Saturday, 26 January 2013

Most Played Games of 2012

With so many games online and offline being played by people across the globe, only a few manage to make them spend more time on them. The most popular games of the year are announced by the Raptr report. Other agencies like DFC intelligence also release reports on the most played games of the year.

League of Legends:

An incredible success of League of Legends comes from the very fact that the gamers had spent billions of hours playing it. The gamers keep playing it still and the game has at least the difference of two billion hours to its rival games played online.
40% of the League of Legends games were free to play. With the games lists go on like sci-fiction and shooter games, they are still enjoyed. The total time logged in by the players of League of Legends is 1.3 billion. There is a game that has gone over 2 billion hours of play time, but this game took seven years to reach this goal and the League of Legends achieved this in just 1 year.

Black Ops II:

Black Ops II gets the next place to the League of Legends. There are more than 360 titles in the Xbox Live, call of duty Black Ops II, Call of duty modern warfare 3, Borderlands 2, Madden NFL 13, Gears of War 3, NBA 2K13 and much more. And out of all these, the Black Ops II has been the greatest success and in fact, it is getting more players in the current year too.

Halo 4:

The Halo 4 introduced in 2012, is the Master Chief’s story’s new chronicle. The Master Chief Petty Officer John 117, who asks to wake him up when needed in the end of Halo 3, gets woken. Promotheans, are the new enemies you would find in this video game. These breed of enemies are protectors of the planets, who are none other than AIs, created by their forerunners. The players are treated to be enemies and the breed of enemies called Prometheans has a sinister plot against the players. A game worth playing that gives you enough thrill and adventure.

Borderland 2:

If you are a fan of Borderland 1 and love it, then try playing this game and you why it is in the list of most played games of 2012. With characters in the game with unique personae, you will surely find great time with them. There are changes from the prequel, The designs of the guns are changed. You would love the music.

Far Cry 3:

This is again a thriller game and adventurous game enjoyed by players in the 2012. The game is the story of Jason Broody, who skydives with friends and brothers, gets into the clutches of the warlord Vaas. He escapes and tries to find and get back his friends and brothers and seeks revenge. Jason finds the way out and of course, the player has to help him out.
You can also check For PS3 games from Tesco.

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Yahoo Bing Ads (Media.NET) Review - Ultimate Alternative to Google Adsense

Its been more than 3 weeks I started using Yahoo Bing Ads(Media.NET) on my blog and thought of writing a review of the same as Yahoo Ads are performing extremely well.Infact my earning generated from Yahoo Bing Ads has surpassed Google Adsense in the past 20 days.

What is Yahoo Bing Ads?

Yahoo ,Bing in collaboration with Media.NET came with a new advertising solution for Publishers and Advertisers.Its a new Advertising platform to drive targeted traffic for Advertisers and earn money by publishing ads for Publishers.

Customer Support:

They have excellent customer support.Each publisher will be assigned a Sales Representative to guide you throughout the process.They will be guiding you regarding best Ads Placement,Ads Type to maximise revenue from their network.

Targeted Ads:

The Ads displayed by Media.NET are very relevant and will be shown relevant to the content.One more option they offer is targeted ads.If you have any specific posts on your blog with high traffic then you can list out those keywords as keywords hints to your sales representative .So that they will be targeting those keywords to maximize the CTR.
  • Sales representative will be guiding you throughout the process and they will inform you if there are any violations or anything out of their quality guidelines.
  • So no sudden ban to your account as in the case of Google Adsense where all your income and hardwork may get spoiled with that one mail stating "Adsense Account has been disabled".

Different and Attractive Ad Units:

One more best feature of Media.net is you have full control over customising your ad units with different colours to match with your blog design and colour.This is also an other great feature which is absent in Google Adsense.
  • They also offer ad units of various sizes like 300*250,300*600,600*250 etc.

