Do you want to download a flash video? Are you having trouble finding a good program or plugin to rip flash videos? Do you want to know how to download flash video from any website? You’ve come to the right place.

There are lots of programs and browser plugins that help you to download flash videos from websites. The problem is that they all seem to only allow you to do it from select sites. I found a relatively simple way to do it with Firefox and Firebug.

Firebug is a great Firefox plugin for website development and debugging. I don’t know how I would ever get along without it. Don’t bother looking for the “flash video download” feature in Firebug, because it does not exist. You’ll have to do a little bit of manual work to do it, but using Firebug to download flash video from any website is relatively easy.

If you don’t have Firefox, download it. Then download Firebug. Next, open up Firefox and browse to the page with the flash video you want to download. Click on the little Firebug icon in the browser status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window.

Click on the Net tab in Firebug and then select Enabled.

If the video fully loaded into the page when you last opened it, it is likely the entire movie is in your browser’s cache.  That means that when we monitor the net connection, we won’t see it load the video.  You will need to go and clear you’re browser’s cache.  If you’re using Firefox 3.5 on Windows, click Tools > Clear Recent History.  Click the Details button and make sure the Cache checkbox is selected.  Then press Clear Now.

Now you’re ready to find the location of the flash file.  Click the refresh button in Firefox and allow the page to reload.  The Firebug Net panel will display all of the HTTP requests being made along with statistics for each request as the page loads.  There are a few things you can look for to identify the video file:

• .FLV file extension on the file being loaded
• Very large file size
• Very long gray bar on the load time

Here is an example of what the Net panel looks like for a video page on The Onion:

Once you’ve identified which one of the requests is for the video file, right-click on it and then left click on Open in New Tab.

There’s another nifty trick you can you can use if the video has not fully loaded in the player. First, click the clear button in the Firebug panel to remove all the requests. Then click on the player video navigation bar (if there is one) to fast forward to somewhere else within the video.

This will generate a new request for the video file, which in turn adds just a single line for the video file in the Firebug panel. This makes it very easy to find the video file. You’ll then want to click back at the start of the video file, to make sure you get the link to download the entire file. Select the last file request, otherwise, you will end up downloading it from the point to which you fast forwarded.

I’ve noticed that sometimes when video pages load, the video file does not appear on the list of requests until the entire request is complete. If you cannot find the video file in the list of requests, wait until the entire video is loaded into the buffer. It should appear in the list of requests once it has.

When the new tab opens, Firefox will ask you what to do with it. Just save the file somewhere where you will remember you put it.  That’s all there is to downloading flash video with Firefox and Firebug!

Of course this begs the question, “What do I do with the movie now that I’ve downloaded it?” Well, if you want to watch it, you’ll need a player that can read it. I suggest you download the VLC player. VLC is a great open-source multi-platform video player (available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).

I really like it because it includes all the codecs you will probably ever need for playing videos, so there’s no having to constantly add codecs to it all the time. You can even use it to convert videos for your iPod, although I tried this some time ago with limited success (it may work better with the latest version).

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Given that I recently had some success with my free eBay Store, I decided it would be a good idea to put together a similar WordPress plugin for Amazon.com. I’m pleased to present the Amazon Niche Store plugin. So why should you consider building a niche store with Amazon instead of eBay?

I believe that my Amazon Niche Store plugin has the potential to make more money than my free eBay Store (or BANS, phpbay, and the like) for a few reasons:

• If you sell eBay products, those that bid through your blog need to have the winning bid for you to get paid.  With the Amazon Niche Store, you are awarded the commissions as soon as they buy the product.  You don’t have to worry about them winning a bid for you to get paid.
• If the items you sell are more than $75 or so in value, you will receive higher commissions selling them on Amazon than you would on eBay.  Amazon pays a flat minimum of 4% on the sale price, whereas eBay pays on a minimum of 50% on the fees collected for the listing.
  

  Example
  	Sale Price	Commissions
  eBay	$150	50% of $8.57 ($2.00 listing fee + $6.57 sale fee)	=	$4.28
  Amazon	$150	4% of $150 sale price	=	$6.00

• You can sell digital products on Amazon (downloadable music, video games, videos, books, etc.) and receive 10% commission on those sales.

You can display an Amazon Niche Store within posts, pages, as a widget, or any combination of the three.  For example, if you have a video game blog, you may want to display a post or page with Wii products.  You could use the following short code:

[amazon trackingid="yourtrackingid" keywords="wii" rows="3" columns="2"]

And here is what the store would look like:

Wii by Nintendo $249.99 › View Details	Wii Fit by Nintendo $89.99 $87.99 › View Details
Wii Remote Controller by Nintendo $39.99 $35.96 › View Details	Wii Nunchuk Controller by Nintendo $19.99 $17.96 › View Details
Wii Play with Wii Remote by Nintendo $49.99 $44.96 › View Details	EA Sports Active by Electronic Arts $59.99 $56.99 › View Details

Powered By the Amazon Niche Store and Tarzan
Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

There are two conditions you should be aware of when using the plugin:

• The store displays a link back to this page.  This helps to spread the word about this great plugin so that others can take advantage of it.
• Your tracking ID is used 90% of the time, and the other 10% my tracking ID is used.  This will allow me to be compensated for my efforts, and help me spend more time making even more great plugins.

These conditions are subject to change at any time. By downloading, installing, and activating the plugin you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to these conditions then do not use this plugin.

To get started, you will first need to sign up as an Amazon affiliate (this absolutely free).  Once you’ve signed up or if you’re already signed up, create a new tracking ID to use with your Amazon Niche Store.  Then download, install, and activate the plugin.

Download the Plugin

Once installed and activated, write up a post or page where you wish to display an Amazon Niche Store.  Use the following shortcode (put it all on one line):

[amazon trackingid="YourTrackingID" keywords="Product Keywords" rows="RowCount" columns="ColumnCount" pagination="yes" logo="white" customcss="someuniqueidentifier"]

trackingid and keywords are required parameters. Use spaces between the keywords. columns and rows are optional, and the store plugin will default to 2 columns x 5 rows (10 items in total). The product display on a single page is limited to 30 products (and 50 products in total, if pagination is used).

The pagination, logo, and customcss parameters are also optional. The pagination parameter will allow the display of multiple pages of products when set to yes. You can see this demonstrated on my Amazon Niche Store demo page. You can set the logo parameter to white, black, or none to customize the display of the Amazon logo.

