The game Dead Island, a game set on a fictional tropical island where you get to kill zombies hasn’t had very much luck with its recent release. Those who’ve purchased the game on Steam downloaded an incorrect build of the game full of bugs and glitches. On top of that most couldn’t connect online to play multiplayer.

That’s not a big deal in itself as many recent games like Fallout New Vegas were rushed and full of bugs, and a patch was quickly put out that fixed many of these problems. What did get a lot of attention though wasn’t in the game play but rather in the code.

A user who purchased the game on Steam was looking at the coding of the game and found the term “feminist whore” attached to one of the characters in game skills. The skill which in the game is called “gender wars” gives that character 15% more damage against male zombies.

Shortly after it was posted on Steam’s forums an official apology was released by Techland who are responsible for creating Dead Island.

“It has come to our attention that one of Dead Island’s leftover debug files contains a highly inappropriate internal script name of one of the character skills. This has been inexcusably overlooked and released with the game.

The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke. The skill naturally has a completely different in-game name and the script reference was also changed. What is left is a part of an obscure debug function. This is merely an explanation but by no means an excuse. In the end that code was made a part of the product and signed with our company name. We deeply regret that fact and we apologize to all our customers or anyone who might have been offended by that inappropriate expression.

The person responsible for this unfortunate situation will face professional consequences for violating the professional standards and beliefs Techland stands for.”

I totally get that this company would be embarrassed by what appears to be an inside joke, and I understand that whoever put that into the coding of the game will receive some kind of punishment. However I don’t understand why people are getting their panties in a bunch over this. If anything it’s probably made the game even more well known and may even boost sales. I dunno that’s just my two cents on it, drop a comment below and tell me what you think about it.

I like making videos on Youtube, its fun. And while I’m far from being a pro I learn new tricks with each new video. One of the things I’ve learned from trial and error is what songs work and what doesn’t. Sure it doesn’t really matter if your videos are only for a hobby or just to show something off. However if your looking to get your name out there, get your videos popular, and not have people leave after 10 seconds then understanding what songs work and don’t is important.

Bear in mind this is only my personal opinion and from some of the stuff I’ve seen posted on YouTube.

1. Any song from 009 Sound System

I’ve seen a tonne of videos and comments bashing this band, it’s kind of a shame because I actually like some of there music. But when something is overplayed and then overplayed some more it starts to sound like nails on a chalk board. Because so many people hate their music I would avoid making a video using their music.

2. Justin Beiber (Doesn’t matter which one there all really bad)

Probably the most hated he/she whatever on the internet today. Unless you’re a 14 year old girl making videos to show to other 14 year old girls, you should probably avoid this one. Especially if you’re a 45 year old man, it’s just creepy.

3. Rebecca Black (Again doesn’t matter what song they all equally suck)

If you want to know what a cat being shoved in a blender sounds like listen to her music. Let’s be honest here she can’t sing and has to rely on auto tune. Again this is just my personnel opinion and you can take it or leave it.

4. Breaking Benjamin Blow Me Away

I like Breaking Benjamin and apparently so do lots of others because this song seems to be everywhere. Frankly it’s a little much and it’s kinda ruining the song. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use their music, just pick a different song.

5. Clint Mansell Requiem For A Dream

Last but not least is this song. There are lots of songs out there that have a similar type of sound to them, just because this one is well known because of The Lord Of The Rings doesn’t mean it has to be used to death.

Again this is just my personnel opinion and from some of the comments and videos I’ve seen on Youtube. Nobody is saying you can’t use any of the songs or artists mentioned, but I would recommend looking around a little to find something that hasn’t been used very much.

Before Facebook was king of social networking was MySpace. The last few years haven’t been good to the once giant social network, dropping to an estimated 70 million active users. The site itself has transformed from a personal hub of social activity to nothing short of an advertising billboard and virtually forgotten as a relic of the early 2000’s.

However the beleaguered social site could be in for a huge change, one that could give it a huge comeback. How do the new owners plan on doing this? Essentially their going to strip away all the excess and focus on music and hopefully turn the site into a hub celebrities in the music industry and fans alike.

But why music? The answer is simple, according to Al Dejewski senior vice president of global marketing

“No other music destination online today can claim the breadth of partnership we have with the 4 major music labels in addition to the tens of millions of independent artists and the libraries of their songs”

MySpace has a long standing relationship with the music industry, and with someone like Justin Timberlake helping with creative aspects this relationship is further reinforced. If MySpace can convince the current big names in the industry to come onboard it could be just what the site needs to bring it back into the forefront

The other day while going through my analytics I noticed a referral hit from a blog I’d never heard about. Often when I get referrals from sites I’ve never heard of I like to check them out to see what their about. What I found though was a blog that was copying word for word some of my older posts.

Fortunately for me this blog (I’m not going to post the URL because why promote them) is a………well it’s some shitty no name blog from the Philippines to be blunt, that gets 0 traffic apart from my visit so I’m not too worried about this site. But what about if you found a site that was copying all your content and ranking for them what can you do to protect your site and its content. There are some things you can do.

