What is Spokeo?  It is essentially the yellow pages 2.0.  It has the basic contact information, but it also attemps to get more information about your real estate property, guess your net worth, pull in your photos and comments from social media, etc.  See the image below from their homepage:

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Our company photo shoot from this summer has now been posted on Facebook.

Please click on the link below to see rest of the images on our company Facebook Page:

Enjoy!!

FYI, our company Facebook page is located at: facebook.com/webguruco

Mr. Patrick Haug, a student at the University of Tubengen, successfully completed his internship position at the company.  His role included works in web design, development, and internet marketing (design ideas, teaching design concepts, posting podcasts...)  Because of his strong performance, we are happy to note that we hope to be working with Mr. Patrick on various web-based projects even after his return to Germany.

We thoroughly enjoyed having Patrick on the team this past summer.  Because of his prior experience working with website design and development, he was able to add value to the team right away, producing high quality products.  More importantly, he was able to fit right in the team environment and was willing to share his knowledge with others.  His willingness to learn and to contribute to the team was really outstanding.

Thanks to Patrick, we are eager and hopeful to find other great talents to work with us in the future, both in internship and maybe also in full-time capacity as well.  And, we are of course looking forward to working on some projects and producing great results together in the future.

...Anyone want to take a guess how he found and contacted us?

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Of late, Joomla Content Management System (CMS) driven websites are seeing increasing fishing and script attacks.

One of the most basic and fundamental ways to keep your website protected from these attacks is to keep your Joomla core continuously up to date.  However, knowing when the updates are released can be a bit cumbersome if you don't visit the www.joomla.org website often.

Here is how you can stay up to date with the latest Joomla core patch releases

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The First Type of Yahoo Messenger Virus

Anyway, there are two forms of Yahoo Messenger viruses that are quite popular. The more popular form is shown here:

This is actually not too difficult to avoid.  You simply don't click on these links.  Also, you make sure all of your antivirus, malware, and firewall protection software are up to date.  You can read this post on my personal blog:

• PC Security Tips – Best Computer Protection Software Against Viruses, Malware, & Hack Attempts

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(FYI, Fusion is a beer produced by APU, one of the largest spirits companies in Mongolia.  Since about a year or two ago, they are going through rebranding on their products that are going quite well, I think.)

The reason has nothing to do with taste, although it isn't bad.  There are at least dozen other beers in Mongolia that taste just as well or better.  What Fusion does is something that should be implemented on ALL beers.

Fusion beer is extremely easy to open.  In fact, all you need is two beers.

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Typically, email spams ask for credit card or bank information of some sorts.  The email pretended to be from Holiday Inn and had even included the photos of the Holiday Inn Executives.

In short, if you receive an email and you are not sure what do & whether the email/message is SPAM, you can follow the below steps:

1. Do NOT click on any links within the email or Yahoo Messenger message window
2. Review the URL/address of the link. If it is not something you can recognize, delete the email. If the link is something like holidayinn@yahoo.co.uk and not someonesname@holidayinn.com, again delete the email.
3. If the email is not something that is critically important that you respond, delete the email. If you feel the email is possibly important and still are not sure if it is a SPAM, review some of the guides below.

Here are some of the top ways to spot email SPAM.

• Spam Email: How to Identify and Deal With <-- email SPAM basics
• Hidden URLs <-- watch out for hidden URL's; links look authentic but are not!
• Tracking the Source of Email SPAM <-- technical explanation for how to read email headers

Hope this was helpful.  Wish you a safe & secure email inbox!!

The above is a street sign promoting awareness about "human trafficking in Mongolia".  At the top are the three organizations supporting this street advertising sign: Asia Foundation, Equal Rights NGO, and Mongolian Police Agency.

While I most definitely understand the sensitivity of the human trafficking issue, I still would like to take the approach of a marketing professional and give praise where it's due.  Based on my assumptions, probably this was an excellent advertising spend by the three organizations supporting this signage.

For my marketing thoughts on the street sign, please read on.

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The article took nearly the entire page on page 12.  The interview covered topics ranging from starting his own business and reasons for coming back to Mongolia to search engine optimization.

