WDTalk

I watch my share of online videos much like everyone else. This morning I watched Jimmy Stewart recite a poem about his beloved dog, Beau, and it brought me to tears. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, but this morning it had special meaning to me because my baby, a three year old Golden Doodle named Payge, died in my arms yesterday morning.

There are lots of events that change people’s lives, and losing a pet is one of those tragic moments. Although my loss right now seems unbearable, I’ve been told the pain will ease with time and I’ll remember her for all the love we shared. My wife and I spoiled Payge, but she was part of our family, and that’s just the way we are.

My wife and I are small business owners, and Payge would go with me every evening to close the shop. On the way there, I’d always roll her window down and she’d put her nose next to the rearview mirror and let the wind rush through her fur. Or I’d open the moon roof and she’d stick that big nose out the top. I will so miss that.

This was a very personal loss for my wife and I, but everyday families lose their homes to foreclosure, or lose their jobs, or business owners are forced to close their doors. Some tragedies are unavoidable, like Payge’s, but some are preventable. At Hostirian, I always preach disaster recovery. Lose your data and likely lose your company. Some businesses simply never recover. Fortunately, we offer solutions to prevent these types of tragedies.

For my wife and I, our healing and recovery process meant locating another puppy to love, which we have done. Her name will be Abby. And as difficult as it is for me to write this right now, this too is part of my healing process. So I say “Goodbye Payge.” You will forever be with us in our hearts.

What is click fraud? I just did a quick Bing search for click fraud which returned over 17 million results. It’s actually a cybercrime dating back years that occurs with PPC advertising when a spammer or some program or script imitates a real user clicking on an ad for the purpose of generating an actual charge per click, even though they have no interest in the target of that ad’s link.

Have you ever noticed in your PPC advertising campaigns, the same IP address clicking on your ad, spending one or two seconds on your website and then leaving? And coming back again within seconds? If you’re spending $3.00 per click, that adds up quickly.

Click fraud has been on the rise lately, with third and fourth quarter ’09 seeing huge jumps. This is generally attributed to very sophisticated rings of click fraudsters leveraging bots to automate and coordinate high volume traffic from click fraud rings.

What’s the Motivation?

One motivator is competitor click fraud.  The motivation of the perpetrator here is to simply obtain higher-placed ad positions for lower bid amounts by depleting the advertising budget of their competitors. Other motivators of click fraud include financial gain, revenge and blackmail.

What can you do to detect and prevent click fraud?

This starts with being proactive – measuring your advertising results, analyzing trends in click volumes with or without accompanying increases in your website’s traffic or sales.

There are also anti-fraud softwares to protect your advertising dollars. A quick check on Google for FREE click fraud software returned over 1.3 million results.

One of the great divides across cultures has always been the language barrier. Not only do I not know how to speak, read or write other languages, often I cannot tell what the language is just by looking at it – for example, Korean, Chinese or Japanese. I received an email in Chinese? today and went to my normal online translator to see what it said, but Chinese to English wasn’t one of their options.

Auto Detection
I’m thinking, what if this isn’t Chinese? Do I try multiple translators until one works, or is there a translator out there that simplifies this whole messy process? To my amazement, I found Bing Translator which has an auto detect option. Wow! I plugged in my email message and was able to instantly read Chinese spam in English. LOL.

Online Translators
Google’s language tools currently offers the following interface languages:

Yahoo also has it’s own language translator named Babel Fish, allowing you to translate a block of text up to 150 words.

Of course, there are variations of translators, like The Dialectizer. The Dialector can translate web pages and text into Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin, or Hacker. I just tried Redneck on our site and it’s hilarious.

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HostingCon is celebrating its Sixth Anniversary, and with a projected attendance of over 1,500 Internet professionals from over 30 countries, the 2010 show promises to be the best yet. We’re looking forward to meeting you in Austin, Texas!

I’m honored to have been added to the team of writers working on the newly launched blog at Web Host Classes – Tuesday and Thursday Webinars for web hosting professionals. | Web Host ClassesWebHostClasses.com! Hostirian is a company devoted to providing value to it’s clients, light years beyond simply offering packages and price points. We support Web Host Classes because it gives you the opportunity to speak directly with industry experts, advertise your business, and network with people just like you.

From their blog:

WebHostClasses.com Welcomes Steve-Hostirian!

August 26th, 2009