Protecting PDF files From Being Indexed In Search Engines

I have noticed a growing trend in companies who sell PDF files online. I went to get a copy of the ZEND PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, and I noticed that by doing a google search for pdf files with php 5 study guide that the pdf that they sell is actually being indexed by google.

The reason that this type of thing happens is that the actual pdf file itself resides within web space for that site, and someone out there has a link pointing to it.  Google follows the link to the file and indexes the file.

To prevent this from happening, you should store the files you want to restrict outside of web space (IE a folder ABOVE your web root) and allow PHP (or ASP or whatever) to serve the file.

FilePath could be something like “C:\Web\PDF\FileName.pdf” Where your webroot is “C:\Web\wwwroot” for example. The important thing is that the file resides outside of the web space.

In PHP you can do something like this:

<?php
if logged_in() {
header(’Content-type: application/pdf’);
print file_get_contents(”FilePath”);
} else {
# forward to login code here
}
?>

As always, If anyone has a better solution or a different one, please post a comment.

Difficulty With Naming A Website

One of my favorite dev sites is trying to come up with a new site for a project they are working on.  You can find the article here on codinghorror.com. This does bring up an important issue: It can be really difficult to name a website.  I chose this site because it was suggested to be as an alternate name by godaddy.

I wonder how many people agonize for days over what domain to choose? There are so many brands out there, I think you have to be careful not to infringe on something someone else has already done, and more importantly you don’t want a URL that is too closely associated to something that you don’t want to be associated with.  I believe that codinghorror.com is doing a good thing in asking their readers to help pick the domain.

I think some important things to consider are:

1. Keywords in the domain

2. Branding Potential (think t-shirts, business cards, etc, depending on the type of site)

3. The professionalism of the Domain (if this is an ecommerce site, or a personal blog, it should make a difference on what domains are appropriate)

4.  Past uses, existing links, etc. (if the site was recently expired, it could have links pointing to it, problems with G, or other things you need to investigate).

5.  Is the domain easy to remember?

T-Mobile Owns Magenta Color? What’s Next

First A Brief Excerpt From The Wired Article:

Ryan Block of Engadget assures us that this is not an early April Fool gag. Deutsche Telekom, owners of T-Mobile in Germany, has sent a letter to the gadget blog demanding that it stop using the color magenta.

You have got to be joking T-Mobile.  Are you that big of a moron? Next thing you know I won’t be able to use a smiley face, drawn an arch, or use “Micro” in any way.  This is just insane.  T-Mobile, stop being an rtard, you may not have the color Magenta.  While I’m at it, Walmart, you also may not own the smiley face.  Why don’t we just go find a company who used Magenta before T-Mobile, and prove that they own it.  And then we can go back further, maybe to the first paining to ever use it, and claim they own it.  Maybe it will even go back to some archaic cave painting.  Since I am the direct decedent of the cave man who drew that, I think that I now own T-Mobile as well as the color magenta.

You can’t own a color, bottom line, end of story, Good Bye.

Beginner’s Guide To BitTorrent, How to use it, and what is bitTorrent?

Beginners Guide To Bittorrent

BitTorrent is a protocol for file sharing.  It uses a decentralized network, meaning that unlike Napster, LimeWire, or other P2P file sharing services that store the files on one or more centralized servers, bitTorrents are shared in pieces by individual computers.  The files in whole or part are never stored on centralized servers, only the trackers.

The protocol was developed by programmer Bram Cohen, and the first implementation was released in 2001.  I would also like to note that a extremely large amount of the overall internet traffic is generated by torrents. 

A very good advantage about this protocol is that it is not sequential.  The files are broken into many small pieces, and are distributed on a rarest piece first basis.  This is to ensure that there is a maximum amount of completed files available. 

The simplified process is something like this:

UserA has a file he wants to share via bitTorrent.

He creates a torrent file, and makes that torrent available via torrent trackers. (Or in a trackerless system (decentralized tracking) he would become the first tracker.)

5 Different people see the torrent, and open it for download via their torrent clients.

They all start getting pieces of the file from UserA, but then they also start sharing different pieces with each other. 

 Terms:

Torrent - This is the file that points the way to the actual file on everyone’s computers.

Seed  - this is a person who is sharing the file

Leech - This is a person who is downloading the file

So Basically:

 To Download Files Via BitTorrent:

1. Download a bitTorrent client.
2. Go to a tracker site and search for a torrent file you want
3. download the torrent file and open it with your bitTorrent client
4. watch the file download, and enjoy.

To  Upload Files Via BitTorrent:

1. Open Up Your bitTorrent Client (or download one if you don’t have one already)
2. Follow the steps for your client to create a .torrent file
3. upload the torrent file to a tracker site
4. stay on long enough to seed the file.

Clients: 

Azureus

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

Azureus is a BitTorrent implementation in Java (so you can use it on any platform that supports java) It easily supports multiple concurrent BitTorrent downloads, can be customized, and is constantly updated. Make sure you have a recent Java Virtual Machine installed.

BitCommet

http://www.bitcomet.com/

BitComet is a BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download management software, which is powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely FREE. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate Downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster, or more.

There are many other clients, but those are two that I especially like. 

Trackers: (Not a comprehensive list in the least, but enough to get you started)

isoHunt. (http://www.isohunt.com)

The Pirate Bay (http://www.thepiratebay.org)

Mininova (http://www.mininova.org)

Btjunkie (http://www.btjunkie.org)

TorrentSpy (http://www.torrentspy.com)

Yahoo! News Video Only Stories Are Annoying!

I normally like to use Yahoo!  I honestly prefer Yahoo! over G for my homepage, though I typically use G for searching.  Yahoo! is starting to become annoying however, as they are posting news stories that are video only, which I am unable to view at work.  I would like to see a text version of these, or don’t show them at all.  This really is annoying Yahoo!  Also, please stop posting the stupid “7 recipes” random blog posts, and the top x lists of things that someone just threw together.  I can honestly not believe you post some of that crap.  I write posts better than those, and I don’t see my stuff on the Yahoo! homepage, so I can only come to the conclusion that someone is “helping” someone else out for some reason.  So Yahoo! stop with the BS news stories, show text link alternatives to the video ones, and don’t get taken over by Microsoft!

How To Put Text Beside A Picture With HTML,CSS

What you are probably looking for is the float property.

You can use float:left; or float:right; (there are other options as well, but these are most common).

you would do something like this <img src=”image path” style=”float:left; padding:5px; border:0px;” />

This will allow text or anything else to be next to the image.  The padding allows a little room between the text and image, and setting the border to 0px means don’t show a border. (There is often a blue default border when using the img as a link).

How do you clear temporary internet files and cookies while using Mozilla/Firefox?

CTRL + SHIFT + DEL  OR Go to Tools -> Clear Private Data,  then be sure to check cookies.

That’s all there is to it!

How Do I take a picture of a website to save on my computer?

The correct term for this is a “screen shot”.  There are a couple of keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to do this, but you will also need some type of graphics editing program, paint, ms word, or something similiar.

The keyboard commands are ALT + Print Screen,  CTRL + Print Screen.  One gets just the active window, the other gets everything on the visible screen.

Once you press one of these keyboard commands, the image will be in your clipboard.  You need to then open up image processing software (paint, photoshop, etc),  and PASTE what is in memory onto a blank document.

That’s all there is to it!

How To Download Youtube Videos?

1. There are several sites that facilitate the downloading of video sites such as youtube.

http://keepvid.com/ is one such site, and there are many others, you may also want to check out a video converter to go from the flash videos you will generate via these sites onto an avi or mpeg, I would recommend SUPER (just goolge search for it), it is free.

Will I still be signed in on another computer if I forgot to close out over night?

That all depends on what you mean by “signed in”.

If your at a business or school that uses an exchange server, then you may very well stay logged in, and the computer could be locked.

If your referring  to being signed in to a specific website, then it all depends on how they store their sessions, some sites have their sessions expire after a certain period of inactivity, and some stay live for days.

It is always best practice when using a computer that has multiple users on it, to log out completely, and even to erase your user name if it shows up after you log out.

Why is it when i open an email with a picture in it, the picture doesnt show, just a box with a couple shapes?

1.  Depending on your email client, you may have to click a link that says “display images” or something similar.

2.  Check that the message is being displayed in HTML.

3.  If you still can’t see the image, try to view the source of the message, and find the html tag <img source=”http://…” and copy and past the http://…  part into the browser, and see if the image is displayed, if not then the link is dead, if it is, then there is still some setting that is incorrect in your email client.

Bad Credit Can Be Fixed

I have bad credit, mostly due to playing so much World Of Warcraft that I kinda forgot to go to work for a while. I wondered what to do for a while, but then I found that there are bad credit credit cards that are designed to help people like me who have bad credit to get back on their feet. (As for not playing world of warcraft…well I have yet to find the proper help group for that, but I can assure you that there will be one available soon, because its about as addicting as cocane).

BadCreditOffers.com gives you a good overview of some popular cards, and what options they have. It also tells you if they are secure or unsecure (meaning you have to put money down to back the line of credit or not), and they offer a ranking system to tell you which cards are the most popular.  This is a great way for many of us who have bad credit to find a starting place to help rebuild.

Shopping Cart Software Anyone Can Use

For those of you out there who are novices to the web design world, you may want to have your own ecommerce website, and wonder how in the world you can tackle the problem of having quality shopping cart software. I can tell you from experience that while solutions like OsCommerce look good, they can be a huge hassle if you ever have to dig down into the code to do anything unique to it.

One great thing that I have noticed about AShopCommerce is that they will design your custom e-commerce storefront for free! They also offer the ability to get some custom work done on bits and pieces on an as needed basis, and they host the whole thing for you on lightning fast servers, and guarantee the up time of your site.

They also make the ecommerce shopping cart SEO friendly. This is a tough thing to do after the fact, so starting with the correct shopping cart up front can save you time and money in the end. I have had clients in the past who tried to modify their own shopping carts and failed causing huge problems for themselves down the road. You can save your self the trouble, and start with something that you know will work correctly.

IBM’s Latest News… Or Is It?

Okay, I could go ahead and write what would possibly be the 4,732nd article about The Big Blue Teddy Bear’s supercomputing “breakthrough” that seems to be making the rounds, or I could just poke fun at the blogging and newsmaking community as a whole… Let me think about that one for just a minute…
(more…)

Internet Providers Blocking Torrent Traffic

I dont’ know what is going on with the world today, or how much sway the MPAA and RIAA have, but apparently its quite a bit. I have been reading lately how certain ISP’s are attempting to block or cause problems with torrent traffic. This is totally unacceptable in my opinion. Its bad enough when they block certain ports, prevent web servers from running, ect. This is crossing the line in my opinion. To advertise things like “unlimited use” and “fastest internet” and then turn around and start packet sniffing and filtering is just bad business. I will not use an ISP that does this, and I hope that many of you out there will feel the same way. There are many valid torrents out there than do not violate copy write protection, like linux ISO’s, many of the files we share for projects ect, nearly all of the open source programs…the list goes on. I feel like we are a piece of stone that is just gradually getting chipped away, and I want to know if we are going to stand up and draw the line in the sand, or just keep letting things like this happen.

Check out this chart from azureus wiki.

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#United_States_of_America