Scrapers: which is the original and which is the fake?

here has recently been a rise in the number of scrapers across the Internet. Such sites ‘scrape’ content off other existing, content-rich sites and put it along with ads on the Internet. They can make a ‘quick buck’ by attracting errant users who use search engines. In the process, genuine sites lose visitors and potentially get penalised for duplicate content.

Apart from illegal scrapers and spam, there are marginal cases of plagiarism. Imported content must always be:

• Contained within quotes
• Quoted in part so that it contains enough text to serve as a ‘teaser’ for the original information source
• Include at least one prominent link to the source

Video formats are among the most complicated formats to handle. Decoding and encoding of a frame sequence is an intricate process that different manufacturers take a different approach to solving. One solution is to settle down for no compression, the other being imposition of standards. There is one body, namely Microsoft among a few more, that embeds elements which are never agreed upon in the IT community. This corruption of inter-operable formats includes documents, spreadsheets, mail and even Web pages. Norway has had enough of that.

I would argue that there is no reason to get bitter. No open format, no view. I was never a huge TV/video anyway. When Microsoft change the encoding of text or textual formats, that descends to an entire new level though.

hen I first registered schestowitz.com, I registered it for 10 years — until 2014 — that is. At the time, I could not imagine that search engines would favour sites that are committed to a long-term future. But guess what? It turns out they do.

Paying your host for domain renewal annually is a poorer choice; furthermore, it is undesirable if your site has real potential. As unfair as it may seem, Google definitely favour sites which are registered for many years and will position these higher in the SERP‘s. This helps in identifying sites that are serious about their vocation and might rule out spam sites or scrapers (site that steal content for fast, artificial growth).

There are important factors when selecting a domain name, which is a very influential choice. A domain name needs to be:

• Short
• Memorable (to distinguish from “short”. For example, m3d4n8sm.com versus feedsync.com)
• Decent and trustworthy

If you struggle to think of a good name that is also available, have a quick look at the enormous list of deleted (i.e. registered, then neglected) domains in the ICANN-inclined whois.net.

Changing of a domain is far more problematic than people imagine. Change of bookmarks, loss of SE ranks, update of links (where still possible) and loss of identity are all involved in such transition. A domain change can be a bitter, cruel and highly effort-consuming process, which makes the initial choice of a name very crucial.

schestowitz.com: rising from ~20 to ~1,000 daily visits in less than one year

The BBC published an article about a model which solves the “I’m my own Grandpa” paradox in the context of time travel. The model is based on laws of quantum mechanics.

Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is “complementary” to the present.

In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind…

Some months ago, an automatic and effective way of obtaining music was described: no need to run any heavy graphical program; no need to select music (only sources of music of the desired genre); no limits on bandwidth or volume.

Taking this further, Dr. Scott Tobkes explains about his method of bringing commericals to a halt.

Something I’ve had fun doing lately is recording live of archived streaming audio from radio stations around the country

There are innumerable subjects and programs. I record it to mp3 or wav, and listen in my car or PC, while fast-forwarding through the commercials. I know that there are aggregators that will make this a seamless process like Ipodder.

I don’t like to call them podcasts. I use this program…

Polaroid-o-nizer applies a sequence of transformations and adds effects which create fancy images on-line. There is a simple yet flexible Web interface which enables you to customiseoutput images.

Let us put the famous Lenna to the test, as was done some months ago with the image-to-text transformer. Below is the result.

I have recently come across a German site which cloned my theme. Looking at the similarity in terms of layout is somewhat surreal. Sadly, that site appears to have become dormant last year.