It was a very well written piece with only a very few items that could use tweaking.  We are very thankful for Gerelmaa and Ya. Bayarbaatar for taking the time to interview and include a piece on us.

Here is the copy of the article (click on image to view in full):

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Needless to say, this has made my day.  Our team is excited too.  Think about this, Google, the granddaddy of searches and the major gateway to all things on the web, would like to create a link to one of our blog posts because it found a blog post from a startup in Mongolia helpful and informative.

Google said our quality of content is helpful and of high quality!  Awesome!!

Here is the email text in full:

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Hi there:

My name is (removed for publishing purposes) and I’m reaching out from Google, Inc.  I noticed your previous blog post ( http://webguru-co.com/blog/51-set-up-google-adwords-my-client-center-mcc) and based on the helpful content and high quality, I am planning to include a link directly to http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=22064 in the AdWords Help Center.

This is part of a user generated content experiment—we love helpful, user-generated content here at Google—and the plan is to offer a direct link to a handful of useful content articles, including your your article, for a few weeks in our Help Centers.  You may see an increase in traffic, though it is difficult for me to predict how much of an increase.

At the end of the experiment, I would appreciate your feedback via a survey.  I’m interested in how much your traffic increased as well as your thoughts on the experiment as a content author.  Pending the results, this practice may continue as a regular part of our Help Centers.

Let me know what you think,

NOTE: This article was prepared on March 19, 2010, but not published until April 13, 2010.  As of today, we have not been notified by Google of posting of our article.  Our article also does not show anywhere on the Google Help pages, as far as I can see.

This morning, I received an email from one of our clients regarding their improved website traffic and plans to work with us to further increase the website presence.  Of course, I was very happy to receive the email.  However, one thing I did not expect was to see Chinese text when I visited google.com/analytics to view my client's website traffic statistics:

The really interesting thing is that a) I am logged into Google, b) I am not in China (Mongolia is an independent country with its own language; no, 95% of us do not speak Chinese or anything close to it; Mongolian language is in the same family tree as Turkey and sounds more Turkish than anything else; read here: Mongolian language on Wikipedia), and c) my Google language settings are US English.

I thought maybe this thing would go away after logging in, but no...

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I think this is a good move.  After all, how long do we have to suffer the wrath of Microsoft's decision not to honor web standards way back in 2001 when the IE6 was launched?  Most of us are quite aware of the security vulnerabilities & compatability issues posed by Internet Explorer 6: IE6 issues.

The downside to the move is that still way too many people use IE6 even today.  As such, we, web designers and web developers alike, have to pay very close attention to IE6 issues and have to modify coding to get our websites to work better with IE6.  Thus, Google's move may hurt them a bit with users accessing Google Apps with IE6 today.

Personally, I am just happy that the big boys are starting to make bigger stands to gradually move us away from IE6 and its security vulverabilities & compatibility issues.  After all, it is a possibility that IE6 security vulnerabilities were behind Chinese hackers to sneak into Gmail servers (Google vs China).

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Originally, I did not intend to write a blog post with as strong of a statement, but I think it is well deserved.  Denver Post simply sucks at listening to its readers.  Anyone who looks at comments on some of its poorly written online content can see and understand that the content of the newspaper is very poor.

I am not here to bash the newspaper, I just want to highlight that Denver Post needs to listen to its readers and start providing more useful and relevant content.

Here are some examples of very poorly written content.  Apparently, even after the bashing received by writing poor articles in Summer/Fall of 2009, Denver Post has yet to learn.  The JR Smith article was posted on January 28, 2010.  Maybe we should all write to the editor.

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I think that RAC (Rent A Coder) is `dead` for now. With rates so ridiculously low only providers with very little knowlege or no chances for a ‘real’ job will stay there.

Most of the projects on RAC are for $20-$100USD and the requirements are insane. Eg. $50 for designing a professional website, $400 for youtube and other big sites clones, etc.

On the other side, how “work” done on RAC looks? Like it was finished in 1990’s. Tables, no css, font tags, spaghetti coding, no object oriented programming, lack of any code structure, planning, comments, etc.

