If you're going to change your router, you're going to need the following bits of information:

Connection Type - PPPoE
VPI/VCI - 8/32
Encapsulation - LLC
Service Category - UBR
Telefonica ADSL Username - adslppp@telefonicanetpa
Telefonica ADSL Password - adslppp

And if you're wondering what routers you can replace it with, there are a few good modem/routers available on Amazon, but I'd probably spend the money on something reliable like the WRT54GL by Linksys.

Why am I sharing this? Because I've swapped out the standard ComTrend router for a few people now, and I keep on forgetting, so in a way, this is just to help me remember :)

Laptops at a conference?

I decided on my trip to Budapest last year, to do - in my opinion - the unthinkable... I left my laptop at home. I planned for it and had everything I could conceivably think of needing hosted somewhere or duplicated in Google Docs. I had email access on my phone (Gmail and work accounts). I had internet access for checking anything I needed. I had Google Maps to find a hotel, or the restaurant that a client dinner had been booked at. I even considered buying the LogMeIn app for Android just in case I needed to get onto the laptop or PC I had left running at home... neither of which I needed access to in the end. But I felt naked. Like something very important was missing. Reverting to manually written note-taking was not the best experience, forgetting the likes of cramp, ink stains on hands, etc, but my handwriting is slow and messy on the verge of illegible at the best of times (don't make me scan in some evidence)... I'm far more efficient at typing something up, and try as I might on my phone, it wasn't working.

Netbooks at a conference?

In my search for a beast-replacement, I started off on the netbook train of thought initially... quickly dispelling many options, but considering the likes of the new SeaShell EEE PC or the Samsung N series. They're not the most powerful of machines, but come with your standard connectivity requirements (802.11n primarily) and enough storage space to get by with. The costs vary on model, etc, between £250 and £400, but for that amount of money, I could get a 11"-15" laptop, smaller than the current beast, half its weight, but a lot more powerful that any netbook, with a full sized keyboard, latest 64bit OS, etc. The list of laptops in this bracket could probably circumnavigate the globe a few times, but do I really need or want a second laptop?

What about a tablet?

Being a self confessed, gadget loving geek, of course the tablet solution crossed my mind - justifying buying one of the year's must have "toys" as business expense - Who wouldn't consider it? The choice was very quickly whittled down to only one, and I must admit, even without being an extensive Apple user (I have a 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle, that's it) it's the best out there at the minute. I love the Android OS on my phone, coupled with HTC's Sense UI, it's brilliant. But, until version 3 of the OS hits the airwaves, it's simply that, a phone OS, and not designed with Tablets specifically in mind. Even with that, the Samsung Galaxy Tab has been getting rave reviews, but it's quite a bit smaller than the iPad (7" screen compared to almost 10"). Some say this is a good thing, many disagree. However, after reading this post by Christina Warren, I'm leaning more towards the fact that the 9.6" iPad would be the Tablet I would buy, if I were to get one.

Any recommendations - first, second or third-hand, I don't mind - greatly appreciated.

Conferences

The conference season is well upon us. I went to one three weeks ago, missed one two weeks ago and am currently missing one, and that's just within the iGaming industry (my industry of choice). Let's not forget the recent Manchester Mini SEO Conf, SEOktoberfest, G2E that's about to happen in Vegas, BlueGlassFL which is currently running; the list goes on and on and on.

"Portable Wifi Hotspot"

My new phone (an HTC Desire running Android 2.2 Froyo, which, incidentally, is a lovely little phone) comes with something called "Portable WiFi Hotspot". This allows you to share your 3G, HSDPA or other mobile internet connection with, say, your laptop, by transforming the phone into a wireless access point. You can also do this by tethering the laptop through your phone using the USB cable, that's not what we're concentrating on here. You can limit access to the hotspot, secure it, restrict MAC addresses, but again, we don't want to do that!

