who resigns his job in Finland to travel throughtout europe and India. All throughout his journey he keeps in touch with his family with only one means of communication which is text messaging.

The novel is completely fictional but you have to give the author credit for his orginality. All the messages and replies total to about 1,000 - are listed chronologically in a 332-page novel written by Hannu Luntiala. Its interesting to note that even the common abbreviations used in texting are included in the novel.

Sari Havukainen, spokeswoman at Finnish publishing house Tammi, said the company is considering translating the book into other languages.

All those text messages must of cost him a substancial amount but still a remarkable idea none the less. I am sure many of the older readers might find it harder to comprehend the text used in the novel but the young tech crowd will surely find it interesting.

The navbar was originally made to help enhance the readers experience by allowing them to search through millions of blogs of their interest. Intentions are worthy of admiration, but a blogger set on representing professionality might find it disturbing or even turned off by the diversion of traffic this feature causes.

Bloggers were able to disable the navbar found in the previous version of blogger using a simple CSS code. However, if you have switched to the new version of blogger, you might of noticed that the CSS code seems to stop functioning. This is due to the fact that google now uses a different CSS tag to control the navbar in Blogger Beta.

If you want to hide the display of navbar in the new Blogger, then simply copy and paste these lines into your blogger template.

<style type=”text/css”>
#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
</style>

Note:If you are using a classic template in the new version of blogger, then simply search and replace the #b-navbar with #navbar-iframe, which will successfully hide the navbar.

Now, you might be wondering if this method is violating any google blogger TOS or any type of licensing. There is no mention of anything relating to the removal of navbar in the google policy. Also, many have been using methods such as this, since the early days of blogger in itself.

[via:Digital Inspiration] 

Dont be fooled, there is no actual service called PayPerWiki, but thats what  is causing a storm in the blogosphere. When a company like Microsoft makes even the slightest move, they should know the whole world will come to know about it sooner or later.

The most recent controversy deals with Microsoft’s decision to a pay a fellow Australian blogger by the name of Rick Jelliffe to edit Wikipedia pages containing information regarding the company. The Wikipedia pages were detailed postings stating the various technologies developed by Microsoft relating to open office standards.

You can be assured that anytime a company of Microsoft’s size and influence is mentioned, it will hit slashdot or other social media type sites. Just as you very well guessed, it did top slashdot and to further fuel the discussion,Matt Mahugh at Microsoft admitted to doing so in a comment.

Microsoft claims that they were not comfortable making direct changes to an article about their technology. According to Microsoft spokesperson, he states that the Wikipedia articles were written by authors of a competiting brand known as IBM which has adopted a different office standard, many of the details mentioned in the wikipedia articles were incorrect.

Wikipedia is designed in a way that anyone from anywhere can make changes to articles found in the site and so accuracy is somewhat comprimised. But, why would a company like microsoft care about Wikipedia, when they have such large public representation compaigns to deal with their image. Tech enthusiasts might be the only people, who would even care to read details regarding such technologies and they are aware of wikipedia’s flaws and advantages.

Microsoft Anytime Upgrade is a new system implemented by microsoft in order to  allow customers seeking more features to easily upgrade to another version of windows vista.

Previously, Microsoft didn’t have such methods in place to influence users to go out and buy a legal copy of their operating system. With this new system a person who has purchased a copy of Microsoft’s newest operating system which is  Windows Vista can easily upgrade a more feature filled version like the premium edition.

The key advantage being the cost of upgrade. A user who has purchased the most basic edition of windows vista can upgrade to Home premium with only a fraction of the cost. Full price for a legal copy of Home premium is about $159 but with this new system in place, you can get a activation key to upgrade for only $79.

Another system in place to promote legal usage of Windows Vista is Windows Family Discount. This allows a costumer who has purchased a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate to get licenses for Home premium at a very low price. Basically the costumer would be allowed licenses to Home premium that can be installed on up to two PCs for only $49 rather than having to pay the full price $159 for each one of your systems.

Microsoft’s decision to introduce these discounts will definitely appeal to more costumers looking to buy a legal copy instead of a pirated one. If a user was forced to buy new licenses at the full price for each system at their given house, the use of pirated copies would become much more appealing.

