Crenk

How to Update iPod Touch to Firmware 2.0 for Free

Steven Finch — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:43:27 +0000

Apple has pushed the new iPod Touch Firmware 2.0 to iTunes. All iPod Touch users can upgrade to this latest firmware by paying a one-time fee of $9.25.

iPhone users, however, get to upgrade to firmware 2.0 absolutely free of cost. As I find this kind of unfair on part of Apple to charge only iPod Touch users, so I am going to help you upgrade iPod Touch to firmware 2.0 absolutely for free.

If you want to have an updated iPod Touch 2.0 for free, then just follow the steps below:

Download iTunes 7.7 from Here.
Hold Shift and click Restore.
Select iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw
Enjoy!

The iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw firmware can be downloaded from any of the mirrors below. It is the complete stable and final iPod Touch Firmware 2.0 (5A347) and has been checked and tested.

Rapidshare mirror (Join parts using this software)

http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part1 http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part2 http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part3

Uploaded.to mirror

http://uploaded.to/file/ih0z65/iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw

Freakshare mirror

http://freakshare.net/files/30208/iPod11_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw

Once you download the firmware locally on your PC, follow the steps above to update iPod Touch to Firmware 2.0.

Insomnia Network:

RouteNote is the new Licensing and Distribution Company that will change the lives of indepedent artists.

South West Sailing is a new Sailing weblog written by some of the UK most well known journalists.

Adphilia, The Individual Advertising Network.

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Review: Strands to Connect and Recommend

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Just recently I’ve been able to play with the new relaunch of Strands. The social networking site falls in line with popular sites like FriendFeed and PlaxoPulse, and looks to aggregate your social networking habits all in one place, but extend to even recommending things you might like.

Some will say that the multitude of social network platforms are watering down the market, and while that may be so, there are always small distinctions that separate them from one another. I for one thoroughly enjoy my Strands account specifically because of recommendations. Now even though I am new and still meeting people on there, I enjoy going through profiles and looking through recommendations.

Strands single handedly battles the information overload and filters your “feeds” from different social network sites. You set up your profile the way you want Strands to respond. What I find especially interesting is that Strands does not just support the major players in the game, but also reaches out and taps into lesser known social networks such as Hype Machine and Meneame (Spanish Digg clone). This really creates a sense of inclusiveness as opposed to exclusiveness.

Strands “evangelist” Drew Olanoff on Twitter is a great person to follow on Twitter for day to day happenings with Strands. Sure he incorporates details of his personal life, but he works to build strong relationships with the communities he’s a part of and welcomes feedback on Strands.

If you’re looking for a method of “life streaming” that is functional and easy to use, definitely check out Strands. I don’t see it knocking off the heavy hitters like FriendFeed just yet, but I do see some major success for this social networking site.

Currently the site is still under private beta, but you can sign up at their site to receive an invite, or if you’re really nice to a certain someone on Twitter, perhaps…just maybe an invite might float your way!

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WebHostingRating.com: The Newest Place TO Head to Find Out The Right Hosting Package For Your Needs

Steven Finch — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:59:48 +0000

WebHostingRating.com is a new host rating site where they are trying to build the biggest searchable web hosting directory featuring complete information on all web hosting providers, all their web hosting plans, promotional and discount coupons, and unedited reviews by real customers.

From what I can tell this service is built on a Wordpress platform which incorporates a review feature, allowing users to find the right provider and package to suite their needs.

Webhostingrating.com also have other sections on the site, such as a directory, web hosting awards and web hosting tutorials. The articles section is basically their blog in which they discuss everything web hosting. The site itself is brilliantly design and I can see this type of directory really taking off.

Since the site is relatively new, they have only review 4 key web hosting companies at present, but make sure you keep and eye out for more coming in the future. The hosting companies they have reviewed are all Unix hosting, but they have other categories that I’m sure will develop over time, such as Windows hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, collection hosting and managed hosting.

While offering some good reviews on trusted hosting companies, they are also writing their own corporate blog, which discusses everything from the world of web hosting. Currently, they seem to have approximately 100 articles in a variety of categories. These categories range from domain hosting to ecommerce to scripting. All the articles seem to be of good length and are very helpful. It would also have been nice to see them add a few pictures in the posts to mix up just the plain text. Normally, a site with the quality of articles they have would grow in the blogosphere, but add in the reviews section and you have a great site in the makings.

