Author: Nick

How good or bad your IT equipment – PC / Laptop / Ultrabook / Tablet / Phone is?

By Internet Statistics

These days computing technology evolves so fast and many times we get caught in a avalanche of upgrades or equipment change just to keep us up to date…

Of course all these new stuff cost money and is not quite easy to buy just to be on top. You have to have an increase need to upgrade.

On the other hand, many business have quite upgrading to reduce cost, and after a while they have found themselves in a deep predicament  and far behind their own industry standards…

How good or bad your IT equipment – where are you in all this IT saga – at home or at work?

An easy and free way to share these info with us would be to run GeekBench benchmark software on your equipment and fill out the following form.

GeekBench is free and cross-platform – Available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone

 

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How to win the Lottery – TattsLotto Statistics – Frequency – Pairs – Triplets

By TattsLotto Statistics

There are always lots of lotteries offering big prizes around us.
But how can we win these big prices?

I always had an eye on them and tried to understand more about numbers and their statistics.

Nobody has the absolute answer and nobody can guess the lottery numbers, but is absolutely verified that by checking the previously drawn numbers and calculating statistics you can improve your chances of winning the lottery.

I won’t give you any crystal ball, but I will try to post here relevant statistics that could help you win. I will start with Saturday Lotto / Tatts Lotto and based on feedback that I get from readers this post could evolve and become an independent page or even a whole nine yards website…. who knows?

Where can you find the raw data? 
Few Aussie official lottery sites don’t publish anymore the whole past draws, but you still can find them on Lottery West and Tatts websites:
https://www.lotterywest.wa.gov.au/results/saturday-lotto
https://tatts.com/tattersalls/results/download-results

What can we do with all these numbers?
What I normally calculate is the frequency, pairs, triplets, quartets, draws sum and then group the numbers in four different categories ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘due’ and ‘previous’.

‘hot’ – numbers drawn in the last 10 draws, but not the last draw
‘cold’ – numbers having a lower overall frequency and  not drawn in the last 10 draws
‘due’ –  numbers having a higher overall frequency and  not drawn in the last 10 draws
‘previous’ – numbers drawn in the last draw

All this stuff can help filter out the numbers that are unlikely to be drawn in the next draw.

How exactly?
For all past draws I have calculated  frequency, pairs, triplets, quartets, draws sum and then grouped the numbers in four different categories ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘due’ and ‘previous’….. so I could see a pattern:
About 66% of drawn numbers are ‘hot’ number
About 15% of drawn numbers are ‘cold’ numbers
About 6% of drawn numbers are ‘due’ numbers
About 13% of drawn numbers are ‘previous’ numbers

This pattern has been almost the same, over time…..draw after draw, since ’86.

So, what can you do?
If you play 6 numbers, play 4 x ‘hot’, 1 x ‘cold’, and 1 x ‘previous’ by example….less numbers to choose from, more chances to win.

If you want to increase the chances to win a price (not necessarily the big one), play 6 or 7 or 8 ‘hot’ numbers…

Let’s see some updated Tattslotto statistics – just created this database:

https://winlotto.nicks-software.com

I will update it weekly for Tatts Lotto and please comment – if you are interested in other lotteries – let me know and I will create a few other online lotto statistics databases.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 – Cases with magnets are not good for your phablet

By Samsung

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 – the biggest phone out there – is always a good candidate for a protective case. 

Note 2 at its 5.5 inch screen is huge and you want to protect it, but which case would you buy?
You can get few Samsung original flip cover cases, but the trendy ones are the leather ones.
The designers got very creative and trying to minimize the size of the buckle started to make covers using magnets…

Well, magnets and smartphones don’t mix to well.

If case designers had read the Note 2 spec they would have seen that the phone is packed with sensors: Accelerometer, RGB Light, Digital Compass, Proximity, Gyro, Barometer and an S-Pen.

 

So, let’s see how magnets messed up my Samsung Galaxy Note 2….in just few minutes. 

