TOTAL VISITS

Saturday 28 March 2015

10 Interesting History Facts Of Google!








If you have been using internet for over a decade, you would surely agree
that since all this time, Google has had been the best source of help when it
comes to searching anything in the online world. You will, However be shocked to
find some of the very interesting facts about the renowned search engine and
people affiliated to it.







Here are 10 interesting History Facts of Google that you might not ever come
across!






10. Google�s Family











It was Larry Page�s brother Carl who helped them start an e-Group and a
dotcom company that was gained for over half a billion dollars by Yahoo by the
year 2000.


9. Original Name Of The Website











The original name for Google was Backrub and which was given to this website
due to the algorithm of the ranked pages was based on the number of back linked
pages the site had and supported.


8. Copyrights











The copyrights system of Google is very interesting because the patents that
have been filed with Google are referred to the patent that has been owned by
Dow Jones which is very much same to the Google copyrights.


7. Stanford











PageRank is the name of Google algorithm which has been given to it after
Larry Page. The patents for this are held by Stanford and are given 1.8mm shares
which were sold for 336 million dollars in the year 2005.


6. User Generated Data








According to some of the studies Google uses about 20 petabytes of user
generated data every day. (Petabytes are estimated at 10 to the 15th power. So 1
petabyte is approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes). It uses enormous totals
of calculation to index the Web, process search results, serve up ads etc.


5. Opening Shares











Google was publicized in 2004 and its opening shares were about 85 dollars
per share and during their IPO they raised it to about $2,718,281,828.


4. Largest Search Engine








During 2000, Google became the largest search engine of the world and users
have spent about 200 billion minutes over it until now.


3. Politics











Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the two richest guys in the country to not
make any political contributions but have spent more on lobbying than Yahoo and
Facebook combined.


2. The First Google Employee











The number one employee of Google was Craig Silverstein and he is still
working at the company as the director of technology with a total net worth of
about 950 million dollars according to different websites.


1. April Fool Tradition











Google�s practice of April Fool�s jokes initiated in April 2000 when Google
proclaimed the �MentalPlex,� or Google�s aptitude to read a person�s mind as he
envisages the search results he wants.





So these were some interesting facts that you might not know about Google.





All for now,







Share your views


Thursday 19 March 2015

Our Visit To "Beacon Light Academy" - Meeting The Angels

Beacon Light Academy SeminarAfter having conducted several seminars and conferences across the country in different universities and delivering the message of Online entrepreneurship through Content Marketing across the globe, it was now time to meet those little Angels face to face who needed a slight push to transform their dreams into reality. After the deadliest attack on "Army Public School (APS)" in Peshawar, the terror did not stop unless it tried to frightened the students in Karachi.  Beacon Light Academy became the first target of terrorism when some unidentified men threw two grenades early morning at this school on February 3, 2015. Fortunately none was injured [Source]. On February 7 the principal of this effected school invited us i.e. STCnetwork and my best friend Rafay baloch from RHA Info Sec for a seminar on "Victims of Slave Mentality". The Seminar aimed at promoting the true sense of Online entrepreneurship amongst students through Web Development, Content Marketing, Security research & Penetration testing. The Seminar was later delayed due to security concerns and was conducted instead on February 14, 2015, where more than 150+ Angels (Students from secondary grades) actively participated without any fear! Lets share some important highlights of the event.

victims of slave mentality seminar

Event Venue & Speakers

All Details on the Facebook event Page - Victims of Slave Mentality

Mohammad Mustafa and Rafay Baloch

What Was The Event all about?

Education without application is like buying cents for dollars. A map without key. As a fresh graduate myself, throughout my academic life, I have always kept a close look on the unequal distribution of wealth amongst society. Sometimes I would blame the nature for the imbalance of living standards but with time as I gained more experience about the social cash flow system, human Psychology and the Rise and Fall of poor and rich communities, I started understanding why despite the same God gifted potentials, some humans live a far better life whilst others struggle all life to fulfill their dreams but they end up in despair. Those who succeed in life are either by luck, resources or by one basic rule of life and that is Dreaming With Open Eyes. I term such people as followers of PLAN B and the rest as Victims of Slave mentality i.e. PLAN A

Note: Those who choose to be free of worldly desires by choice are Holy people and they are not part of our discussion ever for they are people of wisdom and great intellect and deserve full respect at all times. The above classification between two different standards of life is meant to educate students and make it easy for them to explore their inner strengths and the gift of true knowledge.

We gave a basic definition of both these classes of people first time on our Seminar at NED University on BluePrint To PlanB back in 2103 which I am quoting below for reference:

 Plan A

A Plan oriented individual is always led by society norms and rules, he is always the follower and never an initiator. This spoon fed life which starts from school level and continues till graduation leads him to his ultimate goal and that is "The hunt for Job". He is always afraid to invest his energies into a more productive form of work. Take an example of a school nerd, whose ultimate aim is scoring high in class. He may be good in studies but poor in extra curricular activities, poor in communication skills and social interaction. Most of Plan A oriented students often fell prey to depression and frustration. Upon completion of their graduation they are left with nothing but fixed salary jobs where they spend rest of their lives, dreaming of getting a sustainable Income one day but they die as ordinary citizens and never as distinguished names that could be remembered for decades.

 

 Plan B

Self Fed, financially stable, always hungry and thirsty to innovate and create something new and unique. That's what that defines a Plan B oriented mind. Can a Plan A student pause his university studies in middle just because he needs more time to turn his innovation into reality? Of course he wont, but people like bill gates, Abraham Lincoln, zukerberg, Steve Jobs, John Mackey, Ted Turner,  were amongst those who taught they will better apply knowledge and never worship it blindly. PlanB believers look for opportunities and the moment they find a loop hole, they give their best to utilize it properly.They are always students with dexterous minds always looking to learn and apply. They are practical thinkers and better planners. They are normal students but they don't keep one goal in life, they keep multiple parallel goals in life. They never follow social trends. They try to develop college skills during school life and university skills during college life. They are always ahead of time and never bond their potentials to social restrictions set by the dead slow walking society. They dream of empires and never getting enslaved by big giants. They never dream of joining Microsoft or Google but they dream of inventing one of their own. They are indeed Plan executors and day dreamers!

We shared with them real life stories of successful young entrepreneurs around the globe, internet's proper use, Ways of building a lucrative income online, Earning Secrets of Social Media Giants and of course not forgetting our Self-applied Online earning strategies.

We motivated them that Excellence is not dependent on Age or Time, they can attain it before time just like Arfa Karim Randhawa did, who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at the age of nine in 2004! Or Babar Iqbal who started computer programming at the age of 5 or Akrit Pran Jaswal who performed his first surgery at the age of seven!

We also shared the story of Nick D' Aloisio  who was an average school going guy but his summly App that he created during his 10th grade got sold out for over $30 Million US Dollars to Yahoo!

We also discussed how whatsapp emerged and was soled for $19 billion dollars to Facebook which ones rejected giving job to the same developer

We then concluded that all these legendary figures achieved all this because they believed in a PLAN B setup of life! They did not swim with normal flow of academic trends, they did not restrict themselves to home or social bounds, they instead invested time and energy to explore their hidden powers.

The Most Unusual Thing!

We were approached for Autographs!

We kept wondering why would they take our autographs for I personally consider myself not worthy of it but later as we realized that it was a gesture of thanksgiving by these little angels who were extremely excited to discover their hidden talents and capabilities. Casual seminars often aim at product or idea promotion and they rarely touch the hearts of the attendees but Alhamdulillah these paper autographs were enough a proof to let us know that we delivered the message with full sincerity. We thanked God for all this honor and also prayed for these kids to live up their dreams in true spirit.

Certificates and Gifts Distribution

Slave Mentality Certificate

Certificates were distributed amongst students after the seminar by the school administration.

We distributed three gift hampers amongst students during the Q&A session. Unfortunately the photographers missed capturing those memorable moments.

STCnetwork certificatesSTCnetwork certificatesMohammad's signatureOrganizers certificate contentMy nephew Ammar Munir AhmedMy Niece Sana Aimal

Received Shields!

We express our gratitude to the principal of Beacon Light Academy Madam Azra for her hospitality and token of appreciation in the form of a memorable Shield.

Shield Given To Speakers

Event Photos

We are sorry for not sharing professional set of photos today because we had avoided taking our Personal Photographer "Saad" with us because the organizers suggested that they had around four cameras and they could easily cover the entire event. But they missed many precious shots and most importantly failed to capture Rafay's pics. =<

So these are the only pictures we received.

