Resources

I have written an article (974 words) which I would like to add to the Google website. Can you tell me how I go about it?

As a fellow writer, I can tell you that there are many ways to get your article out there on the Internet including publishing it on a personal Web site or blog, submitting it to article directories, submitting it to sites that pay for articles, and submitting it to a site such as Google Knol. Each has its pros and cons and it really depends on your goals for the article. For example, if you want to use the article to drive traffic to your Web site, submitting it to an article directory might be a good move. If you simply want the world to see your words, a site like Google Knol is easy for self-publishing. On the other hand, if you’d like to make a little income from your hard work, there are many good markets for selling articles on the Internet. Since you asked specifically about Google, let me show you how to submit an article to Google Knol.

What is Google Knol?

Google Knol is a user-generated collection of knowledge with “knol” meaning “unit of knowledge. Users must sign up for a free account. From there, they submit articles which can then be read by anyone interested in the topic. These articles are indexed by the search engines, so it’s conceivable that readers will find your article via Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.

Signing up for Google Knol

First, you need to go to http://knol.google.com/k and sign up for a free account. If you already have a Google account, simply sign in with your existing Google username and password.

Submitting an Article to Google Knol

Once signed in, click the Write a New Knol button. This will open a form where you can cut and paste your article’s title, subtitle, summary, and text. Off to the right side of the screen, you’ll see an area where you can create your user profile as well as select options for your knol. For example, you will need to “publish” the knol by clicking the Publish button once it’s ready as well as select the licensing and collaboration levels for the article.

You can change both the collaboration and the licensing settings by clicking the Change link next to “All Rights Reserved.” By default, collaboration is set to “Moderated Collaboration.” That is, users can suggest changes to you and you can either accept them or deny them. If you prefer an open model (like Wikipedia), then choose Open Collaboration. If you want to be the sole author, choose Closed Collaboration.

“All Rights Reserved” is the default licensing option. That is, users are not allowed to copy and paste your text and use it as they please. If you don’t mind sharing, choose one of the Creative Commons license types.

Once you have entered your article and made your choices, click the Publish button and your article will be on the Google Knol site for the world to see. Happy publishing!  

Maximize Your Blog Income with Google Adsense

If you own or operate a blog, chances are you use Google Adsense as a way of generating income. Known as one of the major money-making powerhouses for bloggers, Adsense requires a certain amount of knowledge if you want to maximize your earnings.

The average blogger, however, doesn’t have a lot of time to calculate Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Cost-Per-1000-Impressions (CPM). You want to spend time writing content for your blog, not fiddling with algorithms or adding up figures.

Fortunately, there are a few tips that will help even a beginner blogger see a jump in Adsense earnings. They’re simple, and they work with almost any blog program.

Get Visitors

Choose a topic that sells. Certain topics will drive traffic to your website and generate higher-paying Google ads. If you seem to get paid pennies per click, you may want to reconsider your topic.

Get Ads that appeal to your readers

Write keyword rich content. Good, useful content is the most important part of getting readers to visit and return to your blog. But you’ll generate even more traffic–and get more relevant Google ads–by writing blog entries that target your keywords. If the ads appeal to your readers, they’ll be more likely to click on them and increase your income.

Make ads noticeable

Position ads in the right spots. Visit Google’s Adsense Help section and search for their ad placement diagram. It shows “hotspots” for your ads. By placing your Google ads in these spots, you’ll get more clicks–which mean more money.

Make ads consistent with your blog

Pick the right colors. Yes, your Google ads should be noticeable. But they should also be consistent with the rest of your blog. When creating your Google ads, make sure you choose colors that match the rest of your blog posts. It creates the appearance that the ads are part of your blog, which means readers are more likely to click on them.

Use everything

Include a Google search. Google searches are so popular these days that the phrase “Google it” has become part of our vernacular. Include a search bar–provided by Google Adsense–as another way of generating income.

Use variety

Add images and text. Text links may seem the least intrusive, but image ads draw the eye. Use text links in parts of your blog where it blends with your posts, and include image ads on the side or at the end of a page.

