Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Been scrubbed? Say NO to plagiarism !


Hey FOlks,

It's been quite some time since I could drop in for a post, but here is something that needs very very important redressing! Plagiarism !

Plagiarism is and has been for quite some time, one of the hottest topics of debate on the internet.

Plagiarism is a serious offense, and believe it or not, if you have plagiarized content on your web site or blog, you sure are going to regret it!

First of all, plagiarized content will drive search engine AWAY from your site. This is because search engines like Google index the internet and update their website records very often. Read about indexing over here

Therefore when Google sees another website(say yours) that has the same content on it, then it will simply not display your website in the search listings or will decrease your listings significantly.

Why does this happen?

First of all your content is plagiarized, and whether your visitors know it or the original author knows it or not, YOU and Google know it! So it's wrong (ethically) to expect your site rankings to rise from plagiarism!

Secondly, if I do a Google search, and the first five listings are different websites with the same plagiarized content, I am not going to get ANY new/different information, or relevant content from the remaining four sites.So that wastes my time, irritates me and make me search again and again in futility. And then I give up all hope, and move to Yahoo or MSN !

This doesn't serve the search engine's purpose and it will destroy its entire ranking and trust system. A good search engine will relate and link content available on the internet with the few key/search words that you type in and display the results! Only a BAD search engine will show you repeat results, whether they are from the same site or others!

So you can be sure that Google or any other search engine will never encourage plagiarism at all! lest they will be wiped out by competitors!

Sometimes, it is possible in many cases, especially when contents feature topics of hot discussion, that two different web sites have plagiarized content by mistake, as in like a co incidence! If this is the case, the search engine will blotch out one of these sites and it could well be yours!

How can you avoid this?

Well, here comes the use and purpose of this post! Checking and guarding your work from plagiarism! You can use the services of www.copyscape.com for your plagiarism checking purposes. Even if you are a copywriter, then you will not be at a great loss to use copyscape as even if you pay for their checking services, it is dirt cheap at $0.17 per checking. I found copyscape to be the best article checker on the internet, and by experience, I feel copyscape is also accepted worldwide as an authority when it come to plagiarism checking and article checkers. Another article checker that I found which was pretty good was articlechecker. you can use the services of articlechecker from www.articlechecker.com . Articlechecker is not as strong as copyscape, but it well does the trick. It offers Google links for every plagiarized bit, so you know when and where it will be blotched out and for which relevant keywords the sites pop up in the searches. This is very useful and convenient as well! However, the intensity of the searching and checking was not as great as that in www.copyscape.com . Copyscape beats articlechecker in quality, but of course the catch is that you must pay for each check. However, articlechecker is free of cost! There is no payment involved and you do not even need a URL (as in your content need not already be published- again a very handy tool when it comes to website development and content uploading)

You probably might be a bit confused as to what article checking tool you must use and whether it is worth the money or effective enough.

Do not despair, because with the experience of developing content for more than 100 websites, I have figured this out all the way! Not only you can use copyscape for free, but also for an unlimited number of times!(This is mainly for people with unpublished content) Just create a temporary blog on www.blogger.com , and paste your work on it as the first post. Copy the post url and use it as your site on copyscape.com to check the status of your work- for free!!

Friday, April 11, 2008

Funny Computer Viruses !

How many of you folks out there have actually enjoyed a virus's jokes/pranks?

I have no idea about this latest intruder into my computer, but this little virus seems to have a funny or rapist coder!

Imagine restarting your computer and you get this error message!

This actually scared me a bit, made me feel like I was in soem horror movie. Like fear dot com or something! But then I figured out it was some prank virus in a second :)

ALso, please let me know if you have any idea what this virus does and how to get rid of it. It's reallly not doing anything to my cmoputer yet, though i think it is trying to make changes in my system registry.

Enjoi!



Cheers to all,

The Tech Mechanic

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Education : Lets make fools of ourselves!



Now doesn't that picture speak for itself?

The first time I saw it, all that ran through my head was AC sqare equals bc square pluc AB square! Believe me folks, it took me one whole minute to figure out what the photographer was trying to convey!

Ha ha ha ha :)

If only modern education and engineering examinations were like this!

Humourists that they were, I'm sure Newton, Einstien, Feynman, Rutherford and Bohr would have agreed whole heartedly!!

Sometimes we try to be so rigid and normal(read conventional) in our thinking, that we miss out on better ideas and lose out on creativity and common sense!

All this can only be blamed on the system that teaches us nothing but how to become blind in our analysis of situations!

As Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes wrote after answering an exam question----

" All I've learnt here is to memorize this utterly useless fact long enough to pass this stupiod test question. I now intend to forget this as soon as possible, because all you have taught me is how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations! "

Hats off !

No wonder everybody likes that comic character!


Cheers,
The Techmechanic