Beacon light academy Seminar

Beacon light academy Seminar

Mohammad Mustafa in Beacon light academy Seminar

Mohammad Mustafa in Beacon light academy Seminar

Beacon light academy Seminar

Beacon light academy Seminar

Mohammad Mustafa in Beacon light academy Seminar

Questions in Beacon light academy Seminar

Mohammad with Rafay Baloch

Audience at beacon light academy

Audience at beacon light academy

Mohammad with sisters from beacon light academy

presentation at beacon light academy

presentation at beacon light academy

presentation at beacon light academy

 

Special Thanks

We would like to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to Madam Azra, the honorable principle of Beacon light academy for inviting us to the school and giving us a chance to share our online earning strategies with the students.

Madam Azra - Principal Beacon Light Academy

Sameer Rehmani the genius who made it possible. Design Credits of Certificates, Shields and Event Pamphlets goes to him.  

Sameer Rehmani from beacon light academy

And all the Organizers!

Organizers and speakers at beacon light academy

Where Will We Go Next?

God knows best, we have no perfect plans. From the past 3 years we conducted several seminars across the country in different universities but from this year onwards we will narrow down our approach to Schools and colleges. We will try our best to encourage students across the country to kick start their Online Business dreams.

Thank you for always being a great source of motivation. You keep us alive as long as you keep on reading us! Thank you to Beacon Light School for honoring us with an opportunity to share our Online business ideas with the students. We wish you a successful future, full of opportunities and creativity. You guys deserve the best of life!

Peace and blessings be upon you all! =>

Thursday 12 March 2015

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Makes Your Website Vulnerable!




According to a latest news, the popular Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin has a major vulnerability that makes a website susceptible to blind SQL injections. This is a very popular plugin that is used by over 14 million websites. Reportedly, all versions of SEO by Yoast prior to 1.7.3.3 are vulnerable to Blind SQL Injection web application flaw. This is an alarming news for those that use this plugin, because it could seriously compromise the data on their website.


According to Mohit Kumar of Hacker News:



�Basically in SQLi attack, an attacker inserts a malformed SQL query into an application via client-side input. However, in this scenario, an outside hacker can�t trigger this vulnerability itself because the flaw actually resides in the �admin/class-bulk-editor-list-table.php� file, which is authorized to be accessed by WordPress Admin, Editor or Author privileged users only. 




Therefore, in order to successfully exploit this vulnerability, it is required to trigger the exploit from authorized users only. This can be achieved with the help of social engineering, where an attacker can trick authorized user to click on a specially crafted payload exploitable URL.�



So in other words, WordPress admins can be tricked into clicking on links that would then trigger an SQLi attack. After the attack, the attacker could then add their own admin account to the vulnerable WordPress site and do whatever they want with it.





Everyone who has SEO by Yoast installed is not going to be automatically affected by this. The attack can only be manually triggered by a WordPress admin, editor, or author who clicks on a dangerous link created by the attacker.





In addition, this is something that can easily fixed by updating your plugin to the latest version. The Yoast team promptly patched the exploit upon being notified, and the newest version (1.7.4) is said to fix the problem. The Premium version of the plugin has also been updated.


Security fix: fixed possible CSRF and blind SQL injection vulnerabilities in bulk editor. Added strict sanitation to order_by and order params. Added extra nonce checks on requests sending additional parameters. Minimal capability needed to access the bulk editor is now Editor. Thanks Ryan Dewhurst from WPScan for discovering and responsibly disclosing this issue.


In the future, you can have plugin updates taken care of automatically by going to the Manage > Plugins & Themes > Auto Updates tab. It is strongly recommended that you update all SEO and security plugins on your websites as soon as possible.





Stay safe!

Monday 9 March 2015

Google To Rank Sites Based On Accuracy Of Information


Accuracy of information


In recent months, Google has become increasingly focused towards the quality of search results pages. It always was, but there has been talk of new ranking signals being incorporated into the search engine. Where certain signals were merely guidelines in the past, they'll soon geared to become direct signals. One example is mobile-friendly design. Another is security. This leads us to believe that a major algorithm update might be in order pretty soon.


Latest rumors have it that Google may start counting the accuracy of information as a ranking signal. According to a paper published by researchers within the company, it may now value accuracy over the quality of backlinks.