Firesheep

Firesheep hit the tech headlines in the last fortnight after being announced at Toorcon12 (a hacker conference). Firesheep is a plugin for FireFox which sniffs out traffic on open wireless networks (and WEP secured networks for that matter) and allows the "attacker" to take control of other WiFi users' accounts on a number of popular websites. It was produced by a software developer named Eric Butler who was becoming increasingly frustrated by the number of mainstream, popular websites showing a distinct lack of "responsibility to protect the people who depend on their services." Butler continues, "they've [websites such as Facebook] been ignoring this responsibility for too long, and it's time for everyone to demand a more secure web. My hope is that Firesheep will help the users win."

Butler was instantly flamed due to the fact he had opened up the gateway for people to abuse security flaws - which, I might add, anyone with some reasonable tech-savvy-ness could have done before FireSheep - in a far more readily fashion. A few clicks of a button whilst connected to an open wireless network (in Starbucks for example) and the "attacker" could take control of anyone elses Facebook profile (again, for example) who is currently connected to that same network.

Some Blackhat SEO

To bring this post to a conclusion then, having spoken about 3 reasonably random things. There are other security credentials that Firesheep picks up by default, including the ever popular WordPress (hello, someone elses affiliate site). Did I mention it will also log access to Google accounts (hello, Gmail), Yahoo! accounts and MSN/Windows Live accounts (hello, YMail and Hotmail)?

So my question is thus: Would you continue to jump onto any freely available wireless hotspot whilst attending a conference to quickly check your Facebook profile if you knew it could be my HTC which is acting as the  "CONFWIFI - ATTENDEES ONLY" hotspot? Would you even be thinking about the consequences when you just checked you analytics stats for a second? Are your affiliate site login or FTP details saved as a Google Doc or Gmail draft? And would it already be too late for you to notice that I or anyone else had changed some of your affiliate links to my own, or have 301'd your site to mine?

Like I said, this is all hypothetical, but certainly something people should be aware of. Be careful on public wifi networks or even publicly available computers (I recently used the ones at BAC, but did everything through a secure LogMeIn connection to my computer at home), use secured connections where possible and be sure to call your own wireless network something amusing:

Starting at Google.com, I began typing in the address of my blog into the search bar. Note, this is without hitting return/enter:

The same happens when searching for a term, and note, the search results autoupdate as you type:

Click for bigness

I'm no prude, but I thought the advert on this piece of news was a little inappropriate. I regularly check the news from client offices, and although it's innocent enough, could be glanced at from a distance and be very misleading as to the content I was viewing.

Thoughts in the comments, email or snail mail.

In light of the "naughty" filter (as it's being referred to), 2600 (the hacker group) have begun compiling a list of words that have been blacklisted by Google Instant, fairly or not. At the end of said blacklist, is a list of words which are not blacklisted, even though they would do well to be, given the guidelines Google seems to be following at the moment. You can, for example, search unhindered for the phrase "how to commit suicide" without the big G sticking its beak in.

Hungry to know more, I quickly thought of a word, to see which list it would fit in... out of curiosity. Imagine my surprise, when searching for "clung" - as in: "the climber clung to the cliff-face for dear life after his safety line snapped leaving him dangling above a great big gorge" - I was given the following suggestion from Google, as well as a full Instant result:

Note the lightly shaded letter "e" urging me to complete the search.

I also found the third result for the full, dirty, uncensored search reasonably amusing!

But you can't search for "teen"!

Incidentally, what I put in was accepted, so I'm either very lucky, or the second part of the image is ignored!

Can you beat it?

This Telefonica specific application for configuring your Comtrend or Zyxel router is the only way of accessing the box, which can be frustrating as it is fairly limited. Those of you with a Zyxel can try a number of default username and password combinations (admin/1234, admin/admin, root/root) upon accessing your router's IP through http and will usually find some success. Trying to access your Comtrend (mine's a CT-5365) router's IP address through http will prompt a login screen which none of the default passwords you'll find online will work on.

It seems, however, that the password you set up through the configuration assistant is tied back into the Comtrend security, and after a moment of genius (read: luck) attempting the old password (1234) as a username, followed by the password you set through Asistente de Configuración (I'm not giving you mine) will let you in through in both your browser, and through SSH.