Follow the rules

Obey Google’s guidelines. Nothing will get you kicked out of the Google Adsense program faster than breaking the rules. Don’t click your own ads. Don’t ask friends and family to click ads. And limit yourself to the maximum number of ads that Google allows. By following Google’s guidelines, you’ll continue to generate income for as long as you own your blog.

Change your ads until you find what works for you. Everyone’s blog is different. Your content, your style of writing, your page design and every other aspect of your blog is unique. What works for one person may not work for another. When working with Google Adsense, remember to experiment with things like colors, images versus text, ad placement and keywords to find the right money-making formula for you. All it takes is a little bit of time to maximize the earning potential of your blog!

I have been trying to get a pod cast (www.history.org/mediapodcasts.cfm#CharltonsCoffehouse). When I type this in, I get a box which says it cannot be downloaded, pick a plan to use to download it. So I pick one of the choices and it simply puts me into another page with all sorts of options but nothing to click on to read what the podcast says… Is there an easy way to access this podcast w/o jumping through all these hoops?

Using the address you gave me, I tried to get to this podcast and had the same trouble. It brings up an error message from Adobe, but when you click the links, it won’t tell you what the problem is.

Wrong Podcast Address

The problem you’re having is that the address for this podcast is wrong. By doing a little Internet search, I found another way into this podcast on History.org. Click on this link and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. At the very bottom, you’ll see the podcast for August 18^th, 2008 which is titled “Charlton’s Coffeehouse” and the caption starts off with “A long-absent address returns to Duke of Gloucester Street. . .” I clicked on the “Listen Now” button and it came right up. If you have Quicktime 7 on your computer, you can view the enhanced podcast.

Ways to Find Internet Information

The longer the Internet address, the more likely that something is going to be transcribed incorrectly. A way around this is to click on links directly, like the one we have embedded into this article. Another way is to highlight an address that you find printed on the web, right click it to Copy and position your cursor on the address bar of your Internet homepage. Right click again, choose Paste and the address will appear just as it was in the original document.

Google Search

If you know what you want, but you don’t know where it is located, just do an Internet search on Google and chances are, you’ll find what you need. I found this podcast by typing in “Charleton’s Coffeehouse, podcast” (without the quotes). The history.org site was the third one on the list in the search results. If you know the website you want, you can expand your search criteria as in “Charleton’s Coffeehouse, history.org” and it will narrow it down even further.

As a history buff, I found this website really interesting. I’m going to go and listen to a few of these podcasts and learn a little bit about Colonial Williamsburg. I hope this helps you and that you are soon doing the same.

After downloading the new google, I now get an “error downloading” window upon startup of my computer. [rndll]

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a brand new web browser recently released in “Beta” mode. This means that Chrome has been tested in controlled environments and is “almost” ready. Unfortunately, it also means that Chrome Beta users can expect their fair share of errors and bugs. It’s impossible for software developers to dream up every possible scenario that their product will encounter including conflicts with operating systems, hardware, installed applications, and the countless configurations of computer systems. Currently, Chrome works with Windows XP SP 2 (or above) and Windows Vista.

Current Known Issues

As of this writing, over 30 known issues with Chrome are posted on the Google Chrome Help pages. None of the known issues describe your error downloading/rndll error though.

Uninstall and Reinstall

The first thing you can try is to uninstall Google Chrome and then reinstall the latest version. It’s possible that a glitch occurred during the first installation attempt. Of course, if Chrome never installed correctly in the first place, this may or may not be an option at this point.

Checking Your Installation

You can check to see if your installation has installed despite the error message by clicking Control+ALT+Delete and opening Task Manager. Click on the Processes tab and see if GoogleUpdate.exe is listed. If so, then the installer is on your computer and you can then manually complete the installation.

Now, go to the Start button, click on Run, and type in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Update\Download

Is there a file called “chrome_installer.exe” and a second file that begins with the word “gears” and a file extension of “MSI”? If so, their file sizes should be 7.34 MB and 993 KB respectively. If so, they were successfully downloaded.

Now what?

Google’s installation troubleshooter at this point tells you to try the download again while watching the Processes tab in Task Manager. If Chrome_Installer.exe appears in the processes list, then it is being run successfully - but something is interfering. Google wants users to then create a log file so that they can investigate further. This is a complex process. If you’d like to try the Installation Troubleshooter yourself, go to Google Chrome Issues: Troubleshooting. Another good resource is the Google Chrome Help Discussion Group.

