Words from Alejandro U. Alvarez
alex
Hello, I am Alex a software developer currently established in the north of Spain. At the moment I am studying communications engineering here in Spain, a career centered in software development and communications signals. I have been working on website development for many years now, you can see my portfolio in my main website.
Home page: http://urbanoalvarez.es
Posts by alex
Easy steps to monetize your blog
2When dealing with monetizing a blog or website most web developers or authors will usually get stuck or follow bad strategies.
The most simple monetizing strategy is of course text links like the ones in Google Adsense, which are always a good resource, given that you have at least a thousand visits a day.
If that was not the case there are some simple steps to get money with your blog, although they require one important detail: patience. Money does not fall from the sky and it won't be given to you effortlessly. Although there are some things that you can do to speed up the process.
First things first, you need popularity, or importance. To achieve this you need at least a couple of months and good content. So speed up your writing process and set up a goal that you won't break. Mine is one article per day. And if one day I don't write, the next I write two. To make this effort valid, register at the top social bookmarking sites that are relevant to your niche. I recommend Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Dzone (Only for my niche), and maybe del.icio.us. Make sure all of your articles are submitted to all of those sites, and if you can, make friends that like the stuff you write about and let them know about your articles. In Digg is called shouts, in Stumble Upon that happens automatically, and in the rest I don't know.
This will drive traffic to your site, and that traffic is translated in popularity, measured in PR, Alexa rankings, Compete...
As soon as you have this setup, it is time to give information to people about how to "use" your blog.
There are several ways of providing services in a blog, and I will go through them one by one.
Paid reviews
There are some sites out there that provide the tools to get paid reviews, and they are of course a good way of getting some fast money, but you must be careful with them and never overuse them, for sometimes it will result in PR penalizations from Google, and even banning.
The good way to do this is by doing them yourself. Simply create a page in your blog where you explain how they work. I charge my paid reviews per lines, and I ask for a minimum number of lines. Another important thing is that you must always write the review yourself, it is more respectable and it is more in line with blogging ideology.
Make sure you chose who you review, no matter how much they pay, and by this I mean that if you talk about TVs in your blog, you shouldn't make a review about a hotel in Hawaii.
By the way, when you publish the review, don't say it is a review, or other potential customers who would like a review might not ask you for one (They want to get people to think you like their product) It is almost the same thing as TV ads with famous people, they don't say: "I am being paid to say I like this", you know they are, but they pretend it is they're actual choice.
Banners and text links
Selling the space in your blog is a good technique and gives a very stable income. But you must think a lot on how you'll do it.
Here is my approach, and it is one that over the years I've found to be the best:
First decide where you will place the ads and how much available space you'll have in pixels. For example in this blog the available space is of about 200x600px (Width x Height). Then setup a minimum amount of pixels that can be bought and the minimum time span (Usually a month)
Now setup the divisions, to ensure that they look actually good. The way I've set them up in my blog are like this:
Minimum is 25x25. Then 50x50, and maximum is 200x200. Although you can buy for example one 200x200 and a row of 25x25 and you'll end up with 200x225 of available space.
Now this is the most important part, selling that space. The way this works is you have a maximum number of "slots" per month. And a starting prize. To begin, make them be free.
As soon as all the slots are full and someone asks for one, tell all the advertisers that finish their "contract" the next month that the new prize is of 1$ for example, and if some of them say no, then tell the interested client that they can have a slot for a dollar. Every time that the demand is greater that the number of slots you have, the prize increases, although they can avoid this by buying long-term, which is also good for you since it ensures a fixed income.
You can also limit the long-term advertising to 3 months for example. This way you ensure that they will have to pay the new prize every time it raises.
Be careful though to always give preference to current advertisers, they deserve it 
Follow this tips and you'll get some money for sure, and remember to be patient, some day the fee will be high enough to be considered a good income!
Other ways
There are several other ways to earn money with a blog. If you are the author of a plugin, and it is in your blog, you can offer yourself to install it and configure it, and update it as soon as need it (As well as modify it to suit the client's needs) for a fixed monthly rate of say 50$.
If you are good at writing, you can also sell articles. This is a very good way of getting money, but of course you need good reputation, popularity and credibility. If you think you have all of this, you can sell articles for 5-10$ per line.
And the most important tip: Be imaginative! Imagination is the key to success!
Beautiful lighting effect in Photoshop
01262 days
This is the effect we are aiming for:
Step 1
Let's get this started, so first create a new document. For the example I'm using a 500x500px document which I will then fill with black.
With a dark tone of purple/pink create a radial gradient around the center. It should look like this:
Step 2
Now we need to get a nice "object". I used an icon I found at PNG icons, under the category Objects.
Simply place it in the center, over the gradient we drew, and play with the Levels (Image>Adjustments>Levels...) to make it look good in the new location.
Step 3
Let's get some text to put flying around our object. I simply went to the code (View>Source code) of this website and copied the first line, but you can use any text. Anyway, it won't be legible...
Paste the text in the image, and go to Filter>Distort>Waves. It will tell you that you cannot apply it to a Text layer, that you must convert it, click OK and apply the waves directly. The default settings are good enough.