The customcss parameter allows you to customize the look and feel of your store.  By default, the product display mimics that of Amazon.com.  The product display uses custom css classes, and the customcss parameter you specify will be added to the custom class names.  For example, if you set customcss=”mycustomcss”, you can specify the CSS for the following classes:

• amazon-store-mycustomcss : This is the style for div that encloses the entire store
• amazon-store-mycustomcss-title : This is the style for the title
• amazon-store-mycustomcss-manufacturer : This is the style for the manufacturer
• amazon-store-mycustomcss-price : This is the style for the price
• amazon-store-mycustomcss-view-details : This is the style for the view details link
• amazon-store-mycustomcss-footer : This is the style for the footer displayed at the bottom of the store

The display of a store as a widget makes use of this feature, and the customcss parameter is set to sidebar.  So you will need to specify the CSS for amazon-store-sidebar, amazon-store-sidebar-title, amazon-store-sidebar-manufacturer, amazon-store-sidebar-price, amazon-store-sidebar-view-details, and amazon-store-sidebar-footer to customize the look and feel of the widget. The default css customizations for the widget are very similar to those for a regular store, but they have been tweaked a bit so that they will probably look a bit better for sidebar displays.

You can also set customcss=”none”.  This will prevent the customized CSS from being displayed inline on the web page.  If you’re displaying multiple stores on the same page, I would recommend you set customcss=”none” on all but one of the stores, to prevent repetitive CSS declarations.

If you set customcss=”none” you can specify the css for amazon-store, amazon-store-title, amazon-store-manufacturer, amazon-store-price, amazon-store-view-details, amazon-store-footer yourself.  You can also not specify them at all, in which case the store will take on the style of your blog.

Much of the plugin code for this plugin is based on the code I used for my Free eBay Store. The server-side code was a bit different since Amazon has their own API for retrieving product information. However, I did manage to find a great PHP library for Amazon called Tarzan.

Tarzan definitely helped to reduce the amount of time it took to develop the plugin. My favorite feature of Tarzan is the ability to make parallel requests to Amazon. If you are interested in developing your own Amazon applications in PHP, I highly recommend taking a look at the Tarzan library.

Good luck with your own Amazon Niche Store and happy affiliating! If you have any suggestions for the plugin or encounter any bugs, please feel free to comment on this post.

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I recently learned about Market Leverage from a friend, who has done reasonably well with their affiliate program. I decided to join, and upon joining decided to put together a WordPress plugin to help manage and rotate campaign banners. And thus the Affiliate Manager plugin was born.

Market Leverage offers many different products, for which you can display advertisements on your blog. When people click on the links and order the products, you receive a commission. These transactions are referred to as CPA (Cost per Action). If the products are relevant to the information on your blog, such programs can be even more profitable than CPC (Cost per Click) advertising, such as AdWords.

To install the Affiliate Manager plugin:

• Join Market Leverage if you are not already a member.
• Download the Affiliate Manager Plugin, install, and activate it.
• Go to the Affiliate Manager options page under Tools, in the WordPress adminstration.
• Enter your Market Leverage email and password.



• Add new keywords to import ads that are relevant to your blog.



• You can either display ads by placing PHP code within your template, using widgets, or both.

There are three functions you can use for displaying ads in your template.

affiliate_manager_random_banner(size)

This function will display a banner for any keyword of the appropriate size. Just replace size with the size you wish to display in quotes. Example:
<?php affiliate_manager_random_banner("120x600"); ?>

affiliate_manager_by_keyword(keyword, size)

This function will display a banner for a specified keyword of the appropriate size. Replace keyword with the keyword for the banner, and replace size with the size you wish to display. Both parameters should be in quotes. Example:
<?php affiliate_manager_by_keyword("mortgage", "120x600"); ?>

affiliate_manager_displayAd(id)

This function will display a specific banner, according to the ad ID. Replace id with the id of the banner. This parameter should not be in quotes. Example:
<?php affiliate_manager_displayAd(15); ?>

To display banners within widgets:

1. Go to Appearance > Widgets in WordPress.
2. Select the section where you want the widget to appear and click Show.
3. Click the Add button next to the Affiliate Manager Widget widget.
4. Select the keyword for the banners displayed in the widget.
5. Select the size of the banners to be displayed in the widget.
6. Click Done in the widget options.
7. Click Save Changes to add the widget to your pages.

I used a somewhat generic name for the plugin with the intention of eventually adding other affiliates. I’ve also done my best to write the code so that I can later incorporate others. If you have any affiliates you would like me to add, just suggest them in a comment here. Please also free to make any suggestions that you think may help to make the Affiliate Manager plugin even better.

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• Free eBay Store Demo (0)

I’ve been fooling around with the WordPress Plugin API, and I decided to take a stab at putting together a free eBay Store plugin. An eBay store is a great way to make some extra income with your blog or website, and you don’t even have to directly sell anything. You will make commissions on any eBay fees you generate.

For instance, let’s say you have a photography blog and you are writing a review for the Canon Rebel XSi. You can use my free eBay store WordPress plugin to display relevant products right in the post! Here is the code you would place into your post (put it all on one line):

[ebay campaignid="5336304844" keywords="canon rebel xsi" rows="3" columns="1"]

And here is what your store would look like:

NEW Canon Digital Rebel XSi SLR Camera 18-55mm Lens Kit Current Price: $510.00 End Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes Free Shipping!

CANON REBEL XSi EOS 450D CAMERA+ LENS +8GB~6 BONUS HOT! Current Price: $513.00 End Time: 1 hour, 36 minutes Free Shipping!

CAMERA BATTERY CHARGER FOR CANON EOS REBEL T1i XSi XS $8.98 Current Price: No bids yet. Bid now! End Time: 55 minutes Free Shipping!

Powered By the Free eBay Store

If you have many posts on your blog that discuss many products, you may wish to set up entire pages dedicated to relevant products. You can even place multiple stores on the same page for different keywords.

I’ve seen some products out there similar to my plugin (such as BANS), but they are not free. If they are free, then they want you to sign up for mailing lists and bombard you with solicitations via email. Why am I willing to give this away for free, when there are others charging for similar eBay stores?

Well, for one thing, people love free. It makes it easy to try something out when there is little or no risk involved. I’m confident that because my plugin is free, I’ll have many more takers than I would if I were to charge for it. I want my free eBay store plugin to become the plugin everyone uses for their blog’s eBay store. Making it free is essential for that to happen.

So what’s the catch? Two simple things I think you can probably live with:

• As you may have already noticed, the store displays a link back to this page. This will help to spread the word about this great plugin so that many others can also take advantage of it.
• Your campaign ID will used 90% of the time, and 10% of the time it will be my campaign ID. This will allow me to be compensated for my efforts, and help me spend more time making even more great plugins.

So how do you get started? First you need to sign up as an eBay affiliate for free. Once you’re signed up or if you’re already signed up, create a new campaign to use with your free eBay store. Then download, install, and activate the WordPress plugin.