After only few minutes of having the phone in the cover case with magnetic buckles my Digital Compass started to complain: “Magnetic field strength outside of expected range. Move away from metal or magnets, or try calibrating your sensor.”
Even after I took the phone out of the case the Compass was still messed up – displaying a wrong North direction and complaining about excessive magnetic field strength.

 
 The other feature that didn’t work as per normal, once I put the phone in the magnetic case was the S-Pen.

 The part of the screen sitting on top of the magnet inserted at the back of the case was not reacting at the S-PEN and we couldn’t write anything in that area.

Once we took the phone out of the case the S-Pen worked perfectly anywhere on the screen. 


File:AMOLED en.svgBesides, all above, it is known that magnetic field can influence the electro-optical properties of OLED displays. This will cause a decrease in luminance of the area exposed to an external magnetic field due to resistance change of these areas – OMR – organic magnetoresistance effect.

 

Also we know that magnets are not good for any data storage device. Even if micro SD are considered not affected by weak magnets, in some cases we have seen that very strong magnets and especially electro-magnets could shorten the shelf live of the card and trigger data corruption.

As you can see -it’s much better to avoid magnets around your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 phablet.

 

 

iisamiitromiutuf

By Google Experiment, Google Page Rank, Google Traffic

Well, this is not quite a real article, this is just another Gyhwesaa-like example. We just want to see how quickly Google picks up this new word iisamiitromiutuf and how we will rank in search results for this ‘word’.

As gyhwesaa, opmdcsdcpb, iisamiitromiutuf are the perfect examples of a keyword with almost no competition and a very low number of searches.
This original article will have to compete against a few lots of copy-paste articles that will contain the same fabricated word iisamiitromiutuf in them. Let’s see how they will rank against each other.
iisamiitromiutuf rules.

Used to be 2h to pick up any stuff like this.

HPDCA – In Circuit Test (ICT) – Machine Monitoring System

By Agilent In Circuit Test, HP In Circuit Test, HP3070, ICT, IFR In Circuit Test, IFR4220, Machines Monitoring, Machines Monitoring Systems, WEB APPS

NS-HPDCA

If you are in EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Services) business, you know how important is to have a good test solution for all your products.
A common test solution is In-Circuit Test and also you might have:

  • Visual Inspection,
  • AOI (Automatic Optical Inspection),
  • X-RAY,
  • Functional Test,
  • and many more.

ICT (In-Circuit Test) is many times a basic requirement for PCBA’s testing.
Test solution has to be properly designed and deployed in order to give you a good test coverage.

Once you have it designed, deployed, validated, you need to get under control the messages from the ICT machines.

ICT machine prints a docket for each failed PCBA and also creates log files, where tests results and measurement are recorded/logged.

It’s all good to have the data saved in the log files, but when you need to analyse a large amount of information from the log files you need a tool that will help you extract and organise this data.

Scripts, OEM software tools have been made available, but quite often these tools were expensive and not really designed for engineering needs.

HPDC (HP Data Collector) Inception

I’ve had the same issue as many others, had data available in the log files, but it was so damn hard to get them out of there and make them useful, meaningful, summarised in a good report.

For example, many time I’ve questioned myself:

  • Which are the top 10 ICT failures for a specific product (real time, would be nice)?
  • What’s the average test time for a product?
  • What’s the average measurement for a specific test?
  • What’s ICT loading/utilisation?
  •  What’s the ICT yield (the real one)?
  • How many times the boards are tested (number of retests)?
  • Are going out to the customers only boards that passed ICT?
  • The right ICT program has been used to test the PCBAs?
  • What should I do with a fail board if the fail docket is missing? Do I have to test it again when failure data are available somewhere (log file)?

I couldn’t find too much help checking available solutions from ICT manufacturers like HP (Agilent), IFR (Marconi), Genrad and then I’ve started thinking how can I do it?

HPDC – What it does?