Anyways, make sure you head over to Webhostingrating.com and I’m sure they can help you find the right hosting package to meet your needs.

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On Stage Free Vector PSD Icon Set. Direct from Smashing Magazine

Steven Finch — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:58:13 +0000

Smashing Magazine has just released On Stage icon set. The set contains 49 free vector icons including PSD which can be useful for both corporate and personal setting. You can use the set for free without any restrictions whatsoever.

The icons are available in the .png-format in the resolution 128×128px. 100% pure shape-based layered PSDs are also included in the package.

Download: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/27/on-stage-a-free-icon-set/

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Top 5 Bit Torrent Trackers on the Net

Steven Finch — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:07:31 +0000

Bit Torrent search engines have been in the news a lot lately. There have been always issues with sites like the Pirate Bay who find it really hard to get out of the news, and with a blog called TorrentFreak you are now able to track all this new instantly. Below are the top 5 bit torrent trackers if you are looking to get your hands on all the free music, games or movies you can get.

Isohunt.com - If you want to use this tremendous Canadian site, you better use it while you can. Note: any torrent listed as “ISOhunt release” means that it is a file verified by the administrators…a nice feature to help you get authentic torrents, not fake files.)
The Pirate Bay - by readership size, is the most popular torrent search site today. Pirate Bay also has an immense database of 600,000+ torrents, the single largest database available on the web.
Torrentspy.com - March 24, 2008: Torrentspy has voluntarily closed its doors. Instead of conforming to the American court mandates to change their privacy policies, the Torrentspy team has opted instead to cease operations. A sad day for downloaders everywhere.
Torrentscan.com - (a meta-search engine: Torrenscan is a search engine that searches other torrent search engines)
Bitsoup - Bitsoup is a growing favorite amongst P2P downloaders. As the trend towards private torrent sharing continues, you will need to signup and join as a member to participate in the Bitsoup swarm.

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How Much Could You Steal In a Bank Robbery?

Steven Finch — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:23:59 +0000

I came across quite and interesting site survey this morning. The survey is based on a highly un-scientific study into your criminal mind. In the end the survey estimates how much you will be able to carry in a bank robbery. This is a pretty cool way to spend a couple minutes or so. Make sure you head to Bank Robbery Talent.

$3,696,390
Quiz brought to you by money.co.uk

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Performancing Ads - Why It Doesnt Work!

Steven Finch — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:40:59 +0000

A lot of people have been talking recently about Performancing Ads, John Chow, Problogger and Shoemoney to name a few. I totally understand the system they are trying to put in place, but is it actually going to work? For a long time people have been saying that Advertising marketplaces are the way forward, but I dont think that the type of marketplace that Performancing ads has will ever work.

Performancing ads simply will add a banner onto your site so that you can self-serve advertising, a full automated system. While at the same time they gather information about your traffic and user demographics. This is meant to automate the system so the publisher doesn’t have to worry about negotiating individual contracts or the advertiser doesn’t have to worry about having a 5 email exchange before they can purchase.

Advertisers will only purchase advertising in this way on sites that are already major players in their niches, solid brands or emerging sites. Thus, it has a very limited return for publishers. A great deal of smaller sites have joined Performancing Ads in the hope that they will sell more advertising.

Selling advertising in this method for small sites simply doesn’t work, because they don’t have the traffic or brand to actually sell. Smaller sites really need to band together in a particular niche and use the safety in numbers method, cause then they will have a much better chance of getting more top quality advertisers with their broader reach.

This method of self service is great for only a very limited few sites. Therefore, I’m sure that Performancing Ads will only be a fad and they will die off soon enough. The only way this platform can work successfully, is if they have a huge amount of publishers, then a marketplace which makes it very simple to purchase across 10 sites for example, while at the same time they increase their sales team.

Currently, Performancing Ads is a company that medium or small bloggers shouldn’t be taking seriously!