Download the Plugin

Once you’ve activated the plugin, write up a post or page where you wish to display an eBay store. Then, enter the proper code to display a store (put it all on one line):

[ebay campaignid="YOUR-CAMPAIGN-ID" keywords="YOUR-STORE-KEYWORDS" rows="NUMBER-OF-ROWS-YOU-WANT-TO-DISPLAY" columns="NUMBER-OF-COLUMNS-YOU-WANT-TO-DISPLAY" pagination="yes" vertical="yes"]

campaignid and keywords are required parameters. Use spaces between the keywords, and if you want to exclude a word, prefix it with a minus (-). columns and rows are optional, and the store plugin will default to 2 columns x 5 rows (10 items in total). The maximum total product display is limited to 25 products.

The pagination and vertical parameters are also optional. The pagination parameter will allow the display of multiple pages of products when set to yes. You can see this demonstrated on my free eBay Store demo page. Setting the vertical parameter to yes will display the item info below the image, rather than to the right of it.

The plugin also comes with a widget, if you would like to display ebay Products within a widget. This would allow you to display advertisements for eBay items on every page on your blog. To use it, just log into your WordPress blog, go to Appearance > Widgets and add the Free eBay Store widget. The sidebar widget uses the vertical parameter to display the item information below the image.

Don’t forget to supply your eBay campaign ID and the keywords you want for the products displayed in your widget. If you want, you can display different types of products at random. To do this, use multiple sets of keywords and separate them with a pipe character (|). For example, to display teddy bears and inflatable pools, you enter teddy bear|inflatable pool as the keywords. The widget will select the pipe-separated keywords at random.

If you don’t have a blog, but you have access to a scripting language (such as PHP) on your host provider, feel free to use the following URL to access the store as a pseudo-service:

http://geeklad.com/tools/ebay.php?campaignid=YOUR-CAMPAIGN-ID&rows=NUMBER-OF-ROWS-YOU-WANT-TO-DISPLAY&columns=NUMBER-OF-COLUMNS-YOU-WANT-TO-DISPLAY&keyword=YOUR-STORE-KEYWORDS&pagination=yes

And of course, you need to replace the campaignid, rows, columns, and keyword parameters accordingly. The output is just regular HTML. For instance, to display a 3 x 4 store for products to make money online in PHP, you would use the following line of PHP code:

echo file_get_contents("http://geeklad.com/tools/ebay.php?campaignid=YOUR-CAMPAIGN-ID&rows=4&columns=3&pagination=yes&keyword=make+money+online"); And your store will be displayed right on the line within the webpage where you supply the code. If you want to reformat the display of the store on either your blog or a webpage, just enclose the store within a <div> HTML tag, and set the formatting for that div however you like.

Let me know if you encounter any bugs, have any questions, or have any suggestions on how I might be able to improve the free eBay Store. Enjoy!

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I recently switched my GrandCentral account over to Google Voice. I fooled around with Google Voice quite a bit and was quite impressed by the many features. It took quite a bit of work, but I finally figured out how to set up Asterisk along with Gizmo to use Google Voice to make free telephone calls to anywhere in the USA.

Last month, Nerdvittles wrote up a great tutorial on setting up Asterisk to make calls with Google Voice. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter Google Voice blocked inbound SIP calls except those coming from Gizmo. However, it is still possible to set up Asterisk to dial Google Voice if you set up Gizmo to forward calls to Google Voice.

Forwarding Gizmo Calls to Google Voice

First of all, you will need to create two Gizmo accounts. One will be used to make outbound calls from Asterisk (I will refer to this one as the primary Gizmo account), and the other one will be used to forward calls from Gizmo to Google Voice (I will refer to this one as the forwarding Gizmo account). You do not need to purchase Gizmo outbound minutes to do this since SIP forwarding on Gizmo is free.

When you log into the Gizmo forwarding account, click the Forwarding All Calls radio button. Next, click the SIP radio button. For the sip number, put your Google Voice number @216.239.37.15:5061. Let’s say your Google Voice number is (555) 555-5555. For the SIP forwarding number, you would put 5555555555@216.239.37.15:5061. After you’ve set up the SIP forward, click the Save button.

Don’t forget to enable the forwarding Gizmo account within Google Voice as well. To do this, log into Google Voice, go to Settings, Phones, and click the checkbox for the Gizmo Forwarding account.

If you want a simple, but not so elegant solution for making free telephone calls with Gizmo and Google Voice, this is as far as you really need to go. Just log into your primary Gizmo account and dial the Gizmo number for the forwarding Gizmo account. This will result in a call to your Google Voice account.

When your Google Voice outgoing voicemail message begins to play, press * to access your voicemail and then enter your PIN number. Then press 2 to dial any USA number, followed by the # sign.

Before you read on, let me say that the rest of this tutorial is somewhat advanced and is for geeks only. If you’ve never used Linux before, the rest of this tutorial is not for you. However, you should still be able to use Gizmo to make free calls through Google Voice as I’ve explained so far.

I would say at a minimum, you need some experience with Linux and a basic understanding of IP networking. It also helps if you have used SIP before and have some familiarity with VOIP. If not, you may want do some research on voip-info.org.

If you are experienced with Linux then you are probably geeky enough to set up a new Asterisk system. If you’ve used Asterisk before, then this tutorial is definitely for you.

Download and Install Asterisk and FreePBX

If you already have Asterisk and FreePBX, you can skip this section.

Asterisk is a free and open source software implementation of a PBX phone system. FreePBX provides a simple web-based interface for managing an Asterisk system. If you don’t have a Linux box handy to install Asterisk and FreePBX, here is what I would recommend you do:

• Download VirtualBox
• Install VirtualBox and create a new machine to use as an Asterisk system
  • Set up the new box as a RedHat Linux system
  • Be sure the virtual hard drive is at least 4GB
  • Set up networking to use the host interface
• Download AsteriskNOWAsteriskNOW is a small CentOS Linux distribution that includes a ready-to-go Asterisk system. This really simplifies the process of setting up Asterisk since it is all-inclusive of the operating system and everything.
• Install AsteriskNOW on the virtual machine
• Set up AsteriskNOW NetworkingWhen you first boot up AsteriskNOW, it will be set up to automatically receive an IP address via DHCP. You may want to manually configure networking to use a static IP address. Be sure to take note of the static IP address you use, as you will need to bring up the FreePBX web interface to configure your new Asterisk system.If you set up a static IP, be sure to provide the DNS server as well. When you run the setup tool, the DNS configuration is not in the same section as the machine IP, netmask, and gateway information.

If you do already have a Linux system where you would like Asterisk to reside, download Asterisk and FreePBX and install them.