HPDC is a file parser – it opens log files, from ICT Machines like HP3070, IFR4220, takes relevant information from them, and sends the information to a MySQL database.

Now that data is nicely organised, in a MySQL database purposely built for easy access, creating reports should be an easy task.

HPDA (HP Data Analyzer) – What it does?

HPDA is a software solution developed to interpret data collected by HPDC, bring them closer to you, make them useful.
Through comprehensive reports, this software is capable to present a holistic image of your ICT testers.

  • Need to know yields, top defects, retest, cycle time – you’ll have them in a sec.
  • Need to know ICT machines utilisation – done in a sec.
  • Need to see more specific failure report or failures related to a specific serial number or do paperless debug – no worries.
  • Need to know if a board was pass or fail last time when it was tested, or if that board was tested using the right program – too easy.

The whole bunch of log files data at your fingertips, that’s useful.
If you want to find more about HPDC & HPDA or ICT data collection/collectors in general check the web page linked below:
https://nicks-software.com/exp/NS-HPDC-ICT-Data-Collector-and-Analyser.php

Or contact me.

Have fun playing with your ICT machines…

Cheers,
Nick

Android 2.3.5 for HTC Desire HD

By Android 2.3.3 - Gingerbread
In theory an update should be a good thing and Gingerbread V2.3.5 had listed few good things in its original release in July’11, like:
  • Improved network performance for the Nexus S 4G, among other fixes and improvements
  • Fixed Bluetooth bug on Samsung Galaxy S
  • Improved Gmail application
  • Shadow animations for list scrolling
  • Camera software enhancements
  • Improved battery efficiency

Few weeks ago, I’ve updated  my HTC Desire HD, OTA, to Gingerbread 2.3.5 and since then I have different issues than before (2.3.3)….

The most annoying one is the battery life, was bad before, now totally sucks. Even if the phone just sits there in the pocket or on the table and have only few calls and a quick Internet browse, before I get home is already on red (used to be still on green with similar type of use).

I also noticed that now I’m connected more to GSM instead of 3G, in areas where before I used to have 3G, in this situation Internet experience is almost impossible.

Another one, reboot takes forever and even if you think that it is not that important, could be sometimes. I experienced apps crashing and rebooting every now and then, and had to wait long minutes to get it back.

I think I had enough of these poor quality STOCK ROMS and STOCK RADIO and I will go back to customized (had before and I was happy with it – stupid enough though to come back to STOCK) ones and I will search to find THE ONE that at least gives me a decent battery life and increased signals.

I’ll come back with my findings.


Search Engine Optimisation Tips – Part 4

By SEO, SEO Tips


Off-Site Optimization – Link Building

Are many articles on the Internet about links building and what to avoid and what to do…

I just want to point out that Google treats links as appreciation of your site from others and it gives value to each inbound link that you get.
More value, the better, so a good source to get valuable  links would be websites with high PageRank and less outbound links,because value of a link is direct proportional with page PR and inverse proportional with number of external links that that page has.

On the other hand, quantity matters, even if you get links from Sites with low PR and lots of external links, you still get some value for your links and, most important, these Sites could evolve in the future and get higher PR.

How to get links?

If your Site is new, a good source for links could be link-exchange. Software Packages like SEO Powersuite offers  powerful tools to get started and manage your link-exchange campaign.
Link Assistant let you find link partners, sends customized emails, tracks  status and scans their websites to find your links. Link Assistant is a very useful tool to control your link building campaign.

Of course, you should ask all your friends and family to posts ONE WAY links on their sites. ONE WAY links are powerful. If you can get SITE LINKS – links posted on each page of a website – they are more powerful, if not at least bargain for a link on a main landing page – like HOME PAGE.

A pretty easy way of getting valuable links is commenting on BLOGS – especially blogs that are posting DO FOLLOW links. Search in Google for “Do Follow Blogs” and you will get a list of them.
Important thing when commenting on Blogs is to read the article first and get a response that is relevant and not SPAMMY.
If you SPAM your comment will be probably deleted by BLOG Admin/Moderator.
Try to be reasonable first time….