They should have come with such ideas in the past as it would have decreased the amount of pirated copies floating around the internet. Note that I chose to use my words carefully by stating decrease but not end piracy. There will always be people who choose to use pirated copies rather than a legitimate one.

Google is by far the dominant player in online contextual advertising with little to no competition at all. But, what do you do when you run out of ideas to advertise material?

A couple of months back, Google daringly entered the radio advertising area with somewhat success. Google lives and breathes advertising and besides its the only way they can monetize. After all, a service cannot survive without sufficient funding, especially one that of Google’s size and power.

Their newest approach to expand Google’s advertising empire involves a certain old fashioned idea with a much modern twist. A traditional method of advertising at best but one that of great value.

Its no secret that the future of advertising is no where other than the internet itself but at present, physical means of advertising still play a significant role in our lives.

All hints to Google’s interest in developing a digital billboard advertising network. According to a report by the New Scientist, Google has already filed for a patent regarding this matter. The author gives us a detailed view of how such a service might work.

Stores buying advertising time on local electronic billboards are able to connect their stock-control computers to the network. The ads are displayed in rotation, but only until the stock-control computer reports the product as sold out. At that point, the ad is omitted from the cycle until the product is restocked.

Google claims that electronic billboards often display products that are not found in local stores which would mean the advertisement is simply useless. Google has come up with a system that only advertises products available at nearby stores.

There is no doubt in my mind that this would truly revolutionize the current electronic billboard advertising industry. As for it’s success among competitors in the field, I couldn’t possibly tell but if Google’s past is considered, then success is where Google Lies.

[Via:Google Blogoscoped, Search Engine Land]

Techmeme is by far one of the most popular news aggregators out there,    especially with almost 30,000 unique visitors a month. Getting a post at the front page of Techmeme would certainly give you the traffic boost you need and the much needed visibility from high profile bloggers.

During a recent interview with Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme, revealed some insights into how you could possibly get your blog post in the front page.

»Create posts that will interest other bloggers to link to your post which will allow your items to rise in importance. The more inbound links you can get, the more it appeals to the Techmeme bot.

»Linking to an item on Techmeme will not get you listed as a source. Techmeme has a list of preset sources that are increasing as the blogosphere expands. You should always aim to get blogs that you know are already listed as a source such as GigaOM by Om Malik to link to your entry.

»If a post on your site includes a Techmeme permalink, as opposed to linking to an article that Techmeme links to, with the addition of a moderate amount of traffic through that link would get you a better chance at being listed under the Techmeme Discussion section of an article. Also the Techmeme system must first determine that your site is not spammy and the referral is real.

»Write content that is original and meaningful to new visitors as well as returning visitors of your site.This is a great tip because its important to write original content to increase your blog readership not just to get your blog listed on Techmeme. Just remember that originality is the key to increasing popularity in the blogosphere. Put yourself in the shoes of your readers, would you want to read content that is a repeat of what all of the news sites are writing about?

»Enable others to find your content easily through emails, links, trackbacks, IMs,social networks etc. This will in fact increase the appeal your blog has on potential readers, while increasing traffic to your site. Traffic has a great impact on Techmeme’s ability to find your content and evaluate it’s worth.

Source:Tech Memeorandum |Image Credit:Digital Inspiration

Pirate Bay is the swedish heaven for torrent users seeking access to millions of copyrighted material online. Recent lawsuits and allegations have put the torrent community at a tight position which could result in permanent shutdown of services in the near future.

For the most part, the owners of Pirate Bay have been able to avoid troubles due to their decision to switch between Netherlands and Sweden. Its much harder to seek justice dealing with intellectual property outside of United States.

Their latest announcement to buy the island of Sealand has been meet with outrage among those wishing an end to piracy. Sealand is a small island off the coast of United Kingdom which was first claimed as an independent nation in the late 1960’s by a radio broadcaster named Paddy Roy Bates.

Pirate Bay has reported that the cost would probably be about $2.000.000.000.  In fact to help raise funds for such a large purchase, they have lauched buysealand.com. They know such a price would be hard for any company to raise but if things dont go well, they would buy a less expensive island.

In my humble opinion, a decision to purchase a whole nation just for the sole purpose of avoiding government control does sound a little farfetched.