Configure Asterisk for Gizmo and Google Voice

It took me quite a bit of tinkering to get Asterisk set up just right using FreePBX. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot of documentation out there for using FreePBX to set up custom extensions. A custom extension is necessary to perform a more advanced dial plan that will send the DTMF tones necessary to instruct Google Voice to dial a phone number.

For the rest of the tutorial, I will assume you are using AsteriskNOW. These instructions would be very much the same for TrixBox, which is another Linux distribution that also uses FreePBX as the management interface. If you already have an Asterisk PBX, you’re probably pretty smart and can figure things out if the details are not quite the same.

Let’s say the IP address of your AsteriskNOW system is 192.168.1.100. Open up your web browser and go to http://192.168.1.100. Click on the link that says FreePBX Administration. The default username/password is admin/admin.

Set Up a Gizmo Trunk for the Primary Gizmo Account

First, we need to set up a SIP trunk for the primary Gizmo account. Let’s say the SIP number for your primary Gizmo account is 17475550001. To create the new trunk, click the Trunks link and then the Add SIP Trunk link. Use the following settings for the new SIP trunk:

• Dial Rules

  1+747NXXXXXX
  1+800NXXXXXX
  1+866NXXXXXX
  1+888NXXXXXX
  1747NXXXXXX
  1800NXXXXXX
  1866NXXXXXX
  1888NXXXXXX

• Trunk Name: gizmo
• PEER Details

  type=peer
  disallow=all
  allow=ulaw&ilbc
  dtmfmode=rfc2833
  host=proxy01.sipphone.com
  fromdomain=proxy01.sipphone.com
  insecure=very
  qualify=yes
  fromuser=17475550001
  authuser=17475550001
  username=17475550001
  secret=password_for_gizmo_forwarding_account
  canreinvite=no

• USER Context: 17475550001
• USER Details

  type=user
  disallow=all
  allow=ulaw&ilbc&gsm
  dtmfmode=rfc2833
  host=proxy01.sipphone.com
  insecure=very
  username=17475550001
  secret=password_for_gizmo_forwarding_account
  canreinvite=no
  context=from-trunk-sip-gizmo

• Register String: 17475550001:password_for_gizmo_forwarding_account@proxy01.sipphone.com

Be sure to replace 17475550001 with your primary Gizmo account number and replace password_for_gizmo_forwarding_account with the password for that account. Click Submit Changes.

Set Up an Outbound Route for Gizmo Calls

I deleted the default route to dial 9 for an outbound line. You may wish to do the same, if you want consistency in the tutorial with the route name for the Gizmo outbound route. To delete this route click on 0 9_outside and then click the link that says Delete Route 9_outside.

To set up the new route, click on Outbound Routes and then Add Route. Use the following settings for the new route:

• Route Name: gizmo-out
• Dial Patterns

  1+747NXXXXXX
  1+800NXXXXXX
  1+866NXXXXXX
  1+888NXXXXXX
  1747NXXXXXX
  1800NXXXXXX
  1866NXXXXXX
  1888NXXXXXX

• Trunk Sequence: SIP/gizmo

Click Submit Changes. At this point, Asterisk is configured to use Gizmo to make outbound calls to other Gizmo numbers, as well as to toll-free numbers. Next we have to set it up to dial regular telephone numbers through Google Voice.

Set Up the Custom Extension to Dial Google Voice for PSTN Calls

This is where the real magic happens, and it is heavily based on the Nerdvittles article on using Google Voice with Asterisk. Here your are setting up Asterisk to dial your Gizmo forwarding account. Let’s say your Gizmo forwarding number is 17475550002. To set up the custom extension, log into your Asterisk Linux box as root from the console. Edit /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf and add the following lines:

[pstn-via-gv]
exten => 411,1,Dial(local/18004664411@outrt-001-gizmo-out)
exten => 411,n,Hangup

exten => _X.,1,Dial(local/17475550002@outrt-001-gizmo-out,30,rD(wwwwwwwwwwwwww*ww1234ww2${EXTEN}#))
exten => _X.,n,Hangup

Be sure to replace 17475550002 with your Gizmo forwarding account number, and also replace 1234 with your Google Voice voicemail 4-digit PIN number.

If you deleted the default AsteriskNOW route to dial 9 for an outside line, the lines you add should be the same as what I have here. Otherwise, you will have to change the 001 in the outbound route to the proper number, according to what number FreePBX assigned to the gizmo-out route you created earlier.

The 411 entries are to dial 1-800-GOOG-411 directly from the gizmo account. Feel free to omit these lines or change the number to some other toll-free 411 service you would prefer to use.

Register the Custom Extension in FreePBX

After you’ve edited the extensions_custom.conf file, you need to register the newly created extension within FreePBX. Documentation on doing this is very sparse, and it took me the longest time to figure out this step was necessary to get everything to work properly.

Go back to the FreePBX configuration in your browser and click the Tools tab on the left-hand side, then click Custom Extensions. For the new custom extension, use the following settings:

• Custom Extension: pstn-via-gv
• Description: pstn-via-gv-custom

Click Submit Changes.

Set Up a Custom Trunk to Use the Google Voice Extension

Next, you need a custom trunk use the custom extension for making regular telephone calls. Go back to the Setup tab and click Trunks and Add Custom Trunk. Use the following settings:

• Dial Rules

  411
  1|NXXNXXXXXX
  NXXNXXXXXX

• Custom Dial String: local/$OUTNUM$@pstn-via-gv

Click Submit Changes.

Create an Outbound Route to Dial the PSTN Through the Google Voice Trunk

Finally, you need an outbound route to use the custom trunk. To create the route, click on Outbound Routes and then Add Route. Use the following settings for the new route:

• Route Name: pstn-out
• Dial Patterns

  411
  1|NXXNXXXXXX
  NXXNXXXXXX

• Trunk Sequence: local/$OUTNUM$@pstn-via-gv

Click Submit Changes.

Create an Extension for your SIP Phone

Click Extensions, select Generic SIP Device for the Device, and then click Submit. Use the following settings for the new device:

• User Extension: 200
• Display Name: Gizmo User
• Secret: password

Click Submit. You can actually use whatever you want for these values, just be sure to remember what the User Extension and Secret are, as these will be your username and password for your SIP phone.

Create an Inbound Route for Gizmo

If you want to use the SIP phone for receiving inbound calls as well as making outbound calls, click Inbound Routes. Put your primary Gizmo account number for the DID Number, or leave it blank if you want to receive all inbound SIP calls at the extension. For the Extensions option, be sure to select the new Gizmo User extension you just created. Click Submit.