Many people are saying that WEB Directories are DEAD… I wouldn’t say so, it still important to get your Site enlisted to the major ones and then if you have time and patient send your sites to more directories. A manual submission is preferred, or at least a smart semi-automatic.

I would recommend you to submit your Site to DMOZ and any directory that you find and has a page rank higher than 6. Many directory lists could be found just searching Google.

Witting articles is a good source of links and a good way of growing content. Articles could be sent to Article Directories, published on your on Site Blog, posted on external blogs, other blogs.
Just remember, from our experiments – Blogspot and WordPress pages are indexed each 5-15min. It’s a good spot to publish something cool/explosive/viral….you name it.

Don’t forget about social media – a strong presence in social media will give you links and visitors.
Social media sites are extremely valuable because they are free to join and have high PR. It takes few minutes to join a social media site and set up a page that contains a link to your website. Are sooo many, start with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Digg.
Search “list of social media sites” in Google and find a huge number of Social Media Sites not mentioned here.

These are only ‘the classical’ way of getting links.
More details are coming soon.

What should you use as links title?

Of course links are valuable, but are more valuable if are using as title your most marketable keywords. Use your keywords as title for these links, vary them to get similar amounts of links for each and don’t forget about image links. Use ALT attribute to key in your keywords.

Another important step in link-building is to scan your competition and analyze what links they have, which are more valuable and how did they  advance in SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
You could do it using Yahoo linkdomain search operator or you can expand this analysis using professional software – SEO SpyGlass  – it offers a range of professional reports that surgically analyze your competitors pages and their most powerful links. Get links from same source and you could get in front of them, in SERP.

That’s about it, for today.

Cheers,
Nick

Search Engine Optimisation Tips – Part 3

By SEO, SEO Tips

On-Site Optimisation
 
Content matters, but few things have an immediate, positive effect upon your Site, so add them in your TO DO LIST of ON-SITE Optimisation.

Write your Meta(s) – Meta Title and Meta Description are the most important ones – for people and for Google bot.

Meta Title is the blue underlined text displayed in the search results page for each site.

Meta Description is the black text that usually follows, underneath the title.

Both represent the essence of your business, you have less than 100 characters to summarise your activity in your title and a bit more than that in your meta description.

They both need to contain your most valuable keywords, written in a human-friendly and Google-friendly way.

Once you have done this, could be enough to get your site listed in Top 100. Of course is not enough to be in Top 100 and everybody wants to be in Top 10.

If you want to play tough, on-site optimisation could be applied further and you should optimize your:

  • meta keywords – add more keywords
  • body text – stuffed with your most marketable keywords, do not over-do it
  • H1 Headings – good place for a strong keyword
  • bold text – another nice place for few more strong keywords
  • anchor text -add your most valuable keys
  • image alt texts – first thing, all images should have ALT text; secondly, they should be stuffed with keywords – smartly put – human readable and BOT friendly
  • Don’t Forget – Site Load Time Matters – if you have a huge, highly optimised Site, which is very slow – it will not DO well – speed matters a lot and keep an eye on it.

If you need software help to DO all these ON-SITE OPTIMISATION stuff, WEBSITE Auditor is a nice software, that lets you analyse and export pretty useful reports.

You can try it for free from here.
For more  info about ON-SITE OPTIMISATION – drop us an email at: customDB@nicks-software.com

Cheers,
Nick

Asus Transformer – the new rising IPAD killer

By Nick's Software

The guys from ASUS got it perfectly right, when they design and released the Asus Transformer.

 

They got it right with the design and smart combination between a tablet, a good keyboard and docking station…and 16 hours combined battery life. You have to go to sleep before you finished the battery, yes kidding, but still impressive.

On top of that they got it right with the price (not in Australia – where everything seems to be more expensive without any reasons).
Buying from a $400+ for a great tablet is awesome.

