Bye-Bye to Google Adsense For Domains

I am not a huge fan of Google Adsense for domains, I had parked couple of names for testing purpose and they were not doing it better than other parking companies. In fact, stats were worse that Sedo or Bodis. I thought they never wanted to compete with parking companies, may be the parking revenue for Google is small compared to their total revenue. Also, it was sort of conflict of interest with partner parking companies. Today, I received communication from Google that they are shutting down, business of Adsense for domains, directly. They will continue to do so, through partner companies. Couple of months back Google banned most my parked domains from their network. Not sure how to interpret this development, in that sense.

This is what I received

SUB : Retiring AdSense for Domains in your account

Hi,

We’re contacting you because you’re using AdSense for Domains to monetize your undeveloped domains. After evaluating the benefits of our partner network, we’ve decided to retire the Hosted domains product within AdSense. Going forward, undeveloped domains will only be served through our existing AdSense for Domains distribution network.

Our records show that 9 of your Hosted domains will be affected by this upcoming change, which will follow the schedule below:

• March 21: You’ll no longer be able to create new Hosted domains
• April 18: Hosted domains will become inactive and it’ll no longer be possible to earn from them
• June 27: Hosted domains will no longer be available in AdSense accounts

To continue monetizing your undeveloped domains, you can migrate your domain portfolio to any domain parking provider. Find out how in our Migration Guide:

Please note that this upcoming change won’t affect any other AdSense products you’re currently using or the availability of other products to you. In addition, reporting on your Hosted domains will remain available throughout the schedule above and for a period following the retirement.

For more information see the Help Center. We appreciate your understanding and thank you for your patience as we continue to develop new features and offerings within AdSense.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

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© 2012 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043.

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

 

Have you parked domains using Adsense for domains? What were your experience?

Review of Head First Web Design and Notes

I have created numerous web pages and websites as a hobby in last 12 years. But,I always wondered about the industry known as “Web Design” and profession “Web Designer”. I thought creating cool logo and graphics using Photoshop as skills of web designer.Also, I was aware of the fact that people who create Wordpress and Joomla templates are web designer. As you might have understood,I had no formal education of Web Designing. Reading any book on this subject was always there is “to do” list but had low priority. I bought the book “Head First Web Design” last week from Flipkart  to read it, while I was supposed to travel.If you are in USA you may buy it from Amazon. Now, I am glad I bought the book.

The book explains the concept of Web Design in interactive manner. It has a lot of images, examples and tasks. I read the book in just 2 sittings!! It’s so interesting.The book assumes that you have some working knowledge of XHTML and CSS. All the technical examples in the book use XHTML and CSS. Book explains in detail about process involved in Web Design and have a chapter  about “The business of Web Design” as well. Here is chapter wise summary of the book.

1. Building beautiful web pages -  The chapter introduces about four core processes of Web Design.
   • Pre-Production
   • layout
   • navigation
   • writing (content)
   The chapter also introduces a terminology, Information Architecture (IA).Information Architecture is a process to break the content in chunk and arrange in in hierarchical order of one another.It is achieved by organizing the site content and building an IA diagram. Website Navigation is a product of IA.

   The chapter also introduces a term called StoryBoard in Web design.Storyboard facilitate visualization of the design and test basic layout before one can start coding the layout.

