Speaking at the worlds largest technology conference, Bill Gates proudly announced his plans to step down from his throne as the Head of Microsoft. He also confirmed that next year would see his last speech at CES as he steps down as head of the company he started 30 years ago.

Microsoft has played an important role in our lives with their introduction of Windows at an age when graphics could not even compare to today’s calculater. The brains behind the works, Bill Gates has been the face that is seen throughtout the world of computing. Bill will still participate in company affairs but as the non-executive Chairman of the company he founded in 1975.

In addition to being one of the most influential tech entrepreneurs, he’s widely regarded as a humanitarian. His contributions in third world countries has certainly won him praise among his fans and the general public. Well, who could stay away from charities when your bank account is worth more than 50 billion dollars. After Stepping down,he hopes to focus on his interests such as fighting poverty,helping the diseased and the foundation he and his wife started.

There is no question to be asked when it comes to his credibility and skill at thinking ahead of his competitors. Perhaps thats the reason for his success leading him to become the worlds richest man. Hopefully,Bill will remain involved in his company’s affairs and watch his creations flourish.

[Via: BBC]

Just when I thought PayPerPost had made a smart move to gain some positive feedback from the blogging community,they decide to leave behind the deal with Performancing.

Metrics was simply a free blog statistics service that was too costly for an organization of their size to maintain.

According to Nick Wilson,their Metrics service will become open source, allowing the community to further develop it. Permancing blog advertising network will remain intact with full support from the developers. As for their Firefox blog editor,it will get its own domain and be rebranded in the near future as ScribeFire.

There is some good news for blogspot users who have been long awaiting for an option to switch from those long domain names such as mysite.blogspot.com to a friendlier one like www.mysite.com. New version of blogger gives publishers an option to migrate their blogspot blog to any other domain name of choice.

The best part about this move would be the ability to keep all the google stats such as rankings,incoming links,etc. Direct traffic coming into your blog is redirected to your new domain automatically.

You wouldn’t even need to actually buy server space but just own the domain name by itself. Blogger will provide the space and uploading capabilities you will need to get your blog up and running. Of course, FTP publishing is still available if you’d like to do your own hosting.

To a rather negative note,this option is only available for the new version of blogger. You can continue hosting pictures on Blogger Images or Picasa web albums. You can use this feature with domains (e.g. mysite.com) or subdomains (e.g. name.mysite.com). However, you cannot specify subdirectories (e.g. mysite.com/blog/).

Additional Details: How do I use custom domain name on my blog? 

[via: Amit,Buzz]

You might of wondered how mozilla makes money from providing users like you with open source and free services like the firefox browser.In 2005,the mozilla foundation disclosed figures stating close to 53 million dollars in revenue.

This just proves that profit can be generated by providing open source and free services in this new era of computing.Just imagine a foundation started with only 10 employees and barely any financial backing could grow to compete against a giant like microsoft.I am speaking on behalf of firefox and it’s rapid growth in popularity compared to windows internet explorer which has been the dominant player for years.

Now you may be asking,how could a free browser like firefox provide mozilla foundation with this kind of revenue.The answer lies in the hands of google,the ever powerful search engine boosting the tech industry.If you have been using firefox for a while, you would of noticed those search boxes to the top right[see screenshot below] and the firefox homepage whcih includes the google search box.

Firefox users do not see those search features as being any type of advertisements but rather a tool created to help them conduct searches.When conducting a search with those search boxes,advertisements are displayed along with google search results and so a user may click on them which results in ad revenue for mozilla foundation.There is absolutely nothing wrong with this at all since you will be displayed the same advertisements if you were to visit google directly to conduct a search.

The big question in everyone’s mind is “how much did mozilla make in 2006?”.An accurate amount is not available at the moment but a close estimation can be made by comparing its growth rate throughout the past years.

Mozilla Foundation chairman Mitchell Baker claimed that their revenue for 2003 was 2.4 million and 5.8 million dollars in 2004 .Since the 2005 revenue was 52.9 million dollars, I would think their revenue for 2006 might be close to 90 million or more.

Adbrite has been around for a while alongside it’s giant competitor which is the google adsense program.Google Adsense allows publishers to display advertisements according to content provided by the author,while Adbrite goes about it in a different approach,as to allow publishers to sell ad space for a value according to their site statistics and placement. 

The recent release of google video ads have fueled the competition for smaller competitors such as adbrite to play catch up,as if it is even possible.Currently smaller advertising companies are promoting their own versions of video ad programs which has proven to be somewhat profitable.

