A contest held by yours truly, Fantasy Baseball. So why should you enter this contest? Because you can win credits. Dur. Credits equal money, man. Cash, fool. Benjamins! (Or whoever the guy/gal that is on your country’s high-end currency.)

I really love to win a prize from Aerten Art - She’s donating a painting.

Okay, Vanna, show the people who our sponsors are:

SPONSORS

Fantasy Baseball - 10,000ec — You can trade in 10,000ec for, like, Graham’s car or something.
Q3-n - 5000ec — Q3-n is selling their 1950s dinette furniture to finance this contest. They say, “You’re welcome.”
Øblog - 4000ec — Wow! 4000ec is going for like $30 on the Entrecard market. Thanks, Weird Oh.
Evil Woobie - 3000ec — Hey, maybe she’s not so evil after all! Or is she? You make the call!
Turnip of Power - 1001ec — He was going to go with 1000 then he found an extra credit in his couch. Thanks, Turnip!
Celebrity Pictures - 1000ec — Credits were acquired through legal means. Supposedly.
Evil Entrecard Kid! - 1000ec — Entrecard trivia: Evil Woobie and Evil Entrecard Kid are not related. Yet.
Modern Glam - 1000ec — With the 1000ec, perhaps you’ll buy an imaginary 1000ec pashmina and hang it around your virtual neck.
Dot Com Mogul - 1000ec — With this 1000ec, you might be able to buy back Q3-n’s dinette furniture.
Blabberwocky - 1000ec — It’s a play on Jabberwocky.
Looking For Scoop - 1000ec — Nothing says “I can buy one popular ad” like 1000ec.
Eyespi20.com - 1000ec — And she’ll teach you how she does that weird signature thing. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, look at her site.
Travelin’ Show - 1000ec — Message from the year 2012: Macy’s is now taking credits and a 1000 gets you one earring.
The Hypnotist - 1000ec — She will put you under a spell. Recognize!
Diet Pulpit - 1000ec — You can buy a lot of imaginary rice cakes with 1000ec. Side note, imaginary rice cakes taste better than real ones.
The Realtor - 500ec — You want insight. Listen to her write. It’s like magic beans growing in the backyard of your brain.
Romelo - 500ec — Romelo, Romelo, wherefore art thou 500ec?
WebATBP.com - 500ec — With gas prices soaring, it won’t be too long before 500ec goes for 501ec.
Inspire Emotion - 500ec — Almost pay for your favorite 512ec ad!
Sue Doe-Nim - 500ec — She’ll probably give you the credits then mock you for wanting them. That’s right — bonus!
Thailand Land of Smiles - 500ec — Actually, that’s 500 smiles.
FitnessLifeClub - 500ec — You’ll have to promise not to blow these credits on any fattening foods.
Lisa Cooking - 500ec — Surprise the whole family with 500 Entrecard credits.
JunkieYard Dot Com - 500ec — If you put these credits in a 401K, in 45 years you’ll have enough credits for a free e-card.
Movie Reviews - 500ec — You can’t buy a movie ticket with Entrecard credits. Yet. (Graham twirls his mustache. Contemplating world domination.)

PRIZES THAT ARE NOT CREDITS (BUT STILL WONDERFUL):

Aerten Art - She’s donating a painting. Seriously. Go look at her site and tell me you wouldn’t want a painting. Now. We’ll wait.
ImpNERD - 125×125 ad for a month — Let’s see, ImpNERD usually sells advertising for 256ec/day. You get this for a month. Um, yeah, you want this.
PoemsofQuotes - A cheesy poem about the winner’s topic — Win this and then ask them to rhyme something with, “Orange.”
Eyespi20.com - A custom made 125×125 card. Some of you need this. You know who you are.
Diet Pulpit - One week ad spot right below the banner and a personal greeting from Lady Rose saying, “Congratulations!”
JunkieYard Dot Com - Three blogroll links. Okay, the thing is, you can’t just get these. They’re prizes only won here.
The Hypnotist - A Hypnotic Audio - I don’t think this will simply be trance music. I could be wrong.

Together this is a virtual truckload of credits and prizes. (But who’s counting?) There will be ONE WINNER for EACH prize. (Caps are for emphasis, not aesthetics.) So that means there will be hundreds (or maybe dozens) of winners. Wow. Okay, again and backwards — wow.

HOW TO ENTER:

1. Write about this contest and just mention the one prize you want to win. Then leave a comment on this blog post with the link for us to see. 1 Entry

2. Write about this contest on your blog, mention the prize you want to win and copy all of the sponsors. Then leave a comment on this blog post with the link for us to see. 2 Entries

This contest will end exactly 14 days from the time Graham posts this contest. Also, if Graham buries this contest with an Outage notice, he will have to answer for the loss of Q3-n’s dinette furniture. Thanks and good luck!