Earning Reports:

Basically Yahoo Bing Ads(Media.net) are CPM based ads and they pay you on the basis of thousand impressions.
  • CPM may vary anywhere between $0.5-$2 which is pretty much decent and almost similar to Google Adsense.
  • Below is the screen shot of my income generated from Media.NET.
Yahoo bing ads earning reports

Payout Methods:

They offer two payout options Wire Transfer and Paypal.Paypal is my favourite mode of payment as we need not wait for the old postman for check which is very annoying.
  • The minimum payout threshold limit is $100 which is very much reasonable and you will reach the limit in no time if you have a pretty decent traffic.
  • I have been using since 20 days and my earning already crossed $100 with only two Ad Units.

Do they actually pay?

Yes they pay you on monthly basis once a minimum threshold limit is reached.You can check out the below screenshot of the same.
Yahoo Bing Ads(Media.net) Payment Proof

Approval Process:

Yahoo Bing Ads approval process a little different while compared with other advertising networks.They are accepting only limited Publishers with decent traffic from US/UK and Canada.
  • It may take upto 2 weeks to review application to approve /disapprove .So be patient till you get an acceptance or rejection mail.
  • You can submit upto 5 Blogs/Websites for review.So more the number of blogs you submit more will the chance of approval.
  • I will soon write a separate article on how to get approved for Yahoo Bing Ads quickly.

Conclusion:

No doubt Yahoo Bing Ads powered by Media.Met is ultimate alternative to google adsense and its going to be a tough competition between two giant networks.For those who are hurt by the cruelty of Google Adsense can move ahead with Yahoo Bing Ads.
If you still have any doubts/questions regarding Yahoo/Bing ads let me know via your comments.

Monday, 21 January 2013

Is it really possible to know "Who Viewed Your Facebook Profile?"

  • Are you eager to know what sorts of people visit your Facebook profile?
This is quite natural. People who use social networking site like LinkedIn, Orkut and MySpace can get to know this by tracking the visitors and can view the profile of the visitor. This feature is missing in Facebook. However, there are few applications that let you know who visited your profile. But, speaking truly these applications cannot be trusted in terms of efficiency and security. Below are the oft spoken apps that claim to track profile visitors.

DoorBell:

This app has more than 30,000 visitors currently. This is not very accurate as the user has to click the doorbell to get the stats recorded. This apps lets you put a doorbell, so that you get to know who visits your profile in Facebook.

Unfaced.com:

John Arrow, who developed the Unfaced.com apps, has been banned from Facebook. This apps is the only one that really works on Facebook. However it is against the rules and regulations of this social networking site. In fact Facebook tried to get into terms with John Arrow and suggested deleting the site, so that his Facebook account can be reinstated.
There are criticisms that Unfaced.com is a scam and cannot be relied completely. You cannot use this tracker site on your profile, because it is a violation of Facebook terms and your account will be terminated.

What is the reality?

Anybody using any form of tools or applications to track the people who visit his or her profile is against the terms and conditions of Facebook. When such applications are used Facebook may delete your account without warning as a breach of terms. The applications that claim to track the visitors’ profile are not owned or authorized by Facebook.

Fake Applications:

Most of the applications for tracking profiles are fake and fraudulent applications. They may be owned by hackers. They may also contain virus. In such cases, your Facebook account may be exploited by them for their own benefit. It is better to extremely cautious as these activities may turn you in bad light, for no fault of yours. Again virus tools may also lead to malfunctioning of your system. Few applications are well designed to get information about your email id. These will not only lead to unwanted marketing emails being received, but also, all your personal information can be tracked. Imagine what if your bank transactions are followed by your mail id? That is the worst that can happen.
  • It is never possible in Facebook for applications to see who has viewed your profile. Even the News feeds and other community feed applications, cannot track this piece of information but only see who keeps replying to the news feeds and people who are engaged to a specific sort of posts in a wall. 
  • Best Practices To Protect Facebook Account From Hackers.
The terms and policies of Facebook clearly states that no one can track or view the visitors who visits the profiles. So, you can too visit anyone’s profile without his or her knowledge and using of the apps will not let them track you.

Sunday, 20 January 2013

Facebook Privacy Settings and Shortcuts you Must Use

While enjoying the Facebook with our family and friends, we often forget the privacy concerns associated with the shared stuff.  The stuff we shared represents a lot about us and is always vulnerable over the Internet, be it a personal photograph or our personal details.  And since Facebook is becoming more public every other day, keeping our info on Facebook is getting harder. Facebook is continuously improving the privacy features which are capable of making your presence on Facebook almost anonymous, but most of us don’t know much about these features.
So, we’ve created this comprehensive up-to-date guide which would definitely make your presence more secure on Facebook.  This guide will significantly strengthen the privacy of content-sharing and would ensure that your Facebook stuff is shared only among the trusted people.

1.Hiding Contact Info:

Sharing your contact info with unknowns can put you in trouble. Contact info is specified by user himself and basically it includes your email, your address, contact number, etc. If you’ve specified contact info on your timeline, you can control its privacy.


For hiding your contact info, go to your timeline and look for “About me” option under your profile picture. In next page, look for “Contact info” column and click “edit”.  A pop up containing all your contact info will be opened and at the end of each detail you’ll find a drop down list denoted by icon as circled above in the picture.  From there you can specify to whom with you want to share this info, three options are available- Public, friends, none. Once done, press the “save” button at the end of the popped window.

2.Timeline and Tagging

Guidelines below will help you to manage your timeline and tagging feature of Facebook.
Tagging
Tagging is one of the most intelligent features of Facebook and one of the most annoying too. Why annoying? It is annoying because sometimes your friends tag you in a picture which you don’t want to share with your friends and sometime they tag you in a picture which is not concerned to you in any way. So to control that Facebook has a privacy option Timeline review which let you to review the Tagged posts before posting it on your Wall.

For enabling Timeline review privacy option, Go to Account settings> Timeline and Tagging. There you’ll find an option- “How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?” Enable the review option from there as shown in the picture above.
Timeline

Further, you can also make your timeline more private. There are privacy options that allow you to hide your timeline’s posts from anyone and moreover you can also control the “Right to post on your wall”.  For enabling these privacy features, Go to Account settings> Timeline and Tagging and change the settings according to your need. (See pic above)

3.Message Filtering 

Sometimes you receive unexpected messages from unknowns. These unknown messages messed up your inbox and for keeping these unexpected messages away, Facebook recently added Message Filtering option.  If you will enable this option, all messages from unknowns were dropped in “others” box.

For enabling this option Go to Messages>Others>Edit Preferences. A pop up will be opened and choose the one from given options- either basic or strict. Basic filtering will work as usual whereas strict filtering will keep away unknown messages from your Inbox.

4.Who can search you and see your stuff?

Your Facebook stuff including timeline is public by default. But Facebook provides you some powerful privacy settings with which you can hide yourself completely on Facebook. For managing privacy settings, Go to Privacy Settings and Tools.  In that section, you’ll find two privacy settings:
Who can see my stuff?

  • Using this option, you can manage privacy settings like- Who can see your future posts? You can set it to public, friends, only you or even to custom.

  • You can even review all your posts and things you're tagged in using Activity Log. Activity log contains the record of your every action on Facebook like pages you liked, posts you were tagged in, your comments, etc. This way you can also control the sharing of your activity.
  • Further, you can even limit the audience for posts. You can decide whether you want to share past posts with friends of friends or Public?
Who can look me up?
  • You can decide that who can look you up using email or contact number. For enabling this, Go to Privacy Settings and Tools and under “who can look me up” change the privacy settings according to your needs.

  • Apart from this, you can even disable the Indexing of your profile by search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. For disabling indexing, Go to Privacy Settings and Tools and under “who can look me up” turn the indexing option off. .