Knowledge-Based Trust



Google is working on a system where it can determine the trustworthiness of a page not by who is linking to it, or how many incoming links it has, but by the number of facts it contains.





How it works





A score, called a Knowledge-Based Trust score, would be computed for each page by cross-referencing the content with facts stored in Google�s Knowledge Vault. The Knowledge Vault is a database of 2.8 billion facts extracted from the web, and is the primary source of information behind the boxes that appear on the right side of some searches.





The more facts contained on a page, the better it will rank. In instances where few facts are found on a page, Google will check the accuracy of other content contained on the site to determine how well it can be trusted overall.





Reliability?





So far in test conditions, Knowledge-Based Trust score has been able to reliably predict the trustworthiness of millions of websites. This sounds impressive on paper, and I�m sure the SEO community would appreciate an alternative to links as a ranking signal. However, a lot of questions remain unanswered.





For one, not every website exists to report facts, so how will trustworthiness be determined in those cases? Well that�s when the research paper says Knowledge-Based Trust isn�t necessarily a replacement for current ranking signals, but a supplement to them.





There is also cause for concern for pages written around new technology and new discoveries, with information that hasn�t yet been entered into Google�s Knowledge Graph. If Google started to rely on Knowledge-Based trust to rank web pages, would it then focus additional effort on revising and updating the Knowledge Graph?





We are eagerly looking towards Google for answers. What do you think about this new development? Share your views in the comments section below!

Friday 6 March 2015

Google Search Results Just Became More Mobile-friendly!


Mobile optimization


Mobile optimization is the need of the hour. Mobile has grown at a fantastic pace - not just in screen size and technical specs, but in usage as well. Google has pointed out time and again that mobile optimization is a must for ranking well in search engines. Recently, it introduced a label for mobile-friendly sites to be displayed in search results. In contrast, a red label was introduced for sites that were slow and not mobile-friendly. Google has made two more important changes recently that reflect on the importance of mobile optimization.


Mobile friendliness as a ranking signal



Up until now, mobile friendliness has remained a best practice, a plus point, a mere usability feature that is nice to have and that will keep users happy. Sites that were mobile-optimized indirectly benefited in search engines as they saw more user engagement, lesser bounce rate, and a generally favorable response from both the users and the search engines.





It never was a direct signal for ranking a website.





Until now.





With the recent changes to mobile search in a bid to make it more user-friendly, Google has made it abundantly clear that mobile-friendliness will now be used as a ranking signal. In fact, they're given a date for this - 21st April. According to Google;


Starting April 21, Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for their devices.


You can implement changes to our website before the 21st. Once you do that, you can use Google's mobile friendly testing tools to check your website.





You can use Google's Mobile SEO guidelines to help you along your way.


App content in search results



Recently, Google Search also began to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking search results displayed to signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, Google Search may now show content from indexed apps more prominently in search.





If you have a mobile app, learn more about App Indexing, and allow Google Search to show this information in search results.





Good luck (:

Wednesday 4 March 2015

How To Embed Twitter-Hosted Videos On Your Website?




Following along the same lines as Facebook, Twitter recently announced a video-hosting feature that lets you capture and upload videos using official Twitter apps without having to upload them first on a third-party service such as YouTube. This was indeed a welcome feature, and in sharp contrast to how Twitter had been predominantly text-based and monotonous in the past. However, as with any video-hosting service, you need a way to share that video elsewhere on the web.




For a video-hosting service, being able to embed videos is pretty important. If your videos can't be delivered elsewhere, what's the point? Not everyone uses Twitter to discover new content. Twitter's video-sharing lacked the embed feature for videos hosted on Twitter. You could embed regular Tweets, but not Tweets with videos.





Until now, that is.





Twitter has just announced a new embedded video widget, which works just like Twitter's official Tweet buttons and embedded tweets.





Embedding a video is as simple as clicking on the ����� button in the tweet and selecting �Embed Video�, as pictured in the image below.




Embed Twitter videos




Twitter will then render a piece of HTML code for you to copy and paste on your website. In addition to the video itself, the video widget will also display the full, original tweet.





If your website is built on WordPress, and you�re looking for a more intuitive way to embed video tweets into your posts, there�s another option for you.





Twitter recently came out with its own WordPress plugin that, among other features, includes the ability to embed video tweets simply by pasting a link to the tweet in the content editor. This works with some other video-hosting platforms as well, including Vimeo and YouTube.





