Words from Alejandro U. Alvarez
General talk
A place for all random thoughts and ideas that come across my mind and I can’t find the right “category” to put in…
Always find the best topics and ideas
Mar 21st
Google Insights Search
You probably struggle to find new topics, and once you do, it's really hard to know how to title them. We want them good, concise, and "juicy", and that is not easy.
Well, there are lot's of people that read guides on writing, that use this "amazing" titles that "grab" people's attention. But well, who wants to spend that much time only for that?
For us that write tech blogs, it's easy to find the right tools online, and we have them at our fingertips. Imagine I wanted to write an article about the iPhone, what should I write it about?
I will go to Google Insights and there I will be able to look at the trends for each topic. That is the real secret, what people are looking for, what the want, right now.
So in my example, I will search for iPhone, to see what people want to know about it. At a glance I can see the interest of people on that subject over time, the main world countries of interest, and the best of it all, the exact searches they make!
The top searches for iPhone are:
- Unlock iPhone 3.1.3
- TaskPaper for iPhone
- New iPhone Apps
- iPad
- ... etc
So these are the areas of interest I should focus on. That is what people want, so that is what I will be giving them.
Another example:
Now you can probably start to see the advantages of this method. Let's suppose another case scenario, where I am an iPhone App developer, and I have no idea what to develop!
Let's see what apps people want, so I go again to Google Insight, and search for iPhone Apps, download app, and other keywords that will reveal the top searches for new apps:
- PayPal App
- SURFit
- Spotify
- White House App
- Cracked Apps
So those are the top searches people make. Note that this are far from being the top apps, they are just what people are looking for. It's important that you distinguish this. When you develop something, it should be completely different from the top solutions that already exist. You must do what people need, and that is what they search. And once you have the idea, inspire its design and usability in the other top solutions for other problems.
Good luck with finding your perfect niches!
Avoid getting scammed by some web hosts
Feb 15th
Nowadays, whether it’s in the real or virtual world, scammers and thefts are just about anywhere. They are always waiting for a victim to take their bait. I wouldn’t even go explaining why there are such people as I’m pretty sure it would be an endless discussion. Just a simple question as why is it hard for them to exert an effort doing a decent or legal business rather than scamming people is already a mind boggling thing to figure out.
And now, they have indeed found another way to scam people and get money from their pockets. By offering free web hosting services, they can easily lure people to sign up and eventually charge them with hidden fees. To register for a free web hosting company is pretty much easy these days. Though there are still, of course, legit free web hosts, everyone should still be careful signing up with a hosting company.
To avoid ending up with the wrong hosting provider, it’s important that you take into consideration how long the company has been doing business. It’s often safer to go with hosts that have been providing their services at least for more than a year or two. Doteasy is a hosting company that also provides domain name registration service. They are currently one of the best that offer free web hosting and have been in the business for around 10 years now. They provide an ad free site and guarantee 99.9% uptime. With their free web hosting package which is their basic plan, you get 100MB of disk space all for free. There’s no set up fee, monthly fee and no hidden charges. You get to have great web site builder to use in creating your site. Plus, you also get to use a cPanel which is only common with paid hosting. To sign up for a free hosting account is easy, just click here.
They also have a great offer right now with their domain name registration service. The offer lets you register any domain name for only $4.95 for your first year and get a free hosting along with it. To take advantage to this offer, just use the coupon code 0910FWH or simply click here.
How to write spam!
Jan 31st
I mean seriously, the people who write those spam emails got to be kidding us! A spam email just looks "so" much like spam it's just pathetic! I had to write this because I am fed up of stupid emails that make no sense and go directly to my trash folder without even reading them
First things first, the subject, I mean seriously, putting viagra? Free credit? If you want people to open a message, there are some things you must avoid in subjects:
- Website urls
- Words like free, gift, money, credit.. etc
- Please stop using FW:, it's like screaming you are a useless email!
Of course there are many more things, but the list is simple unending! Basically, if I wanted someone to open an email, I guess I would fake a reply or a comment, because those are the kind of emails that you don't expect, and still sometimes we open them to see the comment, as in youtube for example.
Now in the body, there are things called spam detectors! So cramming your email with 50 emails, and all of them with porn-related words, free stuff, or things like that doesn't help!
And the next big thing, is it really that hard to spell check the email? I have received things like "Dear mr sir Alex, We want informer you of free gift we give to you..." and so on...
The keyword here is to Look Professional. If you want to be taken seriously, do things seriously. Until you do that, you are just wasting your time!
Developing more intelligent algorithms
Nov 22nd
First of all, what do we call intelligence when talking about algorithms? Well, if we have an algorithm that is able to forecast when it is going to rain and when it will be sunny, we might call that intelligent, but it depends on some other variable, the time and effort it took for it to get those results. Thus the faster and lower number of variables our algorithm needs to return the same or even better results, the more intelligent it is.
That is a rule of thumb, but how do we do that?
Well, many scientists say "Copy nature", and that is indeed a good solution, why? Because nature know how to do perfect algorithms. I'll take simple animals to explain this, for example the ants. If we were to program ants, we would say it is too hard, but are we sure?
How nature did them was by "programming" the simplest possible set of rules (Apart from the moving/eating/basic functions), which put together create the complex societies we see them live in.
Say we want to program ourselves an animal, and we want it to always be safe. Then, instead of programming complex recognition software, or advanced algorithms that determine the surroundings, why don't we try nature's approach, the simplistic approach?
Of course we need to build some "complex" systems, for understanding certain objects, lighting conditions, wet/dry states... Now, we give its algorithms a set of rules, to call them somehow:
First, don't run out of battery. So it has to learn how to plug itself, or any other charging method right?
Second, escape from moving objects.
Third, shade is safer.
Another requirement is that we give the robot the ability to store information, so it can learn what places are better and which ones are not. Now if we set it to "on" and watch what happens, the robot will cautiously start moving toward safer environments, and whenever battery runs lower, it will leave the safe place to look for a plug.
This sounds ok right? Now from this base we could start building better intelligence, but the base is this. We need something basic, some sort of default behavior.
If I have time I will build a java applet or something of the sort to test this out,
Best regards,
Alex