I’m not suprised. When you go for a job that pays $1/hour you certainly don’t have time nor skill to finish it properly. And you’ll do everything to do it fast so you’ll end up with $1.50 / hour. It’s still ridiculous, but more than $1 anyway. How insane should you be to devote time and skill to $1/hour projects when it’ll only lower your rate to a couple of cents / hour.

Let’s be honest that RAC promotes bad providers and cheap, crappy, insecure code. When you devote more time to do something right on RAC you get punished for your goodwill.

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THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU...

Project Honey Pot - What They Do...

Some of the data in the email is quite entertaining as well.  For example, apparently spammers take vacation also.  Spam volume drops significantly on Christmas day.  Read on!

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And because the owners probably do not have any idea of the virus, they are most certainly not aware that their websites are spreading the virus to other unsuspecting website visitors, thus further spreading the virus.

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(WebGuru Director Mergen third from left; first is Laurenz Melchers, the current BCM Chair)

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I'm not picking on Kempinski Khan Palace at all.  Even my bankers at Khaan Bank have this issue as well.  In fact, we have this issue on pretty much 20-40% of communications I receive in Mongolian language.  Interestingly, I even heard there is a government requirement making people use MONKEY.  Outdated laws like these should be changed, if they are not already.

In the meantime, everyone, please use utmost caution and care.  If possible, do NOT use MONKEY.  Rather, just use the language tools that now come standard on Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

This happened even though the US version of the poster had the black couples included of course.  Here are the posters, first the UK version followed by the US version.

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Dwayne Wade, a Finals MVP, a five-time All-Star, and one of the most accomplished and popular stars in the NBA, will be wearing Nike's 25th anniversary Air Jordan shoes for the debut.   Dwayne Wade is absolutely exstatic.  And, the move to bring Dwayne Wade into the Air Jordan lineup is probably another one of the best marketing moves in the athletic shoe industry for the Nike brand.

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(Mongolian Information Technology Park, or IT Park for short; photo taken 2009/11/03)

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#1. Firefox is safer

With all of the tools, plugins, and other things available to protect Firefox, Mozilla's browser becomes a much safer browser.

For example, Spybot Search & Destroy and SpywareBlaster, two great programs for immunizing for, or preventing the installation of, spyware program installation, works on Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera.  However, these programs do NOT work with Google Chrome.  As a result, when I scanned my local drive with Spybot two days ago, 26 tracking cookies were found with all 26 being installed onGoogle Chrome.  Firefox and Opera had nothing on them.  Please note that I used Firefox nearly as much or maybe even more since my last system scan for spyware and tracking cookies.

#2. I Like Options and Customizing as I Wish

Listen, as much as I like Chrome's beautiful interface and maybe seemingly faster browsing, Google has NOTHING on Firefox when it comes to the extensions.  I can customize my Firefox ANY way I want.  There are literally thousands and thousands of extensions with at least hundreds being a TOP NOTCH very high quality plugins/add-ons.

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What're your thoughts?

Well, let me first share the photos.

Instructions on how to open the chocolate bar wrapper (Kraft's Alpen Gold). This is
on the back.

Following the instructions and opening from the back reveals that the chocolate bar is
facing DOWN.  There is no visual appeal!!!

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Last week, WebGuru celebrated its first-ever birthday!  WebGuru was officially registered on October 1, 2008.  And, on October 1st, the company turned one!  Everyone who are currently at the company and who were a big part of the company at some point were invited.  Of course, being a small company, there only were a few of us.  People who joined us were Anar, Uyanga, Saruul, Javkhlan, Oko, Sarnai, and Byamba, and (Mergen).

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This was a great online advertisement, in my opinion, for the following reasons:

1. I can recognize the brand easily and pretty much every time I visit sites/pages with the feature
2. I don't really mind the ad.  It is creative and fun to see and to use.  Plus, it is a cool product that appeals to me.

Without further due, here is a copy of the ad that appeared bottom of an article.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on the ad?  Did you think it was as creative and as exciting as I think it is?  Personally, I don't always look at banner ads except the best located ones - like ones to the top right and "above the fold".

