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Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is an award-winning technology blog on all things related to computer software, web applications, Internet and personal productivity.

Linking Analytics with another AdSense AccountFebruary 6

It is important that you integrate Google AdSense with your Google Analytics account as you will then be able track the ad performance (CTR, CPM, revenue, etc.) of individual pages of your site without having to create AdSense channels.

Linking AdSense with Analytics is fairly easy (see video) but consider a slightly different scenario:

You are maintaining two separate Google Accounts – your first Google Account (say adsense@gmail.com) is configured with AdSense while the other account (say analytics@gmail.com) is associated with Google Analytics.

How do you then link these two accounts so that you can track AdSense and Analytics data from the same dashboard?

If are facing a similar issue, here’s a simple solution courtesy Akanksha Shukla:

Step 1. Login to your Google Analytics dashboard using your existing Google Account (analytics@gmail.com).

Step 2. Create a new user in Google Analytics from the User Manager. Set this user’s email address the same as your existing AdSense account (adsense@gmail.com) and select the Access type as “Account Administrator.”

TechCrunch Removes Reader Comments From All Older Blog PostsFebruary 6

It is not uncommon to find hundreds of reader comments on any TechCrunch story – some of these comments are genuine, some are trolls while some comments are made just for the purpose of getting eyeballs.

If you are a frequent commenter on TechCrunch blog, here’s a slightly disheartening news for you – TechCrunch has stopped displaying user comments on all stories that are older than 10 days. Your comments have not been deleted from the actual WordPress database but they aren’t putting them on the site anymore.

For instance, this TechCrunch post on Nexus One by MG Seigler has 104 comments but if you look at the actual page, you’ll find none. The same is true for all the other blog posts in their archives that are older than 10 days.

Why Blogs Remove Comments

Some blogs automatically turn-off the commenting feature from posts that are older than ‘n’ days to avoid spam but they rarely hide existing comments from their old posts. I can think of two reasons why TechCrunch may have taken this step:

1. When you have hundreds of comments on a page, it increase the size (bytes) of the page thus increasing the load-time. Matt Cutts from Google earlier hinted (see video) that site speed may be factor in page rankings and that partially explains why TechCrunch wants to limit the size of their pages.

2. Comments always have rel=nofollow so they don’t pass any link-juice to the commenter’s website but the problem is that they still dilute the amount to Google Juice that gets passed to other “dofollow” links. By removing comments, you are passing more concentrated juice to editorial links.

Popular gadget blog Engadget recently had to shut down comments because of anonymous trolls but they at least informed their readers before implementing the change.

It would be great if Arrington too, who is rightly getting all the good press for his handling of the TechCrunch bribery scandal, could share a few details about their new comments policy with his loyal readership.

[*] In the following video, Matt Cutts told WebProNews that page speed may soon be a factor in Google Search.

..a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast. It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.

The Problem with Google Image SearchFebruary 4

Google keeps talking about the real-time web and that how quickly it can respond to “real-time” events. The moment Google algorithms discover breaking news (like the earthquake in Haiti or the Toyota brakes issue), it triggers real-time search and starts pulling tweets, news stories and even blog posts into the main search results.

This works nicely but there’s one area where Google is still lacking – image search.

Steve Jobs introduced the much-awaited Apple iPad to the world on January 27, 2010. The news was covered by almost every blog and news website, millions of tweets were written for the iPad and thousands of images and videos from that Apple event were shared on sites like Flickr and YouTube.

With so much excitement around the device, the disappointing part is that th

‘Memorize Now’ Can Help You Memorize Long Pieces of Text QuicklyFebruary 4

Whether you are preparing to deliver a lengthy presentation in your company or need to memorize a long speech for an elocution contest in school, meet a useful web app that can possibly help you memorize long passages of text quickly.

The app, aptly named as Memorize Now, works something like this.

You copy-paste the text passages that you want to remember in the space provided and then hit the “memorize” button. The app will then replace certain words from the passage with blank spaces and you are required to recall the hidden words. You can always hover your mouse over a black space to reveal the hidden word.

If it sounds a little confusing, watch this quick screencast from Molly that explains all the good features of Memorize Now visually.

The Memorize Now app was initially created to help people memorize Bible verses but you can use it to memorize virtually any kind of information (including the plays of William Shakespeare).

On a related note, here’s another excellent video that shares some very practical tips to help you memorize lines. My favorite tip is the one that says -- “Memorize your lines on an empty stomach; that’s when the hormone dealing with memory is most active!”

Troubleshoot your Nokia Phone Problems with Nokia DiagnosticsFebruary 4

Nokia Diagnostics is a free utility that can help you troubleshoot and resolve common problems with your Nokia phones.

For instance, when you need to configure your Nokia device on a different Internet Connection (like moving from one Wi-Fi network to another), Nokia Diagnostics can automatically identify the right Internet settings for you.

The utility can also help you test the phone’s battery charger, the loudspeaker and even the earpiece.

Nokia Diagnostics works with all S60 5th edition devices (like the N-series, Nokia 5800, etc.) while support for 3rd edition devices is expected soon.