5.Facebook Account Security

It’s possible that right now someone is trying hard to break into your account. However, hacking a Facebook account is almost impossible but your negligence like poor password, etc. can make it possible. Here are few suggestions that will definitely make your account much safer than ever.
Strong Password
Applying a weak password just only because you don’t want to forget it- is the dumbest excuse. If you’re not using a password that isn’t 8-10 character long, doesn’t include both uppercase and lower case letters and don’t include a numeric character then believe us your account is more vulnerable to hacking.
Enable Secure browsing

You can use your Facebook in “https” mode which will encrypt all your Facebook activity between Facebook Server and your computer. For enabling secure browsing, Go to Account Settings> Security and enable the secure browsing from there.
Enabling Login Notification
Enabling Login Notifications will inform you whenever your account is accessed from unknown or unrecognized device or location either via email or by SMS. For enabling login notifications, Go to Account Settings> Security and enable the secure browsing from there.

6.Blocking


If someone is annoying you or there’s someone from whom you want to hide on Facebook, you can block him/her. Once you blocked someone, he/she won’t be able to contact you on Facebook; in fact he/she won’t be able to even find you on Facebook.  For blocking someone, Go to the profile of that person and click the settings icon just after the message button (Pic above). Choose the block option and confirm the blocking.
  • And if ever you think of unblocking someone, go to Account settings>Blocking and unblock him/her from there (Pic Above).

7.Privacy Shortcuts


Recently Facebook introduced the Privacy shortcut feature on the Facebook which is indeed a great addition to the Facebook. You can quickly configure the Messaging filters, quickly block someone and configure the privacy of your posts right from the news feed page.

8.Applying Privacy to Media files and posts


For configuring privacy of a status before posting, click the Public button just before Post button and from there you can specify the privacy of that post (Pic above).

For configuring privacy of a picture, open the picture, click the list menu button and from there you can specify the privacy of that picture (Pic above).

For configuring privacy of an album, Go to Photos> Albums, under the album name, click the list menu button and specify the privacy of that album from the list (Pic above).
Well, that’s all for now, we’ll keep you updated whenever Facebook adds new privacy features.  Anyhow, if we have missed any of privacy settings, do let us know through comment section below.

Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Best Women Safety Mobile Apps

The recent Delhi-rape case was one of the most debated issues and it raised lots of unexpected questions about women safety. Government is introducing various new strict laws for women protection but above all, women should be aware about tackling these critical situations calmly and intelligently. Technology can play an important role in such situations and can bring you out quickly.
Well, what will you do if you find yourself in a similar violent situation? You’ll probably scream out for help or probably try to call or notify out known helpful resources.  Among these, notifying the help resources seems much stronger. And there are plenty of applications for Android users that can help you in notifying the help resources with just a single click or tap. These applications are capable of sending your name, type of emergency situation along with your physical GPS location over text messages. So, over the due course of this we’ll be discussing some similar applications that can help you out in such critical situations.

Best Women Safety Android Applications:

Circle of 6


Circle of 6 application is available on Android as well as on iPhone. This application has beautiful easy to use interface and mechanism that can be used by women, students and perhaps by everyone very easily and quickly. They can use this application to alert their friends quickly whenever they found themselves in a threatening or harassing situation. The application will be fully functional when you subscribe to available monthly or a yearly plan. The application is extremely easy to operate and two gentle tap will send one of three available messages to your 6 favourite pre-mentioned friends.  These messages will include your name, the type of situation in which you’re and your GPS location. Apart from this you can even request a call back seeking advice from your friends in a tense situation. The application comes with lot of national as well as security department’s numbers. The application is highly rated, highly trusted and highly recommended to everyone.

Nirbhaya


Nirbhaya is a Hindi word which means fearless. This application is a tribute to brave Delhi-rape incident girl. Nirbhaya is capable of handling emergency situations and capable of sending notifications to pre-assigned contacts like your name, type of emergency situation along with your physical GPS location over text messages. The notification can be send quickly with a single tap on panic button.  Apart from basic functionalities, it allows you to organise contacts intelligently to tackle different types of emergency situations like Molestation, natural disaster, accident, etc. You can even feed the contacting information about the nearby helping-authorities like Police station, hospital, police supervisor and moreover you can even include or import any contact from your phonebook. Application supports lots of widgets and hotkeys combination which enables the victim to send emergency notifications as soon as possible.