Be sure to also go into the General Settings, and set Allow Anonymous Inbound SIP Calls? to yes.

Disable Other Google Voice Phones

I had very inconsistent results with other phones connected to the Google Voice account.  For the best results, be sure the only account enabled is the forwading Gizmo account.  To disable your other phones, log into Google Voice, go to Settings, Phones, and uncheck all of them except the forwading Gizmo account.

If you have two Google Voice accounts, this is ideal.  Just use one of the accounts with a single phone (the forwarding Gizmo account), and use it to make outbound calls.  If you find out a way to enable other Google phones and use Asterisk for making outbound calls, please provide the instructions in a comment.  I will also update the instructions with your findings, and give you props.

Connect Your SIP Phone to Asterisk

Of course, you will need a SIP phone to connect to the extension on the Asterisk server. When you set up the SIP phone, just set it up to the proper IP address of your Asterisk server, use the User Extension as the user, the Secret as the password, and you should be all set!

If you don’t have a SIP phone or VoIP gateway with FXS and FXO to use with your existing phone, you could always download X-Lite to use your computer as a phone.

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Some time ago, I signed up for a nifty little service called Pagerankster. It’s a free service that provides you with email alerts when your PageRank changes. I had almost forgotten I had signed up, until I received an alert this morning that GeekLad reached PageRank 5!

GeekLad.com went from no PageRank to a PageRank 3 within less than 30 days.  Although I hadn’t written a blog post about it, the site also managed to reach PageRank 4 within three months.  I think the main reason I was able to hit PageRank 5 was by taking a page out of the book of my good friend at Blog Traffic Exchange.

I thought that reaching PageRank 3 in less than 30 days was pretty cool, but Blog Traffic Exchange managed to hit PageRank 5 in less than 30 days!  How did he do it?  It’s a pretty stupid simple but ingenious strategy.

He simply developed a few nice WordPress plugins that would display backlinks to his site on blogs that would install them. One thing that is great about this strategy is that it’s much easier than mutual blogrolling.  There’s no having to send “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” type emails. Your back gets scratched when people install your plugin and you don’t have to scratch back.

The other great thing about this strategy is the same thing that makes mutual blogrolling so great. You receive a backlink from every page on the blog in which it is installed.  I decided to try my hand at putting together a PageRank widget plugin (you’ll see it on all my pages).  I shamelessly put a link to the plugin page on the widget, and it wasn’t long before the backlinks started flowing in.

Generating backlinks to a blog is really quite simple, and it doesn’t take all that much effort to quickly improve your PageRank.  Here are some of the things I suggest you try:

• Mutual Blogrolling
• Use Disqus as your comment system
• Syndicate your content with RSS feeds
• Create WordPress plugins that link to your page
• Create badges that link to your page

Of course PageRank isn’t the be-all and end-all for achieving high-ranking results in search engine result pages (SERPs).  Owen from The Linux Blog made an interesting comment about better results on SERPs with a lower PageRank.  His PageRank has bounced around a bit, and although it is lower, his blog is syndicated in many places which he believes has helped him to achieve a higher ranking in the SERPs.

I’d say that for the most part, the strategies I’ve discussed and have used are relatively straight-forward.   It is really common sense more than anything, but I’m not so sure that many people use blogrolling and plugins as primary strategies for SEO.  As Voltaire says, “common Sense is not so common.”  I will continue to share my observations on SEO as I come across new strategies.  Stay tuned.

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RerunCheck is a new website that lets you know whenever there are new episodes of television programs airing on tv. Although it was not actually my brain child per se, I did implement it myself. My good friend James at UltraViolet Development Studios did the web design for me, as I’m somewhat inept when it comes web design.

With Reruncheck, you can find out a few different ways whether or not your favorite TV show is airing a new episode.  First of all, you can visit the website and search for your shows.  You’ll be taken to a page that will let you know with a big green Yes if there is a new episode airing within the next 7 days.

If you are interested in receiving continuous notifications for new episodes, you can either subscribe to the feed for the show (in the upper right corner), or you can subscribe to receive notifications via email.  If you decide to subscribe via email, please be sure to read the RerunCheck privacy policy.  If you see anything in there you don’t like, then I suggest you use the RSS feed rather than email.

If you love to watch just about any show on TV, you can also subscribe to the main RerunCheck feed.  It is updated every day with all the television shows that are airing new episodes.  You can also see what programs are showing new episodes today by visiting the main RerunCheck page.  There is also a page that will let you know the television programs that are airing new episodes this week.

You can also create a new RerunCheck account, to manage all of your favorite programs in one place.  An account offers you the same email subscriptions you can receive without an account, but in addition to receiving email notifications you will also have your own custom feed.

Your custom feed will contain new episode notification for all of your favorite shows. You can share your custom feed with your friends, put it on your website, add it to FriendFeed or other social networks, or just subscribe to it yourself.  The choice is yours!

Try RerunCheck and let me know what you think. Feel free to send me any suggestions you might have for the service to help me make it better.

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The following is a guest post from DR.  DR is the blogger behind The Dough Blogger, and internet marketing blog, and The Dough Roller, a blog about making and managing money online.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Bankaholic, a one-man WordPress blog that last year was bought by Bankrate for nearly $15 million. In the article I analyzed why the blog might actually be worth the eye-popping sum that Bankrate paid. I won’t rehash all that here, but do want to focus on one very important aspect that led to Bankaholic’s success–backlinks.

To get started, let’s run a search on Google for the term, “credit cards.” While rankings change, even daily, Bankaholic typically ranks anywhere from the bottom of the first page to the top of the second. Not bad for a search that generated 174,000,000 results. On top of that, the Google Adwords keyword tool shows more than 450,000 monthly searches on the exact phrase each month (more than 2.2 million on broad search). Now Bankaholic’s credit card page, while perfectly fine, is nothing special. I have a very similar credit card page on The Dough Roller, it just doesn’t rank as well (yet!).

Bankaholic Home Page

You might not be focused on credit cards. But if you are trying to make money online, you are focused on some keywords. And you also know who your competitors are. So let’s see how we can leverage our competitors to (1) determine their backlink strategy, and (2) identify possible backlink opportunities. And we will use Bankaholic’s credit card page as an example.

Step one is to run the following search in Yahoo!: link:www.bankaholic.com/credit-cards/. Of course, you can substitute whatever page you want, depending on who your competitors are. The search will return a list of links to the given page. A drop down box at the top of the search results allows you to exclude links that come from the given domain, in this case Bankaholic. Excluding links from other parts of the Bankaholic site leaves 12,992 banklinks.

