Yahoo, Microsoft and Google - YPN is the key for Yahoo

I like to keep an eye on the Search Engine world and like to think I know quite a bit about the SEO/SEM side of things. But even if I don't it seems abundantly clear to me.

Launch YPN (Yahoo Publishing Network) Yahoo! Lets assume that Yahoo does not have enough advertisers to do a national, much less a global, launch of YPN. This is where Google comes into play. Google could fill in with their adword/adsense inventory and share money.

Google - Are you listening? Do you want Microsoft and Carl Icahn to completely dismantle Yahoo? Maybe you do, less competition right? But it seems quite clear to me that Google has a soft spot for Yahoo and a big F U to Mr. Softie (MSFT).

Why the hell can't Yahoo, after 3+ years in beta, get YPN launched? This would probably make share holders happy (make me happy, and yes I own Yahoo stock). It would quite rapidly increase revenue both gross and net for Yahoo.

It's issues like YPN that is causing Yahoo to flounder and now on the brink of complete disassembly by Mr. "Make lots of Money and not give a shit about the company" Icahn.

WAKE UP YAHOO - WAKE UP GOOGLE - M$FT is lurking in the shadows..

Screen Refresh Problems in Eclipse RCP Solved!

On my current project I was having some serious problems with screen refresh and I finally found a work around. The problem was I have a 4 pane perspective setup with 4+ views. The left half of the application area is a PDF viewer. When a user (me doing testing) would open a new PDF the fragments of the filedialog would remain overlayed during opening of the new PDF as well as the other views shifting over into the PDF area. The reason is because I had to do a HideView then ShowView. If I just did a close/open document function call in my swing PDF component the pdf component (I use icesoft IcePDF) would not always work. I am pretty sure this is due to the SWT to AWT bridge I have to do. So now here is the code to fix it!

Shell shell;
shell = getSite().getShell();
PDFView view = (PDFView)getSite().getPage().findView(PDFView.ID);
getSite().getPage().hideView(view);
shell.update();

Just doing a shell update seemed to do the trick, you may want to also look at this code if the above does not work for you. Look at the comments out code and it may be useful to you.

Shell shell;
shell = getSite().getShell();
// Display display = shell.getDisplay();
// Point shellSize = shell.getSize();
// shell.redraw(0,0,shellSize.x,shellSize.y,true);
PDFView view = (PDFView)getSite().getPage().findView(PDFView.ID);
getSite().getPage().hideView(view);
shell.update();
// display.update();

Numeric Only in Eclipse RCP SWT Text Widget

If you wanted to make an Eclipse RCP SWT text field numeric only here is a simple validation you can do. More to come on this as I need better support then this for like money fields, etc.

Text startText = new Text(group, SWT.BORDER);
startText.setText(txt);
startText.setLayoutData(new GridData(GridData.FILL_HORIZONTAL));
startText.addListener (SWT.Verify, new Listener ()
{
public void handleEvent (Event e)
{
String string = e.text;
char [] chars = new char [string.length ()];
string.getChars (0, chars.length, chars, 0);
for (int i=0; i < chars.length; i++)
{

if (!('0' <= chars [i] && chars [i] <= '9') && (chars[i]!='.'))
{
e.doit = false;
return;
}
}
}
});

Blackberry Outage for All Americas

My Blackberry isn't working and just OUT. Blackberry / RIM has said this is a severe critical outage that affects all 12 million users in the Americas. RIM has no official response to the cause or how long this will last. The last time we had this problem it was approximately 24 hours so this could be even worse.

Want to take bets how long? Post a comment and lets see who is closest!

Hold your breath berry-crackers! This could be painful!

Free One Way Links

So I am off on a tangent from Eclipse and RCP but I do a lot of SEO stuff and wanted to talk about two ways to get free one way links.

I have been able to get 20,000+ links by using a simple method. By using the referral program at www.receivelinks.com. Using this has allowed me to not even need links on my own sites. Great way to get one way links

Here is their description of the referral system taken from Receive Links FAQ page:

Quote:

For each account (which includes all the sites in this account) we will give you 5% to 15% of the Points of the new account you have referred (this is not deducted off them). This lasts for the life time of your and the referred account. If the Points of the referred account goes up (or down) so will your referral bonus. Also we offer a subscription Bonus for each set of 10 sites that have over 500 points. How do you know when I have referred someone? Every account has its own unique referral link which can be found in the referral details box which is located on your 'Manage Account' page. You can advertise Receive Links using this link and if someone clicks on it we give them a cookie so if they sign up anytime within 30 days after you will be counted as their referrer providing they do not delete the cookie or come to the site on a different referrer link.

The subscription bonus is equivalent to having a paid account for free. This in turn also bumps up your referral bonus level.

So how do you do this? First sign up at receive links
Then look for your referral ID under manage account. It will say Your Referral Link is ... [your referral url].
Then promote that url any way you see fit. forum sig's, blog posts, dedicate webpages such as reviews,etc. and whatever else you think of.

Once others sign up and gain points you automatically get points assigned to your account. You can now use those points to get links to any URL you want as long as it's cached in either G or Y!.

Good luck in your link building!



I am offering 500 points at http://www.receivelinks.com for FREE for one month for EVERYONE who does a comment with their userid they used to this post.

Good Brief Description of What Receive Links Is

What are the points worth?
- you get a PR0 link for ~0.33 points, a PR1 link for ~1 point, a PR2 link for ~3 points, pr3 for ~9 points, etc..

How does it work?
Just open an account at http://www.receivelinks.com and post to this thread with your new account name. I will then transfer 500 points from my account to your account. I will give you the 500 points for one month. That's enough time for you to give "Receive Links" a try and see if you like it. After that month you can either stop using the service or participate in the network by offering link slots on your page(s) - this will give you your own points.

Why am I giving away points?
I believe that "Receive Links" is a great network - much better than "Link Vault". It has been around for 1.5 years now and I have had great success using it and the more who join the more success I and everyone else can enjoy.

GIVE ME POINTS NOW
OK. open an account at http://www.receivelinks.com and reply to this thread with your new account name - I will try to send the points to your account as fast as possible and it is usually less then 24 hours.

Desktop Tower Defense

If you need a break and just want to get away from work, life, family or friends I highly recommend this entertaining game call Desktop Tower Defense. It is a free online flash game and can provide many hours of playing. See if you can beat my current high score of 6400. Enjoye

QTJava and Eclipse RCP

I have not posted in a while but thought I would do a quick post before the year ends and follow up with more detail later. Right now I am trying to get QTJava API into my Eclipse RCP application. Thanks to a friend (thanks Rick!) I have some code to help with a problem with QTJava for Eclipse RCP on the Macintosh OSX platform. Isn't that ironic? Under OSX the whole movie canvas is shifted 16 pixels right and 16 pixels down (I believe that is the offset issue, will double check in followup post). So one needs to "trick" Eclipse to think the canvas paint area is correct. I will post some code examples in January once I have all the code in and working. Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!