The another thing which I like the most about this application is the Facebook  integration which means on pressing the panic button on the application, an emergency status will be posted automatically on your Facebook wall.  You can also enable the emergency email support.  The application is highly rated and free to download from Google Play.

bSafe


bSafe is another helpful application that is capable of sending help message with a single tap to your pre-determined contacts. The best thing about bSafe is that you can send SOS messages to your pre-determined contacts which in turn eliminate all impossibilities of sending messages even when you’re not subscribed to a messaging plan. Your single tap will send message to your pre-determined contacts, your GPS location and apart from that 3 pre-assigned contacts will receive a SOS call from you. Moreover you can also set up a pre-planned fake call with lot of timing options.

Like circle of 6 this application also involves monthly or yearly service subscription plans. The monthly plan will cost you $1.99 per month and yearly plan will cost you around $14.99 per year. As of now, they are offering three months free subscription, so you can test this application before getting into paid subscription plans. The application will work with basic features even if you are not subscribing to any plan, however some of the premium features needs monthly or yearly subscription.

Fight Back


The last in our list is Fight Back which is believed to be first mobile application in India for women empowerment.  The application is available for various platforms and is specially designed to tackle the emergency situations calmly. Like other applications, Fight back is also capable of sending notifications to pre-assigned contacts like your name, type of emergency situation along with your physical GPS location over text messages.  It will also automatically post the emergency notification on your Facebook profile.

It’s almost similar to the Nirbhaya application but Fight back uses its own gateway for sending messages notifications.  Apart from this, the Fight back has a beautiful web interface too. Application is free to download and can be downloaded anytime from the official website.

Verdict:

All the applications are efficient and offer lot of options to users.  While some may not afford subscription, they can go with free applications like Nirbhaya and Fight back. Both Fight back and Nirbhaya seems to be much powerful than others and does includes plenty of extra notifications options. While Fight back uses its own gateway for sending messages, Nirbhaya on the other hand needs either sufficient balance or message subscription enabled on your mobile. Applications are advertised for woman empowerment but they can be used by anyone.
Whats your favourite among the above listed apps or do know any other similar application for Android Platform,let us know through comments.
Pankaj Gehloach
About the Author:

A bit different, A passionate blogger, hardcore programmer and soloist music artist.Join him @ Facebook.He is our Gold Star Contributor and co-author of AllTechBuzz.

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Best Alternatives to Google Adsense 2013

If you are a part of the ever-growing blogging field, then you must be aware from the word Google Adsense. It is the best ad network that comes from the search giant Google, and lets you to display ads on your blog/website. Most of the websites/blogs on the web, use Adsense to earn money, but for obvious reasons, one may not like the Adsense. These obvious reasons are mostly the hard approval into network and ban of accounts due to illegal activity. Though Google just announced that it will no longer ban Adsense account, but still many people search for its alternatives daily, this might be because of not getting approved by Adsense. Well, whatever the reason is, I am here with the list of best Adsense alternatives.

Top Best Google Adsense Alternatives:

Yahoo Bing Ads(Media.NET)-Highly Recommended:

Media.NET partnered with Yahoo and Bing and came up to form a new advertising network.This is the best alternative to Google Adsense from my point of view.I have been using this network since few days and the income is awesome. Infact my income generated from Yahoo Bing Ads is more than Google Adsense which is surprising.
  • Easy approval if you have a good site.
  • If you have many sites,more than 5 then the chance of getting approved are more.
  • You will be guided with a Sales Representative to maximize your income.
  • You wont get banned suddenly for invalid click activity or click bombing.
  • All the options available for premium publishers of Google Adsense are available for all Publishers as Media.NET treats everyone as their premium publisher.
  • Infact its better than Google Adsense if you have a micro-niche site because their ads can be targeted to specific keywords which will show very relevant ads to maximize the income potential of your blog or website.

