AdBlock Plus is a controversial Firefox plugin to prevent ads from displaying on web pages. There is a simple procedure to detect (and take appropriate action) AdBlock Plus.

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Google is rolling out a much needed and requested feature for AdSense, the ability to tag ad slots and modify them without having to change the ad code. The ad slots can they be modified centrally from your account. Link

Every blogger has their own reasons for blogging. Many these days do it for the money, other for fame or to keep in touch with their family and friends. I do it for one simple reason…

I learn lots of things everyday and I forget lot of them too. I don’t want to remember topics which aren’t absolutely essential for my day-to-day work. However I do need them at times and often with high degree of urgency. So I use my blog as a knowledge repository. I write about the things I learned so I am (and you too) able to search them later on my blog. It is much easier to find things on my blog than in the wide world of world wide web with Google search. Also what you will find on this blog is distilled knowledge, not just some random brain dump or post-hangover ramblings.

Simple thoughts is about simple solutions to complex problems, mostly technical in nature.

We do not cover celebrities, except as jokes or in technical context, nor do we cover politicians, except occasionally to ridicule them, nor do we blogbait, except maybe once (successfully if I may add). I do sometimes include some humor (my style if I may add); even techies need to laugh, no?

So if you are looking for a hardcore techie diet or you have a question to answer (or an itch to scratch) you come right here. Check the categories on your right to find the topic that interests you and jump right in. Don’t forget to use our search should you need something specific.
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Why in the world I am getting overseas travel insurance ads on my highly technical blog?

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Sometimes you need to view the full email headers to understand whether an email sender information or other details is faked or to even debug your MTA (my situation). Unlike other email clients GMail doesn’t give you an intuitive way to get the full headers. Nevertheless when you know it, it is very simple. Here are the steps:

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When Google Checkout came out I was very excited to have a viable alternative to PayPal from a reputed company despite its limitation to US only market. Since its launch I have heard several complaints from my readers, with zero positive experiences.

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Top level domain names like taragana.com or microsoft.com are available for a low price of under 10$ per year. However if you do not want to spend even that amount then you get a top level domain name (like angsuman.co.nr or www.angsuman.co.nr) absolutely free.

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I wrote an article on a Google interview question in June, 2006 describing the problem and offering a simple solution. What makes this article interesting is that several people came up with better ideas and very thought provoking comments. If you are a puzzle enthusiast, you will surely enjoy the article; if not for the article but more importantly for the alternative solutions proposed. They excel in many cases the original solution; they also provide lots of original thoughts. If I like anything as much as simple thoughts, it is original thoughts.

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Simple Thoughts has always been about technology. However occasionally I like to post something humorous. Today I was browsing through the archives looking for a smile at the end of my day. I collected the 12 best humorous posts since 2006. I present them to you in no particular order. Hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.
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Jan Dembowski uses Translator Plugin Pro for his WordPress blog, which provided him with a good traffic boost: “My web traffic went from 5,000 hits (900 visits) last week to 21,000 hits yesterday”. He made a cool & informative sidebar element with Translator API to indicate to his viewers of translated pages (only) that the page they are viewing has been translated using online services like Google or Babelfish.

Machine translation cannot equal human translation with today’s technology. However it is a simple & cheap way to provide a reasonable gist of your content for viewers who cannot understand the basic language of your blog. Not to mention that it can rapidly increase the traffic on your blog, fully ethically. His customization well manages the expectations of his non-English viewers (or viewers not conversant with the language of your blog).

Here is how he did it:

I just received version 5.01 of ATPP and it now adds the ability to check if the page is translated or not. With the inclusion of the following PHP code in your sidebar.php (or anywhere you’d like; I may change it) you can now warn your readers:




Please note: This page was originally written in English.

The text has been translated using an online service such as Google or Babelfish.

$original=@$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
?>

The original post can be viewed ">here.





I wrapped it in a

so that I can style it easily. In my style.css file I added

.trans-notice {
font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Georgia, Arial, serif;
font-size: 0.9em;
border:#ccc 1px solid;
background-color:#FAFAFA;
margin: 0 5px;
}
.trans-notice p {
margin: 7px;
}

This gives a warning in English…

Thanks for sharing this code on your blog Jan. Hope you don’t mind me quoting it.

You can read the detailed explanation of the code from his blog entry.

We can further simplify and enhance the code as follows: