19 February 2014

10 Incredibly Simple Ways To Share Stuff On The Web While Saving Time



sharing

Sharing should be simple, right? Sharing perhaps comes a close second to searching when it comes to our everyday online wanderings. What could be better than to take our hunt for free seconds to some “time shaving” online services that make sharing a quicker job than it is. After all, when you get rid of the fluff, there is something to be said about simplicity. We don’t notice it till it proves its usefulness. We don’t notice it till it starts making a difference to our everyday tasks. Simplicity is there all around us, and that does not exclude the...


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Microsoft And DocuSign Join Hands To Bring Digital Signatures To Office 365



office-365-security

The eSignature service DocuSign has inked a partnership with Microsoft that should allow Office 365 users to stamp their documents with eSignatures within the Office platform. The eSignature app will be integrated with Outlook, Word, SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server 2013. The feature will enhance the workflow for Office 365 users. They can verify and confirm documents without leaving the Office suite, and without any errors. The eSignature app will be available in the Office Store from next month. Office 365 users can use the app free for sending five documents. After that, they need to pay. The size of...


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Encourage Social Sharing On Your WordPress Blog With Digg Digg



social-sharing

Any blogger worth their salt will know that the key to blogging success is to write content recognized by the search engines as top quality – not mindless drivel. But that is only half the battle. The other half is encouraging your visitors to share your content with others on social media. Say what you want about Facebook and Twitter, but posts shared to those sites have the potential to drive a huge number of people to your site. But web visitors are mostly a lazy bunch of slobs. They read the post, maybe comment, and then move on. The...


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Find the Most Optimized Ad Sizes for your Website



Go long. Go wide. Go big. Google recommends that AdSense publishers switch to wider ad formats as more Adwords advertisers target these ad sizes, more competition among advertisers leads to higher eCPMs thus translating into increased earnings for the website owner.


The statistics suggest that the best performing banner sizes are the 336×280 Large Rectangle and the 300×250 Medium Rectangle. In addition to standard IAB units, the AdSense program now supports custom-sized ads which may serve even bigger rectangular ads. Will they perform better than the standard ads?


There’s no one-size-fits-all solution and what is working on my site may or may not be the most optimized solution for some other website. As a publisher, you need to run A/B tests on your site for about a week and only then you can you reach a conclusion based on the CTRs and CPMs of individual AdSense ad units.


Google Ad Sizes - Performance Report


Split Testing isn’t a new concept for most AdSense publishers but with the introduction of asynchronous responsive ads, the older methods no longer work. AdSense does offer a new feature called Experiments but that’s primarily for finding the most effective color scheme for an ad unit and not the most optimized ad sizes.


How to Split (A/B) Test your AdSense Ads


Here’s how you can perform split testing for AdSense ads on your own site. I am using the rectangle format for this example but the approach is similar should you wish to run split testing against vertical or horizontal units.



<script type="text/javascript">

google_ad_client = "ca-pub-xxx";
google_variations = [
["slot-medium-rectangle", "display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px", "width:300px;"],
["slot-responsive", "display:block", "width:100%"],
["slot-large-rectangle", "display:inline-block;width:336px;height:280px", "width:336px;"]
];

google_style = Math.floor( Math.random() * 3 );
google_ad_format = ( google_style == 1 ) ? 'data-ad-format="rectangle"' : "";

document.write (
'<div class="googleadsrectangle" style="'
+ google_variations[google_style][2] + '"><ins class="adsbygoogle" '
+ google_ad_format + ' style="'
+ google_variations[google_style][1] + '" data-ad-client="'
+ google_ad_client + '" data-ad-slot="'
+ google_variations[google_style][0] + '"></ins></div>'
);

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script>

<script async src="http://ift.tt/1i25Abi;

Go to your AdSense dashboard and create 3 new ad units for Medium Rectangle, Large Rectangle and Responsive Ad. Make a note of the Slot IDs of these ad units and replace “slot-medium-rectangle”, “slot-responsive” & “slow-large-rectangle” with these values. Also, change ca-pub-xxx with your own AdSense publisher ID.


Place the code anywhere in your web template and let it run for about a week. The code will automatically serve roughly the same amount of ad impressions for each of the ad units.


After about a week, log into your AdSense dashboard, switch to Performance Reports -> Ad Units, select the 3 ad units that you have created and compare their CTRs and CPMs. The generated bar chart, like the one shown above, will help you make a more informed decision that is likely to increase your AdSense revenue.




This story, Find the Most Optimized Ad Sizes for your Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 19/02/2014 under Google AdSense, Internet

Want To Keep A Watchful Eye On Your WordPress Install? Here’s How



wordpress-featured

I have a confession to make. I’m really lazy. I have my own personal WordPress-based blog, but – despite being a hardened geek – I don’t self-host it. I can’t be bothered dealing with the hassle of constantly ensuring that my box hasn’t been popped by a malevolent Internet hacker. I don’t want to get bogged down with the tedium of ensuring that my VPS is patched to infinitum, and configured within an inch of its life to deter any enterprising miscreant. But, that’s me. What about you? Regardless of how you choose to manage your WordPress installation, I’d place...


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Facebook Is Here To Stay [We Ask You Results]



we-ask-you-logo

Facebook haters should look away now. Mark Zuckerberg and co. aren’t disappearing anytime soon, at least according to the MakeUseOf readership. Having already prospered for 10 years (celebrating the occasion with those annoying ‘Look Back’ videos), Facebook looks set to be with us for some time yet. Oh joy. No End In Sight We asked you, How Long Will Facebook Survive? We had a fair number of responses, with people generally offering a prediction and arguing why they believe what they believe in terms of Facebook’s possible longevity. The majority of commenters cannot see Facebook disappearing anytime soon, but that...


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How To Write Foreign Character Accents Using Your Chromebook



chromebook-characters

If you’re new to Chromebooks and you’re a bit of a world traveller or you regularly communicate in a language that uses accents, such as French or Spanish, you will need to know how to type them using your Chromebook. Add Keyboard Layouts It’s possible to switch between keyboard layouts on a Chromebook, and it’s quite easy. Go to Chrome Settings by clicking on the three horizontal bars in the Chrome toolbar or your user icon in the system tray in the bottom right of your screen, then choosing “Settings”. In the Device menu (or further down in the “Languages”...


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