Yahoo! Search for Bankaholic Links

At this point it’s important to keep a couple things in mind. First, we used Yahoo! because Google doesn’t return all of the backlinks. Don’t ask why because I don’t know; maybe the Big G is throwing Yahoo! a bone. Second, the backlink count includes links to the credit card page, as well as links to pages in any credit card subpages. Third, when links are in the sidebar, header, or other section that appears on every page of a site, every page counts as a backlink. That means that a sidebar link on a large site can result in hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. So while nearly 13,000 backlinks is a good start, it’s not nearly as impressive as it may at first appear.

Step two is to skim the sites linking to your competitor to get an idea of the types of links they are getting. A quick visual inspection of Bankaholic’s backlinks shows several things. First, Bankaholic is taking full advantage of directory submissions. Without getting into the issue of the value of directories, most believe that the Yahoo! Directory still has value, and Bankaholic has submitted its site to several of Yahoo’s directories. Its worth noting that the links are to the credit card page, not the home page, and typically use the anchor text, “Bankaholic.com: credit cards.” Second, many links come from the sidebar, footer or the end of articles on blogs.

And this leads to step three–digging through the backlinks to find potential sources for your own backlinks. What’s interesting to me about many of the backlinks to Bankaholic’s credit card pages is that they come from blogs, many of which are not updated regular or highly trafficked. In other words, they are links any of us could get. I suspect not all of the links are purely editorial, but nobody can be sure. Still, Bankaholic did what you and I should be doing, so stop reading this article and go get some backlinks.

Photo Credit: Andres Rueda

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In addition to the size of your market and existing competition, the quality of service you provide is a very important factor in making money online.  High quality will provide credibility for your content or service, and result in repeat visits and referrals. If your site is low quality, you may have a difficult time in earning the trust of those that visit your site.

My Failure in Quality of Service

I think another reason why ForeverSMS never took off is because of the design of the website. I designed the website myself, however, I should have relied on a professional to do the design for me.  I think I could have done more in terms of doing more search engine optimization, but the reality is that if the site had been higher quality and in a less competitive space, I would have seen greater success.

Improving My Quality of Service

I’ve hired someone to do the web design on my latest venture. I think it will help me to achieve greater success than I saw with ForeverSMS.  It is important to realize what you are good at, but probably more important to understand what you are not good at.  When you identify such areas, find others to do the work for you.

My Success in Quality of Service

The jury is still out. We shall see how my new venture does, which I will announce shortly.

Ensuring Quality of Service on Your Websites

If you have decided to make money online by blogging, a good blogging platform (WordPress, Drupal, TypePad, Blogger, etc.) with a nice selection of themes is a first good step towards developing a quality blog. The second most important factor in developing a quality of blog is of course developing quality content. Write about a topic you are passionate about. When you start thinking of topics for articles all the time, you know you’ve selected the right topic for your blog.

If you want to make money by developing a service, be sure to ask for help in areas in which you are lacking expertise. I’m pretty good at developing with PHP and MySQL, but I really suck at web design. Be honest with yourself and realize that you may not be able to do everything yourself.

You also need to ensure your site is fast and convenient to use. You may have the most gorgeous web design, but if the site is slow and complicated you may not achieve success. Try to keep it simple, yet appealing. This will help to maintain speed and convenience for your visitors.

Applying All Three Factors

It is important that you consider all three factors together: the size of your market, existing competition, and quality of service.  You need to understand how they relate to each other. You may have a very large market, but if there are many competitors it will be more difficult to make money. However, developing a high quality website can help to overtake the competition and achieve success.

On the other hand, you may develop a very high quality site in a market with very little competition. However if there is no one interested in the service you provide, you will be doomed to failure.  It is sometimes difficult to judge what sort of market there may be for services that do not yet exist.

You could try performing surveys to determine whether or not a particular type of service may appeal to a wide audience. You could also take a gamble and go ahead and develop the website, and see if it is well-received.  As long as you do not spend a lot of time and money in developing the service, there is little risk in just developing the site and see what happens.

It is important to be brutally honest with yourself and learn from your failures. There is no better way to achieve success than to fail and learn from your mistakes. If you do not initially attain the desired results, take a step back and try to understand why you failed.  You will be better prepared when you try again.

What’s Next

Once you’ve decided whether to provide content or service and you’ve taken into account size of market, existing competition, and quality of service, it is time to select a monetization method. In the next post in this series, I’ll discuss ways you can directly and indirectly monetize your website.

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This is the third part of a multi-part series about making money online. So far I’ve discussed deciding whether to provide content or service as well as evaluating the size of your market. The next logical step to making money online is to analyze the existing competition in the market you are considering.

If you compete in a large market, you can expect to have a lot of competition. If there is little or no competition in your market, if you succeed you can expect competition to quickly appear. When Twitter hit the scene, it wasn’t long before competing services like FriendFeed, identi.ca, and others came to market to provide similar and improved services.

My Failure in Assessing Competition

Last year, I developed a free service for texting online. I felt as though it was a pretty decent service, but it never caught on like I had hoped. I believe a big reason for this was because there were already similar services such as Gizmo SMS and txtDrop.com. ForeverSMS really had very little to offer that these services didn’t already provide.

Improving My Assessment of Competition

I’ve learned alot with the less than stellar monetization of ForeverSMS. Lately I’ve been looking to develop services that do not exist yet or that have very little competition.

My Success in Assessing Competition

Well, the jury is still out for me on assessing competition. I am currently developing a service that I believe has very little competition. Whether or not it will succeed once I announce it is another story.  It depends on how I handle my assessment on the size of market, competition, and other factors as well.

Sizing Up Your Competition

I think the biggest reason that many bloggers fail early when they start, is that they fail to realize the amount of competition they face. There are countless bloggers out there writing about a tremendous variety of topics, and many of them do it quite well. Although it is easy to get started with blogging and it is easy to do, it is tremendously difficult to succeed.

That being said, do not be discouraged from blogging. You may find that you do it better than anyone else in the topic you decide to write about.  There are quite a few people that have managed to earn a living from blogging.  Although it is a long and difficult path, it is indeed possible to make money blogging.

It may be nearly impossible to find a topic to blog about where you would face little or no competition.  On the other hand, it is quite possible to develop new services that have no competition. The difficulty with creating new services is deciding on what they should be. Necessity is the mother of invention and often new services are born where individuals find a need for something that does not yet exist.

If you are developing a service and no such service exists yet, you will have a tremendous advantage.  It will increase the likelihood you will make money with it.  It is also easier to make money with blog posts where you provide information that does not exist or is difficult to find.  If you have scoured the net trying to solve a problem and you ended up developing your own solution, blog about it! It’s very likely there are others looking for the very same answer you could provide them.