Deals of ~550$ for tablet and keyboard are quite common – I could not resist and I ordered one.
It looks so perfect and the Android 3.1 is really promising and is Open Source.

Open Source is a magic word that will bury in the “I” and the “W”. 

After a horrid decade of dominance of “W” and Microsoft who the heck needs the rise of the “I” or read it Apple.
Enclosed, proprietary OSes, over-praised hardware arrogant CEOs.

Enough about ‘others’, Asus Transformer has:

  • NVIDIA® Tegraâ„¢ 2 1.0GHz dual-core CPU for excellent multitasking & 1080p video playback

  • Android 3.0 Honeycomb O.S. with Adobe® Flash® 10.2 support*2
  • Full QWERTY keyboard, touchpad input with Polaris® Office® for mobile productivity
  • 16*1 hours long battery life for all day computing with docking station
  • Brilliant IPS panel with ultra-wide 178? viewing angle made from scratch resistant and super tough glass
  • One year of Unlimited ASUS WebStorage, two USB ports, SD and Micro SD card readers for easy sharing & storage expendability
  • 3D stereo with max bass response with SRS premium sound


It has enough power under the hood to play nice games and do real multi-tasking.


But the thing that really makes me happy is the KEYBOARD and TWO in total SD plus Micro SD slots and TWO USBs. That’s quite amazing and transforms ASUS TRANSFORMER in a mini-laptop, because I believe it is already more powerful than a Net book.


It should have had also a mini-laser-projector sticking out from somewhere and then would have been the most powerful entertainment and business tool.
See, the laser-projectors are still not on the manufacturers agenda, but I assume will enter soon, once the camera(s) (face and rear) will be something common…

Enough dreaming, what about apps – good support, so far, from Android Market, but still a bit disappointed because nobody thought that would be useful to group apps per compatibilities – apps good for Android Phones and Android good for Android Tablets….not talking about a more detailed split per tablet name/type…..

Anyway, stock apps are good enough to cover all the immediate necessities…. beyond that EXPLORE.

I could say already, after a week, that games rules and office and CAD still suck, but we are watching and …..developing apps to make the experience more pleasant.

I was impressed with its stock BROWSER – responsiveness and hot buttons – when you press your thumb near any age – very handy for quick navigation.

A big disappointment was the Google’s Honeycomb developers decision to eliminate the posibility of creating……folders…….very strange….but you can find plenty of free apps on the Markets that could do that (I’m using Apps Organizer).

Anyway it looked awkward when I started to fill up my ALL 5 DESKTOPS with downloaded APP’s ICONS without a real possibility to group them in FOLDERS as I’m used to DO.
This should be a MANDATORY FEATURE not a reason to research the development BLOGs and FORUMs.

Overall, I’m impressed and really like the tool/toy…ASUS TRANSFORMER and I would put it on the wish list of any……anybody.

Cheers,
Nick

SEO Tips – Part 2

By SEO, SEO Tips

Choose carefully your keywords

As I mentioned before, choosing carefully your key-phrases is crucial for your SEO campaign.

How to do it right?

Start from obvious keywords that describe in the best way your activity, ask your friends how do they search Internet if they want to get what you offer, use software tools to get more suggestions.

After you have run out of suggestions, the next place to go is Google, type “AdWords keyword tool” – Google offers a free key suggestion tool.

You need a Google Account to get rid of annoying CAPTCHA, but it is working without an account just fine, just go to “Reporting and Tools” and pick up “Keyword Tool”

Type in your best key-phrase and click search. The “Keyword Tool” will come back with suggestions, see example below – suggestions for keyword ‘games’:

 

It provides you enough information to get an idea about the value of each suggested key: 

  • Competition, 
  • Global Monthly Searches, 
  • Local Monthly Searches.

A good way to sort the key-phrases is based on their ‘Key efficiency index’=KEI.

A good formula for KEI is:

KEI=((4-R)/3)*Sv*Sv/C

Where we have:

Relevance (R): it is how closely your keyword is related to what you offer to your customers. 