With the move tool and the "Show transformation controls" check box checked, rotate and resize your text to look as if it is going away from the object.
Duplicate the layer (Cntrl+J) a couple times and move the new texts around to have multiple streams of text. You should end up with something like this:
Step 4
Now we must create the glossy effect that makes it look so cool. Go to layer styles (Double click over the layer icon or with the layer selected go to the bottom icon that looks like a circle with a f inside) and select Outer glow.
You can leave the default color or select another. I recommend that you use a different color for each text stream. Now the most important part is that you set the Outer glow blending mode to Color Dodge, this way it will look really glossy and stylish. For mine, I set the opacity to 100%, the size to 26 and the extension to 5, but again tweak this settings until you feel confortable with the result.
This is how mine looks now:
Step 5
Some improvements, duplicate more text layers, delete the layer style and apply a gaussian blur. Then set the opacity down a little, this way you create the moving effect.
I've used a brush called "Grunge flowers" which you can find in my article Best Photoshop brushes, to paint with black over the edges of the pinkish blurred circle we did in step 1, it looks way better like this
Then I added a little outer glow to that brush, also in Color Dodge, to increase the luminosity of the background.
Another thing you can do is create a layer mask for all text layers (Select the layer and then the bottom icon that looks like a double square) and with a black to white gradient I faded the outer edges, as if it was dissapearing into the distance.
Once this minor retouches have been done, press Cntrl+Alt+Shift+N and then with E instead of N to make a copy of what's visible and apply some Lens Flares (Filter>Render>Lens Flare) to add some visual impact.
I've made a lot of stuff in this step that I completely forgot about, but basically be creative. This is my final result again:
Partial source: Abduzeedo
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!
Best unobtrusive anti-spam technique (Not CAPTCHA)
19I know you are probably thinking that this will be some silly thing, but this idea that Thomas Landauer came up with is by far the best I've seen in a long time.
How does it work?
Well the idea is relatively simple: Add CSS-hidden fields that a user won't see, but a spam-bot will fill. Then using php check if they were filled, and if they were: block the spammer!
The CSS would be something as simple as:
.noshow { display:none; }
The HTML form should include something like this:
<label for="leaveblank">Leave this blank</label> <input type="text" class="noshow" id="leaveblank" name="leaveblank" /> <label for="dontchange">Do not change this</label> <input type="text" value="http://" class="noshow" id="dontchange" name="dontchange" />
And finally the php would be simply:
if ($_POST['leaveblank'] == '' && $_POST['dontchange'] == 'http://') { // accept form submission }
The only possible drawback would be that some users with CSS disabled would see the "hidden" form fields, and thus would be quite puzzled.
The good thing is that the percentage of users with CSS disabled is so low that I wouldn't even care about that issue...
I like this idea so much that I'm writing a WP plugin to do this for sure. Just wait for a week or so and I will have version one running 
Hope to see you when that happens!
PS: If you want me to notify you, comment saying so below, and I'll send you an email when I'm done.
Tips to Troubleshoot Uncommon Windows Errors
0When working on your Windows computer, you may encounter many computer errors that may stop you from working normally. Many users who are not technically well-acquainted with computers may find themselves seeking expensive external help to resolve these errors. To prevent you from having to do this, and to help you understand common causes of computer errors, some tips that you can use to resolve many different types of errors have been listed below.
Tip # 1: DLL errors such as the “msvcr71.dll was not found” error usually occur if a program installation or removal process overwrites or deletes one or more required DLL files. To resolve these errors, you may perform one of the following tasks:
- If you have recently installed an application, try to check for its updates and if you find any, install them. If this does not work, you may attempt to download an updated version of the DLL file(s) causing the error on your computer and register them. You may also try to use the System Restore tool to revert your system to the time when the application was not installed on the PC.
- If the DLL error follows a program removal process, reinstall this program. Now, when you uninstall this program, remember to retain the shared DLL files on the system.
Tip # 2: To prevent errors due to outdated and incompatible files, you must remember to regularly update your operating system, software and device drivers. Updating your system, not only helps in enhancing system performance, but also helps in preventing the many security threats that are built around the security vulnerabilities that are patched up by these updates.
Tip # 3: Computer errors may also occur due to registry problems. Problems within the registry are triggered by the unwanted obsolete, invalid, and malicious information that accumulates within the registry. To prevent these problems, you must regularly scan and clean your registry to remove all this digital junk. Although the Registry Editor tool is shipped with Windows, it is quite difficult to use. Therefore, it is recommended that you use a reliable registry cleaner tool to perform the task.
Tip # 4: Program conflicts may cause computer problems when you try to use or install new programs on your computer. For instance, if you already have a firewall, installing a new firewall may cause conflicts. In this case, to resolve the error, you may have to remove the firewall that already exists on the system and then install the firewall software that you want to use.
Tip # 5: Virus and spyware infections are also a major cause of concern for computer users. These programs may infiltrate your system through many different sources, such as an unprotected Internet connection, open network shares, infected email attachments and external media, and freeware software downloaded from the Web. To resolve errors that are generated due to these malicious programs, you need to thoroughly scan your system to weed out all malicious data and registry entries from within it. You can do this easily with the help of efficient and reliable antivirus and antispyware tools.