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Looking For Some Crenk Feedback

Steven Finch — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:37:29 +0000

It has been a long time since I tried to get some direct feedback from our readers, so I thought I would send a shout out and see if anyone had any suggestions on what we should be doing here at Crenk.

Recently, we have been focusing on provide reviews, analysis, more information about specific web apps and more. Im looking for suggestions about how we can improve Crenk so that it can be a much better read!

Additionally, if anyone has any ideas about what services we could also add to Crenk, it would be great to hear your thoughts.

Example Ideas:

Should focus more on just providing product reviews
Should report more on Technology news
More articles on analysis
Add an invite system which allows readers to get sneak peaks at the newest apps or products on the web
Add a Forum
Provide more freebies, such as icon sets, wordpress theme, wallpapers and more…

So if you have any ideas at all, it would be great to hear your feedback.

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Comparison Sites Like Broadband Expert, Are They Profitable?

Guest — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:08:03 +0000

This morning I came across a very interesting new comparison website, Broadband Expert. The first thing I came across was the Broadband USB devices (mobile internet devices), which are affectionately know as dongles here in the UK. The site allows you to compare speed, download limits, monthly contracts, prices and even reviews from other users.

However, one of the downsides is that it only compares 3 of the UK mobile companies, 3, T-Mobile and Vodafone. It would have been nice to see all of the network sites in this list. Additionally, I would really like to see this done on a global scale and not just for the UK market.

This has always made me wonder, do these comparison type websites actually make decent money? Do they receive the majority of their revenues from direct display advertising on the site or is it mostly from affiliate earnings ever time some purchases a contract? I never actually thought they would work, but I do keep seeing tv advertisements for comparison websites like Confused.com. For example Confused.com keep quoting that they have 5 million people use their site for quotes last year, but this seems like a tiny amount. How can they be profitable from that amount of traffic? What are there revenue streams?

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Review: Feedheads thru Facebook

Luis Sandoval — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:52:54 +0000

Just two days ago, www.feedheads.org was brought to my attention. There are plenty of RSS Reader sites out there, but Feedheads offers a different experience by not reinventing the wheel, but rather attaching itself to an already popular social site, Facebook.

At first glance Feedheads is nothing fancy. It almost reminded me of a Craigslist-like site which little to know aesthetics and a focus on information. Personally I don’t care what a site looks like as long as it’s informative and easy to find what I need, the bells and whistles are just icing. So don’t turn away from Feedheads until you’ve given it a try.

To log into the service you need a Facebook account, and you must allow Facebook to provide access to the site, but once you’ve gotten through the set-up you’re logged right into full access for Feedheads.

I admit at first glance I saw no need to really delve into it since there was no social aspect, but attaching to Facebook makes it very different from other RSS sites. From within the site you can introduce your contacts to stories, have them vote on their favorites and even have them join your networks. You’re given the opportunity to view the stories by three categories, “New”, “Top in 24 Hrs.”, and “7 Days”. A separate link will provide you with the days most popular tags, which is useful for a quick at-a-glance of the days topics.

If you’re a heavy Facebook user and you’re looking for new ways to make that your one stop shop for friends, news, and other information, give Feedheads a try. If you’re stuck on looks then perhaps looking elsewhere would be prudent, Feedheads is definitely for the purist.

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What Are The Best Plugins for Wordpress? Here At My Top 20

Steven Finch — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:41:27 +0000

Wordpress has to be one of the most popular if not the most popular blogging software in the world today. Due to its popularity there are thousands of developers all over the world who are building plugins to add to the platform. Thus, I thought I would put together a short list of my favourite plugins, so here is my top 20.