Use a three points scale:

  • 1 for Excellent
  • 2 for Good
  • 3 for Poor

Search Volume (Sv): it is how many queries are made for a keyword per month. 

Competition (C): that’s how many websites are already more or less optimized for this keyword.

The easiest way to calculate the KEI is, export in Excel your preferred suggestions from Google’s keyword suggestion tool, create a column for ‘Relevance’ and add your best assessment there (remember 1 to 3), then create another column called ‘KEI’ and calculate it based on above formula. 

Coz Google’s data about competition is less than one – you should multiply it with 10^6 or 10^8 for reasonable results (avoid huge number).

Once you have the column ‘KEI‘ calculated, you should sort your keywords descending based on column KEI value and voila, you have the first logically ordered list of key-phrases.

Few things to remember when you work with  “Google’s keyword Tool”:

  • use Match Type = [Exact] to get a realistic number for Monthly Searches
  • use Local Monthly Searches – forget about Global (if you use this free tool – think local first – start small, grow big)
  • due to the fact that competition number is not terribly accurate, better don’t use it – get your competitors number from Google, just type in your ‘keyword’, press search and read the competition as shown below:

KEI is not all that you need, to be able to pick up the most marketable key-phrases for your niche… You need to apply few more filters, do more research, in order to get to the honey.

 You need to get more data about your competition and the real dimension of it.

How many webpages are optimized for the same potential key-phrases? 

How many links are out there having these key-phrases as anchors?

You should answer these questions before picking up your ‘most marketable’ keys.

Google helps and let you use search operators to figure out these answers, and the ones that we want to use are INTITLE and INANCHOR.

Example – Type in Google:

INTITLE:[keyword]

INANCHOR:[keyword]

Having the number of sites optimized for a specific keyword, gives you the real dimension of your competition = number of websites that have the ‘keyword’ in their title.

If this number is in billions…then you are totally screwed (big boys are using your keywords), if number is in low millions that’s more achievable and if number is less than a million just GO FOR IT.

 

Best thing is to add few new columns to your previously put together Excel file and recalculate the KEI (Keyword Efficiency Index) based on INTITLE (replacing C-Competition with INTITLE number), then you can sort the keys descending by this new column (INTITLE KEY).

Continuing example given before with keyword ‘games’ – below are the top 20-ish keywords, ordered descending based on their true key efficiency – giving you the TOP of your ‘most marketable’ keys…

Many keys will have similar descending patterns on both KEI columns (“KEI” and “INTITLE KEI”), but you can see that are some surprises.

BY example [car games] based on KEI=465.51 should be placed higher in the list, but due to a relatively high number of optimised competitors web pages = intitle:[car games] = 49,000,000 it will be downgraded having INTITLE KEI lower than [shooting games] by example, which has only 2.5 mil sites that have this key in the title (compared with 49 mil for [car games]).

 

You could use more formulas and more filters if you want and need – free imagination always helps and by the way….if you have a favorite key that doesn’t qualify based on formulas, but your gut feel says use it, then use it.

 

Formulas are good in SEO, coz give you a sorted list based on some logical assumptions, but your gut feel can be the missing parameter that can send to you millions of visitors. 

So keep an eye on your gut feel.

 

Keywords Selection, Hard work? Yes, if you have to do all these stuff manually, or using just EXCEL (or similar), then you need time….a lot of time.

 

If you don’t have time or just need to be quicker…you can do it using SEO software. 

Which one? Are so many out there and all cost money and promise miracles….

I can tell you about my choice SEO POWERSUITE from Link-Assistant. 

Rank Tracker (part of SEO Powersuite) – it slashes your SEO workload in half and does all above and much more….

FREE version is fully featured, no restrictions, it is easy to use and in this way it is not hard to figure out if you truly like it or not.

 

Next time at SEO Tips – we talk about On-Site Optimisation.

Cheers,

Nick