Okay. The 1st Quarter toolbar update’s ended and it looks like we failed to reclaim the PR5 laurel we held mid last year and lost in the bloody 2007 4th Quarter PR update. We’re languishing at PR3- perhaps due to the sudden fall of many high powered blogs that link to us.

Sigh. Iwebtool.com’s pagerank prediction’s gone haywire as well. The service ‘predicts’ we should be back at PR5 by now and yet it’s evident that no change will occur. Until April perhaps.

No matter. PR or no PR boost, we’re still here to give you boys and girls the most cutting reviews for 2008.

We’ll fly even higher!

Any of you folks still suffering from last year’s shakedown?

Voting’s ongoing for the 2007 Weblogawards! If you’re running a blog or your friends are- now’s the time to vote. Everyone who’s a whos who on the web knows that this is the Pulitzer parallel for the web.

This morning was a dull day. I watched 3 DVDs, had two rounds of steamy sex with my wife and wolfed a large pizza. I was still bored and puzzled how to fill the rest of the day.

Then my blackberry blinked and I say an email from sitepronews with a URL like this

http://www.sitepronews.com/promotion.html

Woah! Tons and tons of free SEO tools to dominate the web and burn the competition to the ground. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

If you’re a web entrepreneur like myself, you better check it out now. It’d knock your socks offs!

My advice to the folks who love automation: don’t. This is particularly true of Windows Updates option in Vista.

When automatic updates is activated, Vista takes the latest updates and patches your system without user intervention. That’s a bad thing. Why? Because more and more users are reporting how some patches and drivers destroy activation and dumps the user back to reduced functionality mode. You get only 30 minutes of internet surfing, then the PC locks you out!

Check out the KezNews newsbulletin on it.

I personally experienced this shenanigans myself. A desktop PC locked-up just the other day when a new driver was changed. Now I gotta get a new code from M$

It helps to google the KB number of the update before downloading and installing. Any bad rap? Then avoid till a better patch comes out. Just like that animated cursor patch that caused great harm!

Webmasters who paid for links in paid-directories just chucked money down the drain. And turned on the incinerator.

You see, starting with the 4th quarter Google pagerank update, some of the largest paid directories (think Aviva, Alive and DirectoryDump) all plummeted from pagerank 7 to pagerank nowhere. Search google, and none of these sites can be found. It’s like they never existed.

Directory webmasters protested, link buyers griped, and Google- well, google stood its ground. Google says directories violated TOS by selling links which game big G’s algorithms (to pass on pagerank). It’s a mortal sin and one must pay dearly for violating Holy Webmaster Guidelines. Nothing can be worse than being sandboxed in Google’s anonymity hell!

I for one agree. For too long, I’ve seen Linux sites sponsoring gambling, porn and viagra businesses. Or SEO sites promoting snoring tablets. Wha???? What’s the connection?

These paid-links and sponsored advertising for unrelated (and crappy) services pollute the web with scum that waste our bandwiths.

Good going google!

For a full details on the shakedown, check out this blog

Comment spam critters fly into our face at the rate of 200 a day. Now that’s a lot of bugs and this considerably slows down the approval of new and legit comments.

Can anyone recommend a good plugin that automates the purging of crap?

Spammers, may this happen to you:

http://mosnews.com/news/2005/07/25/spammerdead.shtml

Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment
Created: 25.07.2005 13:14 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:14 MSK

MosNews

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

Kushnir, 35, headed the English learning centers the Center for American English, the New York English Centre and the Centre for Spoken English, all known to have aggressive Internet advertising policies in which millions of e-mails were sent every day.

In the past angry Internet users have targeted the American English centre by publishing the Center’s telephone numbers anywhere on the Web to provoke telephone calls. The Center’s telephone was advertised as a contact number for cheap sex services, or bargain real estate sales.

Another attack involved hundreds of people making phone calls to the American English Center and sending it numerous e-mails back, but Vardan Kushnir remained sure of his right to spam, saying it was what e-mails were for.

Under Russian law, spamming is not considered illegal, although lawmakers are working on legal projects that could protect Russian Internet users like they do in Europe and the U.S.