2. Pre-Production – Pre-production involved developing a theme and Visual Metaphor for the Website. This would include -

   • Choosing a color palette for the website
   • Using visual elements to reinforce the theme
   • Design a layout based on content.
   Hand drawn Storyboards should be used to finalize and visualize the design before its finalized.The book has given example of developing a storyboard from a real life scenario. Authors have suggested following process for development of storyboard.
   • Make grid on a paper
   • Sketch your design
   • Add color and finalize your design
3. Oraganizing Your Site – The chapter teaches how to find categories and section for content. The process is named as Information Architecture. Using card sort the content is broken into hierarchy and IA diagram is created. 
4. Layout and Design – One need to put the design on computer screen. Considering this, a screen resolution needs to be decided, based on end-user PC.Authors have shown how to develop the \layout using CSS based grid layout. The chapter also introduces concept of “Rule of thirds (2/3 and 1/3)” or “Golden Ratio”, while designing content area in any layout.
5. Designing with color – The chapter talks about
   • Choosing the color wheel
   • Concept of Color schemes
   • Triadic and Tetradic Color scheme
   • And a tool to choose color palette (Kuler.adobe.com)
6. Smart Navigation -   Information Architecture of a given site should serve as base of site navigation. Authors talk about horizontal and vertical navigation scheme as well as primary and secondary navigation for a site. They have also gave example when one may use horizontal versus vertical navigation besides other things related to navigation.
7. Writing for the Web – There is some surprising data in this chapter. Did you know that people read slower on computer screen than a printed material. The difference is significant about 15% slower than printed material having same content. Also, reading habit for same person is different, while reading on printed material than reading in in browser. On internet people hardly read top to bottom and left to right, religiously. They tend to scan the matter and decide if they need to read first para or more.That means, writing on web needs to be different that writing a book. Authors have provided nice examples about “How to write for web”.
8. Accessibility – US Census Bureau categorizes 19.6% of the US population as having some sort of disability. Book explains why we should consider including accessibility options in our web design and how we can achieve this. This topic is also necessary for people who are providing or may provide services to USA government agencies.As section 508 of US Federal Rehabilitation Act requires that Federal agencies make their electronic and information technology, including websites accessible to people with disabilities.
9. Listen to your users – This chapter emphasises importance of user feedback about your website and listening to their demands. It describes techniques to enable “listing to users”, like survey, analytics etc in detail.
10. Evolutionary Design – the book says, “A website should evolve (change incrementally) instead of changing radically all the time”. It lists a few ways to do it using Jquery, Lighbox and blogging.
11. The Business of Web Design – The chapter deals with various aspect of running Web Design service as business. It starts with ways to deal with web design piracy, then moves to defining categories of professional services in world of web. Aspect of managing it as firm or company (this information is only valuable for USA based guys) and prevailing wages in Web Design industry. It also help you to write proposal letter for your business and estimating the job of web designing task.
12. Appendix - Appendix of “Head First Web Design” is useful as well . It talks a little bit about 10 more topics which book didn’t cover in detail.

In India, you can buy Head “First Web Design” online from FlipKart while in USA you have option of buying it from Amazon. Is the review helped you to decide, if you want to introduce yourself with world of web design?

XAMPP for Windows Installation and Configuration

I had used LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) since long. My main laptop is dual boot with with good old Windows XP and Ubuntu.I use a few critical tools that need Windows and these tools runs almost all the time. Hence, working with LAMPP was not an options. I needed something similar on Windows. I wanted Apache with PHP and MySQL support. An easy to use environment where I can experiment with Joomla in short term and PHP and MySQL. As it would be an development environment, security was an non-issue.

XAMPP a easy to use (Apache, PHP, MySQL, PHP and Perl) environment was the thing I needed. Best thing is it comes for Linux, Windows,Solaris and Mac. Windows version have a few option as well.XAMPP for Windows exists in three different flavors:

Installer

Probably the most comfortable way to install XAMPP.

ZIP:

For purists: XAMPP as ordinary ZIP archive.

7zip:

For purists with low bandwidth: XAMPP as 7zip archive.

I did choose 7zip format. Extracted in a folder E:\xampp and ran the program E:\xampp\xampp-control.exe. This program is known as XAMPP control panel. As the name suggests you can start  or stop the server component that comes with XAMPP.

I started the Apache and MYSql server and worked with dowloaded Joomla code as well as Phpxref for Joomla code documentation (using Perl). It worked with charm. No configuration was needed. This is great development environment on Windows. Also did use MOD_REWRITE with apache and result was pleasant.

I would highly recommend this environment to people who are looking for LAMPP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP and Perl environment on windows.