What’s Next

The last of the three important factors I will be writing about in this series is the quality of service.  Quality of service does not just apply to services, it applies to content as well. If decide to make money with a blog, it needs to be informative as well as visually appealing.

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Yesterday my good Friend Bwana shared an article on Lifehacker about GrandCentral preparing for a new release. In his comment along with the shared item Bwana said,

Play the Portal Theme… Still Alive..

Of course, that prompted me to search YouTube for the song. I listened to it and I enjoyed it. I also checked out a few others including a live version of Still Alive performed by the writer, Johnathan Coulton.

After listening to the live version, I searched for Johnathan’s blog and started browsing around on it. I came across a post of Still Alive being played on the carillon. Check out the video. The carillon isn’t terribly impressive to watch, but it’s a cool video to listen to.

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This is the second post in a multi-part series I’m writing about making money online.  The first step is to decide whether you want to create a blog or develop an online service. Next, you need to decide on a topic for your blog or determine the type of service you would like to provide.

Perhaps the three most important factors to consider in deciding what to put on your website are the size of your market, the competition you will face, and the quality of your content or service. In this article, I share some of my observations on size of market, including examples on how I’ve failed and succeeded in properly assessing it.

Without a doubt, size of market is the most important factor for making money online. There are millions of people using the Internet each and every day, which is why it has attracted so many as an opportunity to earn income. However, it is likely that only a very small fraction of them will be in the market you will be targeting.

My Failure in Assessing Size of Market

For the most part, I’ve not had a lot of organic traffic so far on my blog. I’ve come to realize that my eclectic mix of content does not really appeal to a wide range of individuals. Although there are a lot of other geeks out there in the world, most of them are not particularly interested in many of the things I write about and the tools I develop.

Improving My Assessment of Size of Market

Part of the reason I’ve decided to develop this series on making money online was to try to appeal to a wider audience. There is no doubt in my mind there are more people interested in making money online than there are people interested in things like a Greasemonkey script for Google Webmaster Tools.

I also decided to write about making money online because I recently had my first real big hit with organic results on this blog. Earlier this month I wrote an article on how to remove Antivirus 2009, Spyware Guard 2008 and other malware, and it definitely seemed to appeal to a wider audience than any of my other posts on GeekLad. I decided that sharing my success could provide some good information on how to make money online.

My Success in Assessing Size of Market

There are a lot of people that encounter problems with Antivirus 2009 and Spyware Guard 2008. I used Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to remove those programs from my parents’ computer, and decided it would make a great blog post that would appeal to a wide audience. It is apparent by the amount of traffic I’ve received that I was right.

I also signed up for an affiliate account with Malwarebytes.  If anyone decides they would like to purchase the full version as a result of reading my article, I receive a commission for it. Signing up for the affiliate account and including an affiliate link within the article has allowed me to make some money with the article.

Selecting Your Audience

When deciding on a topic to blog about or the type of service you are going to provide, you need to take your audience into consideration. You need to figure out how many people that will be interested in your website.You can use the Google Keyword Tool to determine the amount of search volume there is in the areas you are considering for your blog or service. Keywords with higher search volume will provide you with a larger market.

If your content or service is very specialized, you can expect to have a small audience. If you decide to blog about a very popular topic or develop a service that would appeal to many individuals, you can expect to have a large audience. Having a small audience isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you can convert visits into cash and each conversion is worth a lot of money.

What’s Next?

The size of your market should not be taken into consideration alone. It is also very important to consider existing competition. Although there may be millions of potential visitors in your audience, there may already be many competitors servicing that market. If the competition is fierce, you may find it difficult to make money.

In the next post in the series, I’ll be taking a more detailed look at sizing up the competition.

Photo Credit: Apreche

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a burning desire to earn a living working with technology. I’ve sought out many different methods for making money online.

Much like Edison inventing the light bulb, I’ve found more ways how not to achieve the desired outcome. However, I’m glad to say that I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I recently decided to share my experience in my quest with a multi-part post on how to make money online.

About a month ago, I reached out to Jesse Stay for help in my quest. Jesse is a successful entrepreneur, published technology author, and guest author for Louis Gray. He is the creative mind behind SocialToo, a web service that provides some handy tools for some popular social networks. I asked Jesse for advice on how to turn my hobbies (programming and blogging) into a career. He provided some great info and there was a series of questions he asked that really got me thinking:

What would you like to do? Are you looking to become a developer? Do you want to become a blogger? Do you want to be an Entrepreneur?

Very good questions indeed. I think that ultimately I would like to be an entrepreneur and offer web services that are high in demand but low in supply. If I ever get to the point where I’m creating demand, I’ll know I’ve made it. I think answering these questions led me to the first step in making money online: do you develop content or develop a service?

Content Development

Behind door number one, we have content development. This has become one of the most popular methods for earning a living online. There are countless individuals online providing eager readers with relevant and useful information. The majority of them in the form of blogs.

Blogs are a great way for enthusiasts and self-proclaimed experts on any topic to provide information to the masses. It has become quite apparent that blogs are probably the best and easiest way to provide information online. It has been observed by many that search engines have an affinity for blogs. If you are a decent writer and have a lot of great information to share that others are seeking, blogging is definitely the way to go.

Providing Services

The second choice you have for making money online is to provide services online. Just as there are millions of people seeking information online, there are many others seeking services as well. Of course, the majority of them prefer free services but there are plenty that are willing to pay too.

Providing services online does not necessarily mean you need to be a programmer or web developer. If you already have a business or are interested in starting one, providing services online can easily become an extension of your business. This is especially true if your business is not limited by your geographic location.

It is relatively easy to build a website to promote and even sell the services online. Even if you don’t know how to do it, there are plenty of people out there who provide such services. Alternatively, you could find the information online on how to build a website and do it yourself. I find the latter to be the most enjoyable as well as rewarding.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve decided whether you wish to provide content or services, you need to decide the topic of your content or the type of service to provide. There are three very important factors to consider when making this decision:

• Size of Market
• Competition
• Quality of Service

These will be the focus of my next post in this series.

Photo Credit: Tracy O

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I was shocked last month when Google dropped the beta designation from Chrome. Chrome was in beta a mere three months, whereas some products such as Gmail are STILL in beta after more than four years!  Sometimes I just don’t understand why they do weird things like this, but it’s really all just semantics.

Well, to match their breakneck speed out of beta, they’ve now released a 2.0 version in the Google Chrome dev channel. There are a few new features, the most notable being the ability to do full-page zoom.