Akismet
The must have spam catcher. It’s already present in your default wordpress installation, if you haven’t activated it, please do it before those spams accumulate.
All in one SEO pack
(Inactive)This is an great plugin that will help you manage the meta tags for articles enabling them with unique meta and titles.I use an even better plugin now (Headspace2), which is AllinSEO x 10 times. So this one is inactive. You may want to use it if you are looking for a hassle free and easy meta tag management.
Feed copyrighter plugin
This one is reposible for throwing up those copyright statement at the end of the feeds in RSS readers. It is one way of fighting the scrappers, not sure how effective it is, but it is indeed one weapon we hve right now.Bad thing - The credit link will appear on all RSS footers.
Better comments manager
This is one of the best plugins I’ve always cherished using. It enables easy management of comments, lets you reply to them easily, mass edit/approve them. And yes, this is from Keith and team. His plugins have exceptional quality after all.
Comment Luv
This plugin is responsible for placing the link to your latest posts on comments. Nice plugin, it crawls your site (from the info you submit while commenting), and get’s the latest URL, parse it as HTML beneath your name.Bad thing - To tweak the text that appears with it, there are no options menu, and you have to edit the code. Not too many are comfortable doing it.
Duplicate sidebar widgets
This plugin helps you to duplicate the widgets modules to drag and drop on the sidebar. Ex: If you want two instances of the random posts widget, this one replicates it.
Enhanced Contact form
This plugin is responsible for all those contact forms appearing in the pages.
Feed footer
Adds anything in HTML to feeds appearing in RSS reader. 10 spots available, suitable for advertising and throwing up messages.
Google AdWrap
You know about Googles section targeting right?This plugin adds the “sections” to be targeted to comments and content area thereby the ads that appear on Google AdSense will be heavily contextual to the information in these sections.Bad thing - You can’t manually add te google_ad_section code to any other place on the blog.
Google XML sitemaps
Must have for all blogs. Generates an XML sitemap making the contents visible for search spiders.Bad thing - If you enable the robots.txt rewriting, everything you set manually on robots.txt is rewritten.
HeadSpace2
The best meta tag management plugin I’ve seen in the recent times. No words to describe - killer plugin!Bad thing - Initially, difficult to understand how it functions and yo use.
Homepage Excerpts
Adds a “more” link cutting posts on the main homepage within certain limit of characters. Good for curbing duplicate content on wordpress.
I love social bookmarking
(Inactive)Great plugin that displays a pull down menu for social bookmarking on all the top social media websites.Bad thing - Serious alignment issues.
KB Linker
Great plugin to increase the number of links within your site. It enables you to select a keyword for which you can set a link. Where ever this keyword appears, it would make it a link.Bad thing - It injects the link code even to links and in between html codes ! And you get html errors sometimes.
Random posts widget
Throws up a set of random posts on the sidebar. Good options available.
Search Meter
Gives me access from the dashboard to search phrases on DailySEOblog search box. And also shows if the person who searched the phrase got the info he wanted or not. Good plugin to get an idea of topics to blog.
SEO for Wordpress
A little outdated plugin, it says is reduces instances of duplicate content. But it doesn’t show us how and where. Otherwise a good concept.
Shylock AdSense
The killer plugin that allows you to inject adsense codes anywhere on the post, and decide which ads to go where.
Ultimate Google Analytics
Great plugin that will manage Google Analytics code injection and tracking a breeze. You could very well do it manually, but this one is a laymans friend.
WP- Stats
Displays the wordpress blog stats from the dashboard. A better stats if you wat uptodate results. Analytics is a day and some hours late.

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Yahoo Site Explorer Gets a Makeover

Steven Finch — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:00:06 +0000

It has been reported that Yahoo has been playing around with the look and feel of their Site Explorer. Most of the time Yahoo Site Explorer is only used by webmasters because it shows backlinks to any URL and also shows them in authority order (unlike google).

Today, we launched a new look and feel for Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new) that provides a more dynamic interface to accommodate future feature roll-outs. The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we’re also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10.

I really wish Yahoo Site Explorer had a lot more features, kinda similar to Google Webmaster Tools. However, any really new and exciting features still havent arrived on Site Explorer. Do you have any suggestions on what they might want to add?

Insomnia Network:

RouteNote is the new Licensing and Distribution Company that will change the lives of indepedent artists.

South West Sailing is a new Sailing weblog written by some of the UK most well known journalists.

Adphilia, The Individual Advertising Network.

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Crenk

How to Update iPod Touch to Firmware 2.0 for Free

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Review: Strands to Connect and Recommend

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On Stage Free Vector PSD Icon Set. Direct from Smashing Magazine

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Top 5 Bit Torrent Trackers on the Net

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How Much Could You Steal In a Bank Robbery?

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Performancing Ads - Why It Doesnt Work!

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