Reporting Errors

While you may have to live with your Google Chrome issue for the time being, you should report the error to Google so that they can fix it. Known issues don’t become known issues until users report them. You can report your error at the Google Chrome Help Web site’s Support Options page.

I belong to several different Google Groups - all of which require privacy. One such group is a group of neighborhood moms who use the Google group to coordinate play dates with each other’s kids. We certainly don’t predators to know where and when we’ll be hanging out in public places with our children nor do we want our addresses, kids’ names, and other information posted publicly. My other group involves a circle of fellow writers who regularly critique each other’s manuscripts. None of us want our works in progress circulating on the Internet.

When you first set up a Google Groups, you have an option to make it: Public, Announcement Only, or Restricted. Public groups are open to anyone who stumbles across your group and wants to join it. Announcement groups are also open to anyone though only managers are able to perform many functions. Restricted groups are by invitation only. No one but members can view any information posted.

What if you originally set up a group as a Public or Announcement group but would prefer to make it private? Fortunately, this is easy to do. First, sign into your Google Group. You must be a Group owner in order to make this change. On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a list of options. Click on Group Settings. Next, click on the Access tab.

Now, you must go through each option and change it for complete privacy. The most critical options to change are:

• Who can view - change to “Only members can view group content”
• Directory listing - change to “Do not list this group”
• Who can join - change to “People have to be invited”
• Who can post messages - change to “Members only”

If you’re unsure about whether your group is private or not, you can quickly check your group’s status by going to the “About this group” link on the right side of the screen. This will show you a summary of the group’s membership, description, language, category, access, group e-mail address, and feeds. Look under Access. You will see who can view the group content, who can join, who can create pages, who can upload files, and who can post. If any of these settings are not restricted to members or managers only, click on “edit” and make the required changes.

That’s all there is to it!

Yes! I’m always amazed at how many people don’t realize that this is possible. As a writer, the ability to filter search engine results is incredibly valuable to me. For example, searching the Internet yields millions of results most of the time. I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to click, click, click, click, my way through page after page of irrelevant results.

If I were researching a topic such as “light bulbs,” I’d get over 13 million hits with many web sites designed for selling light bulbs. However, if I were to filter the results, I could get more relevant web sites. To do this, I use the advanced search and filtering options of various search engines.

Let’s use Google as an example. Right next to the Google Search Bar, you’ll see three lines of linked text. Enter your search terms as normal and then click on Advanced Search. In this case, I have entered “light bulbs.” Depending on what type of information you want, you can specify exact phrases to search for, exclude pages containing certain words, limit the type of file format searched, or search a specific category of domain. You can even restrict the search results on the age of the web page.

I like to restrict my searches to .org or .gov domains. This way, I can be sure that the information I discover will come from non-profits or government agencies. For example, by restricting my light bulb search to domains that end in .org, I’ve filtered the search results from over 13 million down to just 327,000. Still a lot but, these are already far more relevant for my purposes. Let’s say that I’m interested in the safe disposal of light bulbs. I’ve just added the word “disposal” in the Advanced Search filter (and have kept the .org restriction). Now, my results are down to 90,000.

Using those two restrictions, the first page of results is perfect! The various websites listed feature tips on recycling light bulbs, benefits of recycling compact florescent lights, low-energy bulb disposal warnings, and more - all from legitimate non-profit organizations.

In addition to the different search options, Google also has topic-specific searches including Microsoft, Macintosh, Linux, Google Scholar, news archives, universities, and government agencies. Need to learn about configuring DNS Server? No problem, use the Microsoft filter and get detailed, relevant results directly from Microsoft or other technical websites. Searching for studies related to obesity? Use Google Scholar and enter “obesity” in the Search Box. You’ll get hundreds of links to articles on the topic by medical experts.

Am I excited about filtering search engines? You bet! The ability to drill down to relevant information is invaluable to me. Why wade through thousands of websites with mixed results when so much credible information is readily available. No matter what you’re researching, using the advanced filters of the various search engines is sure to provide you with amazing results in an instant!