BuySellAds:

This ad network has grown tremendously in the past some time and that's why shines at the top in this list of Google Adsense alternatives. The concept of this rapidly growing ad network is totally different from Adsense. It can be called as marketplace to sell/buy ad spaces. As a blogger, you are required to apply for BuySellAds account. Once you get approved, you list the ad spaces of your blog at decent rate. Advertisers purchase the ad spaces and you get paid. The best thing is that your earning get fixed in this and there is not any heart attack of getting banned by them. Moreover, you set the ad space price, from your own.
  • Its not that easy to get approved for BSA.
  • Your site must have atleast 50,000 impressions per month.
  • No illegal, or containing even remotely *questionable* content.
  • Minimum payout is $50.

Tribal Fusion:

Tribal Fusion is a CPM based ad network.Its one of the best google adsense alternative but its not that easy to become Tribal Fusion publisher.

Exit Junction:

This is a new network to monetize your website with exit traffic.When a visitor leaves your website it will show a pop-up with and ad.When visitor click on the ad you will get paid.This is a new innovative advertising method.Works well if your site has good traffic.

Adversal:

Adversal is also one of the best google adsense alternative.Basically its a pop up based ad network.You will get paid for every visitor.So it has a great potential to make money if your site has good traffic.

Chitika:

Chitika is well-renowned ad network that competes with Google Adsense. Like Adsense, it also pays when someone clicks on the ads getting display on your blog. The cost per click may not be so good for traffic coming from the parts other than U.S. and U.K. But if you have traffic from these locations, then you can make hell lot money from Chitika. You can refer your friends and can earn the commission. Minimum payout is $10 via PayPal, while $50 via cheque.

Infolinks:

Infolinks is in-text advertising network. Means, when you use Infolinks on your blog, it converts the normal text into clickable ads. The best part about the Infolinks is that getting approved into their network is damn simple and you can start running the in-text ads on your blog, as soon as you apply for it. The cost per click is not that much as you get in Google Adsense, but as the mode of advertising is totally different, so there is always a higher CTR in Infolinks as compared to that of Adsense. Some bloggers even tag this ad network as the best alternative to Google Adsense. While the ad network is very popular, but some SEO experts claim that using the Infolinks may kill your visibility in the search engines as in Infolinks, your normal text, including your targeted keywords gets converted into clickable links. This may make a spam-type image of your blog in Google's eyes. The Minimum payout is $50 via PayPal, while $300 via Bank Wire Transfer.

Kontera:

Kontera is also in-text advertising network that converts the normal text into ads. When someone clicks on them, you get paid. Your blog must have good page impressions to get approved into the system. It does compete strongly with both of Google Adsense and Infolinks. You can withdraw the money, once it touches $50 mark.

Adbrite:

Adbrite has always been considered as one of the best Adsense alternatives. Once you get approved into system, Adbrite puts a banner on your blog, showing the sale of that particular ad slot. Getting approved into the network is very easy, but your success in Adbrite solely depends on your blog's popularity. If it s quite popular, then advertisers contact you to buy ad space. The price for the ad space is set up by you. When any advertiser shows his/her interest in displaying ads on your blog, it is completely up to you that you want to accept the ads or not. You can sell the ad space on weekly, monthly basis. The minimum payout is $100 via PayPal.

Clicksor:

They approve any blog, if it is totally new. Clicksor offers all type of advertising like In-Text, Contextual. The pop-up ads are also part of Clicksor. Though this ad network is good challenge to Google's Adsense, but sometimes it shows irrelevant ads, mostly the adult ads. You can withdraw your earned money to your PayPal account, once it touches $50 count.

Bidvertiser:

This ad network offers contextual and feed advertisements. Though you earn good money for each click that you get on your ad, the extra amount is paid to you, if your ad results in a successful conversation. The minimum payout is $10, and one can get this money in one's PayPal account.

So give them a try and share your experience with us.If we missed out any let us know in your comments.
Author Bio: I Sai Kumar a Founder and CEO of Crunchyhub. I am a 21 Year Ordinary and a Simple guy from Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. I write about Blogging, Technology, Programming, Social Media, and Make Money Online etc.