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Are you bored? It happens to us all from time to time. We all need to take a break from blogging and when you do why not check out these interesting gadgets from Google I’m sure they will help you pass the time and relieve your boredom.

Stress Level Gadget

A funny gadget which measures your activity on the PC and analyzes your mental condition. This gadget is just for fun and can decrease the performance of your computer system but it is worth it.

Tetris

Play Tetris in your sidebar or on your desktop. And lets be honest you cant beat a bloody good game of this all time classic its got to be one of the most addictive games around.

Cat Clock

If you use the sidebar in Vista then its a good chance that you have a clock on it. Why not brighten it up a little by using this fun animated cat clock.

PuppetMuppet Noodle Timer

Simply click the left arrow to increase the number of minutes (or right arrow to decrease) and then press the start button to begin your countdown. The noodle cup on his head even rocks back and forth in time. Like the cat clock, it’s another thing that’s sure to bring a smile to your face when you see it sitting on your sidebar.

Answer Ball

Ask a question to AnswerBall and it will give you the response! One of my favourites and a bit of a fun way to pass the time.

Source : Problogineer

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Image via Wikipedia

What does RSS mean?

RSS may mean three different things. The original RSS (RDF Site Summary RSS 0.9) was developed by Dan Libby for Netscape. After a couple of months, they produced a simpler and easier-to-use version called Rich Site Summary or RSS 0.91. But they later lost interest, leaving it without an owner. As more and more users were using RSS, Winer made an adapted version of RSS 0.91 for Userland, claiming it as his own. Later in 2005, Microsoft developed Really Simple Syndication in relation to its Simple Sharing Extensions.

What is RSS?

RSS is a XML file format for syndicating content and news in the web. It is usually used by websites that constantly need to update their content regularly such as news websites (CNN, BBC and Reuters) and weblogs. Since it essentially gives one’s webpage more traffic, it is now more widely used in marketing, web publications and virus reports. Today, large and small websites alike are usually RSS-enabled.

For example, you’re an avid fan of baseball and you want to share something recent about one of the players. Other than content, you can also attach multimedia files, like videos or pictures. By using RSS feeds, other Internet users subscribed to RSS-enabled sites can read your “headline” for free. They can also track for changes and updates using news aggregators, which will be discussed later on.

How does RSS work?

To be able to use RSS, you first have to download a software (content management system), by which XML format can be read. The title and, excerpt of the article, and a link to the full article are shown. Other than just text, you can also insert multimedia files in RSS feeds like pictures, videos, mp3s and others. Broadcatching, picturecasting, photocasting, and podcasting are some features you can incorporate into your feed, but will not be discussed in this article.

For users to access a RSS feed, they need to use an aggregator or a feed reader. An aggregator searches for updates on RSS-enabled webpages then displays it. It can either be a standalone program or a web browser extension, depending on your operating system. Search engines for web content broadcasted over RSS feed are also available such as Plazoo and Feedster.

How can I make an RSS feed?

It is definitely easier to make an RSS feed if you know HTML. If not, you could sign up for a blog (there are hundreds out there), some of which automatically creates RSS. If you’re using a personal webpage building system, you need to understand more about RSS. Making an RSS feed from scratch is relatively easy.

A RSS feed should always contain an “item”, whichever version of RSS you might use. If you wrote about a recent event in your city or a book review, the contents of this article can form an item. An item is essentially composed of three things: a title, its description, and link (where they can find your webpage). In choosing a title and description, use something that will describe the web content best. Although it will be easier for you, it doesn’t follow that the title tag of your webpage and the item title are the same.

An item will look like HTML tags. First, you need to put an opening channel tag that defines it as an XML file. Then, label the tag as an item by putting <item> after the channel tag. After this, you can now insert the three essentials of your item: <title>, <description>, and <link>. Just like HTML, we need to close the tag by writing </channel> and </rss> at the bottom.

An RSS feed that contains multiple tags looks like this:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<rss version=”2.0″>

<channel>

<item>
<title>Anne Rice’s Belinda: A Book Review</title>
<description> If you haven’t read any Anne Rice books yet, you will be greeted with shocking romantic relationships forming between unlikely characters… </description>
<link> http://allaboutbookreviews.com/belinda </link>

<item>
<title>Harry Potter IV: Darker with More Deaths</title>
<description> The recently released Harry Potter installation has proved dark for its younger readers…</description>
<link> http://allaboutbookreviews.com/harrypotterandthehalfbloodprince </link>

</channel>

</rss>

Now, if you’re still having a hard time understanding these tags, look for HTML tags tutorial to further grasp the concept.

Have fun!

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Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

Image via Wikipedia

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:

Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.

Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.

Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.

When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

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