WordPress has long had the ability to embed regular tweets just by pasting a link, and with the official plugin you can extend that functionality to video tweets.





Do you think Twitter hosting its own videos is a good idea?

Monday 2 March 2015

Launching The First User Powered "Blogger Help Forum"

Blogger Help Forum

For the past one year we were busy in giving the biggest surprise to the web and exclusively the Blogger users. We were busy in building the first ever 24/7 Help Forum for Blogger users with a Cloud hosted system introduced first time to Blogspot community. We are now premium customers of Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc and Alhamdulillah bringing you the most advanced Forum technology called Discourse to Blogger users, developed by the founders of Stackoverflow, and maintained by its co-founder Jeff Atwood aka codinghorror.

We are officially launching and releasing the first version of "Blogger Help Forum" V1.3.0 today. This is probably the biggest contribution by STCnetwork to BlogSpot Community and the happiest news for all users who were badly in need of quick help and support. It will be the only place where you will get replies within 24 hours and where you will find real bloggers and developers helping you out for free!

This marks our 5th Project Online Alhamdulillah.

*No Registration required! Login with Google, Facebook, Twitter or your Yahoo account!

Is it Just another Traditional Forum?

Of course not!

"Blogger Help Forum" is the first Discussion Forum of its type that is hosted on an extremely fast Cloud Server and uses the latest Discourse Technology which is the 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet. Discourse is the new big name for Forum software just like WordPress is for blogs.. This application is powered by JavaScript, AJAX, HTML5, Ruby on Rails and Ember.js. 

Blogger Help Forum's huge Database, enhanced  Mailing and Chatting environment will  let Blogger users to help each other in Template Customization, Monetization and SEO and offer 24/7 Free Help and Support without waiting for hours. It will do what Official Blogger Help Forum failed to do inshAllah.

Blogger Help Forum Interface

The Forum has extremely strict TOS and Policy and is built with sole purpose of keeping spammers away. Unlike Blogger's weak Comment Spam Filtering system, the forum has a strong community Flagging system that suspends users and deletes policy abusers within seconds. We surely believe in civilized community behavior at all times. Users achieve credibility and respect through an automatic mechanism of Trust Levels which differentiates a ninja from a newbie.

User Profiles

The Forum works as a:

  • Mailing List!                      powered by MailChimp
  • Discussion Forum!          powered by Discourse
  • Long-Form Chat Room! You will forget whatsapp!

Joining it would be to discover a modern, sustainable, fully open-source Internet discussion platform, where you will not talk to walls, anonymous users or spam bots but you will actually interact with real people and expert pro Bloggers.

notification system

Read below the story which personally forced us to build this new environment for all of you and read also who actually owns this Forum!

Forum Access Points

There are a total of 4 access points using which you can visit the forum to post your questions and ask for instant help.

Forum latest topics can be viewed live from the wooden drop down menu towards the right of secondary navigation menu as shown in the screenshot below:

latest forum topics

It can also be accessed from a link in the Header and footer menu and also through a button at the bottom of every post.

Humble Request

Our dream of a user powered Blogger Community has finally come true. Together we can make it the biggest Blogger Online Library inshAllah and It will be our self-built Encyclopedia for Blogspot blogs.

We created this forum to help people like you for free with no service charges and no advertisements on the site. The site maintenance and hosting charges per month are extremely expensive and we are bearing them all so that people like you and we may contribute comfortably to the forum and help one another. Lets help the generation ahead with this new Blogger Encyclopedia and never abuse it. At Blogger Help Forum you can document your knowledge so that you could be remembered forever. It is as much yours as it is ours. We don't claim to own it as we have mentioned several times, all that we expect is to thank you for all your love and motivation that has been the sole driving force that keeps us alive.

I accept the truth that I could not provide honest support through the commenting system of this blog but I promise to answer personally each query posted on the forum within 24 hours inshAllah. This is what I expect from those of my readers who have excelled in designing and developing blogger templates and widgets, to share their skills with new comers and never reserve skills learnt to themselves alone. Knowledge is good only if shared with humanity, else what good it is if reserved to oneself. 

Thank you for being a strong source of inspiration, we certainly could not have built it without your feedback and help from God Almighty Who is always with us through good Times and Bad.

Join it now and also invite your good friends and family to the Forum! Peace and blessings buddies! =>