Today,Adbrite released their own version of a video ad program for webmasters and bloggers called InVideo Player.This new release has some features that might be interest to video bloggers or even bloggers who may enjoy uploading videos on occasion.

Adbrite provides the video player along with the advertisements that will be placed inside of them.Here are some features of InVideo that will make you think twice about how you choose to monetize your videos:

»Fully customizable video player, easy-to-use, and 100% free
»Brand your videos with your own custom logo “watermark”
»“Split-screen” ads engage users without interrupting viewing experience
»Sharing features promote your site when your videos get “viral”
»Earn money from your videos, even when they’re embedded into other peoples’ Web sites

[Sign Up For InVideo]  [via:Darren]

Wether you are a average pc user or a power user,rememering those long lists of shortcuts built into your windows operating system can be a hassle.However, these shortcuts can be very handy when it comes to saving you some extra time.

I had some time to spare and thought I should help my fellow readers out with some quick shortcuts that you might of forgotten or simply unaware of.Hopefully these shortcuts will come in handy when you upgrade to windows vista.This way you are bound to save alot of time with these shortcuts.

»Windows system key combinations

•	F1: Help
•	CTRL+ESC: Open Start menu
•	ALT+TAB: Switch between open programs
•	ALT+F4: Quit program
•	SHIFT+DELETE: Delete item permanently

»Windows program key combinations

•	CTRL+C: Copy
•	CTRL+X: Cut
•	CTRL+V: Paste
•	CTRL+Z: Undo
•	CTRL+B: Bold
•	CTRL+U: Underline
•	CTRL+I: Italic

»Mouse click/keyboard modifier combinations for shell objects

•	SHIFT+right click: Displays a shortcut menu containing alternative commands
•	SHIFT+double click: Runs the alternate default command (the second item on the menu)
•	ALT+double click: Displays properties
•	SHIFT+DELETE: Deletes an item immediately without placing it in the Recycle Bin

»General keyboard-only commands

•	F1: Starts Windows Help
•	F10: Activates menu bar options
•	SHIFT+F10 Opens a shortcut menu for the selected item (this is the same as right-clicking an object
•	CTRL+ESC: Opens the Start menu (use the ARROW keys to select an item)
•	CTRL+ESC or ESC: Selects the Start button (press TAB to select the taskbar, or press SHIFT+F10 for a context menu)
•	ALT+DOWN ARROW: Opens a drop-down list box
•	ALT+TAB: Switch to another running program (hold down the ALT key and then press the TAB key to view the task-switching window)
•	SHIFT: Press and hold down the SHIFT key while you insert a CD-ROM to bypass the automatic-run feature
•	ALT+SPACE: Displays the main window’s System menu (from the System menu, you can restore, move, resize, minimize, maximize, or close the window)
•	ALT+- (ALT+hyphen): Displays the Multiple Document Interface (MDI) child window’s System menu (from the MDI child window’s System menu, you can restore, move, resize, minimize, maximize, or close the child window)
•	CTRL+TAB: Switch to the next child window of a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) program
•	ALT+underlined letter in menu: Opens the menu
•	ALT+F4: Closes the current window
•	CTRL+F4: Closes the current Multiple Document Interface (MDI) window
•	ALT+F6: Switch between multiple windows in the same program (for example, when the Notepad Find dialog box is displayed, ALT+F6 switches between the Find dialog box and the main Notepad window)

Spammers are known for their willingness to try anything to get their email across to a potential client by any means possible.Their latest attempt known as Image Spamming has been very successful at doing just that.

This tactic involves a spammer attaching advertisements inside of a image files such has .gif or .jpg, which are almost impossible for conventional spam filters to detect. GMail is unable to detect this type of spam as well but thankfully for the people at metafilter a workable solution is found.

Since GMail is one of the email services widely used, a simple solution to filter out some of these advertisements can be utilized using the Create a Filter function.

Step 1:Login into your GMail account,then choose “Create a Filter” option

Step 2:Type “multipart/related.gif” (without the quotes) in the field that says [Has the Words]

Step 3:Simply check the field “Has Attachment”

Step 4:Click next and select “Delete It” to move the spam message automatically to the GMail Trash folder bypassing the Inbox.Alternatively you can create a folder such as “probebly spam” in your inbox and then select “Apply the Label” option which inturn would send the messages to that folder.This can be a effective measure since setting it to automatically send the messages to the trash bin will delete it within 30 days.

Note:This method is not at all perfect in its ability to filter out spam messages.It could possibly result in messages to be deleted that could be potentially important or even personal.You might want to check your trash bin or the labeled folder you are using.