For those of you who have had enough of your telefonica router, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from buying a new one and configuring it. Something like a D-Link ADSL2/2+ would suit your needs perfectly, and will have better wireless connectivity to boot.

You will need to call Telefonica to get the settings for your connection on 900 502 010 and this must be from the telephone line your TelefonicaADSL runs on.

UPDATE I have now written a post on how to set up your replacement telefonica router.

Darren is also a qualified and experienced web designer so those looking for a website are serviced here too, and who knows, I may even jump on the bandwagon and help with SEO and PPC management ;)

Les has a serious IT background and has just moved over to the Costa bringing a wealth of knowledge with him, and I have no doubt that IT World is going to be a great addition to the area. There are very few people offering IT services properly out here (although their are a good number of shysters operating on the coast) so I really think the guys are filling a much needed gap in the market and I'm wishing them the best of luck for the future!

Robots, crawlers, spiders or agents are programs which are used to traverse the wobbly world wide web automatically, taking note on which content is where. Search engines use these programs to index content for their indices, spammers use them to scrape content for their own sites, or even to crawl the web for email addresses to spam you even more. Understanding of how search robots work is an intrinsic part of SEO!

What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a file which, when placed in the root of a publicly available webserver, tells search engine robots and agents which content they can and cannot/should and shouldn't access. It can be used to block access to members' only directories for example, or pages which nobody should really be finding through search engines, or, as I was trying to do earlier today, block search engines from indexing pages which are a part of your affiliate system or associated with an affiliate ID.

What is an affiliate system?

Many e-businesses run affiliate systems, which can be described as an semi-automated process by which the e-business takes referrals from partner websites, and remunerates them for any transactions that result from the referral. Having worked in the online gaming industry for over 10 years now, I'm quite familiar with many of them, as they an intricate part of just about every online gambling business model.

Most affiliate systems use standard html links which contain affiliate ID parameters in order to track referrals from their partner or affiliated sites. Anyone who clicks the link which contains the affiliate parameters will be associated with that affiliate's account. If they go on to purchase something from the site, the affiliate will take their share of that revenue.

Search engine optimisation and brand protection

This is leading somewhere, I promise!

Many companies, when taking on an SEO consultant, agency or in-house employee, go straight for the proverbial jugular. They want to target the big, juicy keywords which will drive mountains of good, converting, valuable traffic. Because of this, they usually overlook the basics, ensuring you're dominating the search results for your brand names. Imagine, if you will, the panic in the office this morning, when after no more than a few hours, I spot a discrepancy in our brand term search results: an affiliate tracked URL is ranking in second spot, taking a nice bounty per referral as well as a share of any future revenue from any clients that came through that link!

SEO, brand protection and affiliate URLs

Whoever was in here before me, had not taken the time to ensure that search engines, and especially Google (ye olde search dominator) were not allowed to index URLs tagged with affiliate IDs. Due to the high volume of traffic this affiliate was sending through his affiliate ID, that URL got indexed for our brand name, and is still ranking in second place. I immediately submitted a removal request, and asked for a change to the robots.txt to ensure that affiliate parameters were blocked from this point forward... the reply: "what robots.txt?"

Robots.txt to block affiliate IDs

Given the fact the content/web developer people here hadn't implemented one, and the urgency required to get this resolved, I quickly typed up a robots.txt file for them to upload... ran it through the nicely-provided-by-Google testing utility:

Allowed by line 5: Disallow:

But what about line 6 you stupid test tool? The one that says:

Disallow: /?affid=*

No amount of fiddling would get it to work! I tried and tried and tried. And then I tested a second URL, one I typed up myself, and not copied and pasted:

Blocked by line 6: Disallow: /?affid=*

And that is when it struck me... affid and affId are two completely, and utterly different things according to robots.txt... why? Because ROBOTS.TXT IS BLOODY CASE SENSITIVE!