Prior to the 2.0 release, if you zoom on a page (Ctrl+ and Ctrl-, or using your scroll wheel on your mouse while pressing the control button) only the text zooms and the images remain the same. The 2.0 release now properly zooms text and images together. Here are a few other blog posts around the web describing some of the other new features in Google Chrome 2.0:

• Chrome gets Mac deadline, extensions foundation
• Google Chrome 2.0 Pre-Beta
• Google Chrome Update With Form Auto-Completion And More
• Google Releases First Pre-Beta of Chrome 2.0
• Release Notes 2.0.156.1

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Ok, so the title is actually Google Reader for Beginners. I’m constantly telling my friends how great Google Reader is, but I have a hard time convincing them they need to use it. From now on, I’ll just show them the video the Google Reader Team put together.

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I’ve been finding myself searching Twitter for information as of late. There was not a decent Twitter search button for the Google Toolbar (only a couple that use the Google Custom Search Engine), so I created one. It’s simple and easy to use, just like my Google Reader search button.

• Click the link below to install it
• When you want to search Twitter, type a search term into your Google Toolbar
• Click the Twitter button on the Google Toolbar
• You are taken to the Twitter search result page for your search term

Install the Twitter Search Button

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I had a very frustrating experience recently. I could not for the life of me find My Saved Locations on Google Maps. I knew they were still there, because when I started typing in the search box, Google started suggesting them. But I couldn’t find the link to edit/view all of them.

Although there were people that actually lost their saved locations, this was not the problem I was experiencing. I just couldn’t find the freakin’ link! As an experienced computer geek, this was especially frustrating. After much searching, I finally found a blog post that informed me that the Google Maps saved locations feature had moved.

I was disappointed I had to resort to searching for the solution, rather than figuring out the link was in a little upsidedown triangle next to the search bar. In my defense, the Google Maps help was no help (it still mentioned the old location of the feature) and I had to resort to searching the web. Finally when I searched for something along the lines of “google maps saved locations link move“, I found the post on Search Engine Roundtable.

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Google acquired Picasa nearly 4 and a half years ago, and they finally managed to release Picasa for the Mac. I for one am glad to finally see it, although I’m still puzzled as to why it took so incredibly long. 4.5 years is a very long time in computer years, the equivalent of about half a lifetime in human years.  I hope it does not take them nearly that long to release Chrome for Mac.

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There are a number of PageRank plugins for WordPress, but it seems that all of them involve manually editing the template to incorporate them. With the lack of a better option, I took it upon myself to develop a WordPress plugin to display PageRank in a widget. And thus, the PageRank Widget for WordPress was born.

The options are very simple, as there is only one. You can display your PageRank either at a top-level (http://www.yourdomain.com) or display it at a page level (http://www.yourdomain.com/the-page-level). By default, the PageRank will be displayed at the page level.

Installation is very simple:

• Download the PageRank Widget plugin
• Extract the contents to your plugin directory
• Activate the plugin
• Navigate to Appearance > Widgets
• Add the PageRank Widget
• Select the display option (Individual Pages or Top-Level)
• Save Changes

I like the option of being able to display PageRank with a standalone widget. It makes it very simple to use and does not involve having to edit any HTML code or load images/JavaScript from another website. Try it out, and feel free to make any suggestions as to how I might be able to improve it.

Update (01/06/2009): Per a user request, I’ve also added a feature to display the pagerank within a page/post. To use it, place the following comment where you wish for it to appear within the page:

<!--pagerank-->

Update (02/24/2009): I noticed today that the widget was causing some errors on my page. There was increased traffic on my site, so I made some updates to the plugin so that the PageRank requests are only made once a day. PageRank really does not change probably more than once a month anyway, so this should not present any problems.

Update (05/09/2009): I broke the plugin a few days ago, and it is now fixed. Version 0.60 has many bugfixes and now the PageRanks are cached so that we do not upset Google for making excessive requests.

Earlier I was avoiding this by using http://www.gmodules.com/ig/proxy?url= as a cache because Google seemed to have no problems when requests were made from the gmodules server. However, it seems Google has plugged that hole and they now detect requests from gmodules.com as automated requests as they would any other server. Now the requests have to be made directly by the website, so caching the PageRanks was necessary for this to happen.

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My wife, kids, and I spent this past Christmas at my parents’ house. It wasn’t long after we arrived before I gravitated to their computer to check my email, read the news, check the stock market, etc.

Much to my dismay, I found a barrage of malware, spyware, and rogue software had made its way onto their machine. I searched around a bit, and found the perfect solution: Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

By far the most annoying type of software that had been installed on their machine was rogue antivirus software. The worst and most persistent offenders were Spyware Guard 2008 and Antivirus 2009. Both of these programs (and many similar ones) are designed to deceive a computer user into believing they are legitimate, by informing the user that spyware and malware has been detected on the system.

Unwitting users click away at the dialog boxes and pay to register the programs, although in reality the programs themselves are the nuisance. Although my parents appeared to have acquired these programs with relative ease, I had a very hard time finding them to intentionally install them (on a virtual machine) for taking screenshots of them in action.

Antivirus 2009

I was able to find a website that generates a very convincing screen that indicates it has located malware on the computer. The webpage and application even use the Windows Security Center Icon, which enhances its appearance of legitimacy.

The Windows Security Center icon.

In reality, the webpage does not perform any scan on the system although it claims to have done so. Upon completion of the bogus scan, the page displays a dialog box that will install the program no matter what you click (if you download and run the EXE installer). Once installed, Antivirus 2009 constantly displays warnings in attempt to have the victim purchase the full version of the software (fortunately my parents had not done this).

Antivirus 2009 Screenshots

Initial view of a webpage that installs Antivirus 2009.	"Popup" that appears after the bogus scan takes place.
Antivirus 2009 initial scan on a clean system.	One of many annoying and incessant nags from Antivirus 2009.

Spyware Guard 2008

Spyware Guard 2008 is very similar to Antivirus 2009, in that it also attempts to have the user pay to register the product. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a website that attempts to lure me into installing the program so that I could provide screenshots. However, I was finally able to find the install exe (SpywareGuard2008.exe) on a filesharing site.

Spyware Guard 2008 Screenshots

Spyware Guard 2008 installer	Bogus warning dialog from Spyware Guard 2008.
Spyware Guard 2008 application showing bogus infections.

Removal of the Rogue Software

Fortunately, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware makes it relatively quick and easy to remove this horrendous software. Just download the program and run a full system scan. When the scan is complete, click the Show Results button and then the Remove Selected button.

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware scan results for the aforementioned rogue programs.

If there are still active programs once the removal has taken place, Anti-Malware will inform you and request a reboot to complete the removal process. Upon reboot, the system will have been disinfected.

It is important to note that although the free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware does an excellent job of detection and removal, it will not provide prevention. If you would like to prevent the installation of malware in the first place, you will need to purchase the full verison.

Photo Credit: Chris Dewey

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