Setting up a Google AdWords My Client Center (MCC) can be a real pain in the rear, especially if you already have Google AdWords assigned to your Google email account.  You will find this post particularly useful if you manage multiple Google AdWords accounts for yourself and for others.  When I set up My Client Center, I found that there were not enough step-by-step and easy to follow guides and sources of information available on the web.

After spending at minimum a few hours each of the past two of three days, I have finally learned to set this up the right way.  I hope to show this to you in a clear and understandable step by step guide. The reason is that I just did not find anything that showed all the steps in an understandable manner.  Google Help Center was only half-useful.  Other websites were usually also at most somewhat helpful.

I hope that you will find this post resourceful when setting up My Client Center. Hopefully, you will not have to spend two or three days to figure everything out because I have laid out everything for you.

This post will be particularly useful for those who have multiple accounts and/or who are doing for other people a some sort of management or consulting services, such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), conversion improvement, affiliate marketing, etc.

Setting Up Google AdWords My Client Center - Step by Step Guide

Before we get started: Do you have a need for My Client Center

My Client Center (MCC) allows for management of multiple AdWords accounts from a single login.  This can be real handy and save you tons of time from having to log in and out each time you want to view each of your accounts.  Additionally, you only have to create unique reports once instead of having to do so for each of your accounts.

• Do you have a need to manage multiple AdWord accounts?
  • If YES, please continue.
  • If NO, then you probably do not need to go through the hassle of setting up My Client Center.  Congratulations!

Some Tips & Notes:

• Use two separate browsers, so you don't have to log out & log back in a billion times
• Patience is a virtue.  Some of the changes take up to 24 hours to go through.  This is why sometimes setting up MCC will not work even if you do everything right, especially if you made mistakes along the way.  It took me 3-4 days because I did not have this guide and I made some mistakes.  Taking off AdWords account from the google account to be set up as MCC, for example, may not resolve issues immediately because apparently you may need to wait.  Google instructions are horrible at telling you everything you need to know.
• Those who do set up correctly and believe there could be improvements made to my instructions below, please pitch in.  Send me an email directly at mergen (at) webguru-co(dot)com.

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If you look at their homepage, there are only two major calls to action: "Follow us on Twitter" and "Check out the Compete.com Blog".  There are not any buttons or links to purchase their service ANYWHERE on their homepage!

This is a bit frustrating because I wanted to look up their pricing and to see if I should purchase their service.  I looked through Compete.com homepage desperately trying to find something that read "our services", "pricing", or the like.  I cannot find anything.  And, of course, the great graph that is touting it's "Compete PRO Enterprise" solution is not clickable.  This graph does not have a call to action.

If someone with the intention to view their services and possibly make a purchase cannot easily view their services, how is that person going to make the purchase?  It's pretty hard to sell something when you don't show what you are selling.

The Screenshot

Below is the screenshot I took on September 19, 2009.  I actually completed this blog post two days later.  As per my earlier article about creating great content consistently, I scheduled this post to be published on September 25, 2009 as part of my strategy to have new content appear consistently on webguru-co.com.

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It Wasn't Obvious We Had iFrame Virus

At first, it wasn't that obvious we had iframe virus issue.  On Sunday morning Ulaanbaatar time, our webguru-co.com site was down.  The error read something like this: "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '/' in..."  We had one of our web masters take a look.  He thought that it was funny that there is an extra slash in the coding on index.php.  He took it out and the site was up and running again.  Only... however, the site went down again within 5 or 10 minutes.  The error now read something like "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '<' in".  Now, we knew something was most definitely wrong.  We decided to check if there were any viruses.

From experience, we knew that this could be an iframe virus because these were becoming more popular and frequent in 2009.  I had read an article about increased number of such virus incidents.  Additionally, I know about the virus due to one of my friends who had his website attacked by the virus.

How We Confirmed and Cleaned Up the iFrame Virus

I am sure there are many ways to test and find out the virus.  What we did is just one simple way to diagnose and fix the virus infection.  Without further dues, here are the steps that we took to test our files and to clean up the virus:

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