1. Get your site copyright protected.

There are a number of free sites such as MyFreeCopyright.com that will allow you to register and protect your bog, website, pod cast, even your RSS feed.

2. Disable right clicking

Obviously this won’t stop someone from copying your content, but it will make it a little harder for them. By disabling right clicking they’ll have to type it out manually. If you can disable right clicking on your site make sure it doesn’t affect anything on your site before you use it.

3. Ask them to stop

This one might work; chances are it won’t depending on who you’re dealing with. But asking them to remove any copied content or at the very least getting acknowledgement and a link back to your site is better then nothing.

4. Tell others

Word of mouth is always a very powerful tool both for promoting a site, or trash talking it. The more people who know about a site that’s stealing content, the more people won’t visit it.

5. Report it to Google

Finally if there being a tool and are screwing you over you can report their site to Google and get them to remove or penalize that site. There’s a simple form to fill out which can be found here

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1

There’s no guarantee that site will be pulled or banned but at least it gives you some alternatives to letting them get away with stealing your content.

Google Adsense it’s usually the first place people go who want to monetize their websites and blogs with the hope those Adsense earnings will net them some big cash. Normally these ads will be matched to your site based on the content and browsing history of the people visiting your site. The goal is to tailor make ads that will hopefully be appealing for people to click on.

While Google Adsense is pretty good at matching their ads with your content using their algothrim, it’s by no means perfect, and what’s actually being displayed might have no relation to what you’re talking about

But there is a simple way that you can use to squeeze more out of your Adsense account. Here’s what you do.

1. Login into your Adsense account.

2. Click on the top menu where it says “Allow & Block Ads” This will be in the top left side.

3. Select “General Categories” this will take you to a screen that should look something like the one below





































What this screen shows you is the categories of ads that are being displayed, the percentage of impressions, and the profit those categories earned in the last 30 days.

4. What you want to do here is look through the categories and block anything that isn’t earning you anything. This will free up more space for ads that your users will find relevant and useful and actually click on. For example if you look at the picture you can see that “Home & Garden” takes up 4.9 percent of the total number of impressions, yet earns nothing.

By blocking that category you free up that 4.9 that can be dispersed to other categories that do earn. In short this means more relevant ads being displayed for your visitors, who hopefully in turn click on those advertisements.

Another thing to note about this is that not available in all countries. So if you don’t have access to this option be patient it should be available to all countries in the near future.

A little while ago I asked if anyone wanted to an invite to Google , the latest attempt by Google to get into the social network scene. Because Google is still in a beta stage invites can only be done through email by a current member inviting someone.

It also used to be that when you were invited and got onto the site you could then send out as many invites as you wished.

That seems to have changed. I logged on there today to see that there is now a limit of how many people you can invite. I’m not sure the reason for it, there’s probably some more bugs to work out before they finally open this site up fully to the public. But for now it seems that I’m limited to sending out 150 more invites.

If you haven’t been able to get an invite and would like one please drop a comment below. Because an email address is required to send an invite, you can also contact me from my contact page which has a form that won’t display your email address.

All I ask in return is that you either like, digg, stumble, or 1 something on this site. It’s only fair if I’m giving you something for free.

By now you’re probably very familiar with Google , Google’s latest attempt at getting into the whole social network scene. But what kind of affect will Google and their 1 button have when it comes to SEO?

Like Facebook Google’s new 1 button helps determine the social value of a particular website. Basically it gets people to recommend content. These personal or trusted endorsements can hold a lot of weight. Because Google’s 1 results are displayed not just on the website or blog, but in search results they can better determine which content people want to view and which to avoid. Also if user’s friends recommended a particular site their profile pics and names appear below the search result.

Now instead of a personnel blog or a funny video it’s related to a business or a product. Instead of the opinions of strangers you can see recommendations from people who you know and trust (hopefully). This adds a huge amount of weight. If your friends like it and trust chances are you will too.

While this isn’t SEO at least in any traditional sense, having your site optimized for these kinds of trusted endorsements will go a long way in determining the popularity of a particular site. As the internet becomes more social and less algorithm internet marketers and website owners will have to put more emphasis on providing a positive user experience.

Looks like the powers that be at Google are launching yet another free web tool you can use to help boost your sites performance. Google page speed is Google’s latest free tool, it’s purpose……well simply put it helps make your web pages load faster.

Google boasts that this new service can boost your websites loading time by as much as 60 percent, of course this depends on how fast your site currently is. In some cases Google page speed actually slowed down a website. These are sites that already have very fast load times of just over a second. Websites and blogs that load 4 seconds and slower should see a huge increase in speed.

To use it webmasters will have to sign up and point their DNS entry to Google. Right now though it’s limited to only a few webmasters to try out and test for bugs before it’s launched to everyone which should be fairly soon.

Google does offer a speed test to check your sites performance to see if this new service will speed up your site, and if so by how much. To use the speed test copy and paste the link below.

https://code.google.com/speed/pss/docs/tryit.html