Posts Tagged ‘Cool’
Cheating Alexa’s Ranking System – Naughty Naughty!
Last Updated on Monday, 1 November 2010 03:00 Written by DarkKnightH20 Monday, 1 November 2010 03:00
I just read an interesting article on Esrun about how he’s able to cheat the Alexa Ranking System. Don’t know what Alexa is? Read below:
Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Along the way Alexa has developed an installed based of millions of toolbars, one of the largest Web crawls and an infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data.
That’s an awful description from the Alexa website. Essentially, it’s a website that has users install a toolbar that then tracks your activity and sends back stats to Alexa. This allows for “rankings” to be created, as it tells Alexa how many people go to which site and other similar info. Not everyone has a toolbar so these stats aren’t necessarily correct, but having a high Alexa rating is a very good sign that a given website is popular. The more visits from someone with an Alexa toolbar, the better the rank.
Throughout the article, the creator talks about how gaming the system is actually done. He first performs packet sniffing to obtain the data being passed through the toolbar and then takes advantage by having proxies make use of the data in question by emulating toolbars of their own. He has several other interesting methods too.
Check out the full article: How to Game Alexa
Aphelion Concept Alarm Clock
Last Updated on Thursday, 14 October 2010 01:56 Written by Naota Thursday, 14 October 2010 12:00
Have trouble getting up in the morning? There is a clock for that! Yes I know we have all seen the various designs of clocks that you have to work to shut the alarm on. This one has an attractive design to it. When the alarm goes off, the clock launches the ball randomly into the air. In order to stop the alarm, you must locate that ball and place it back on the clock.
This is a good idea, but what if it fails to launch the ball in the future? I see snoozing problems already!
Cheers!
– ナオ太 (Naota)
Tags: Clock, Concept, Cool | Posted under Cool | 2 Comments
Cool Video: Parasitic Mind Control
Last Updated on Wednesday, 29 September 2010 05:45 Written by DarkKnightH20 Thursday, 30 September 2010 10:00
That’s right. Another video about parasites and snails. This time ants are also involved and the parasite in question is the liver fluke. In this video, ants consume snail slime that is full of liver fluke eggs. It burrows into the brain of the ants, and then is capable of controlling them. It won’t bother controlling the ants unless a certain predator shows up that is a suitable host, in which case the parasite begins its mind control and forces the ants to move to areas in which they’ll be consumed. This results in the parasite reaching the predator’s liver, where it lives the rest of its life. In the video below’s case, a cow is the victim.
Cool Video: Snail Zombies
Last Updated on Wednesday, 29 September 2010 05:45 Written by DarkKnightH20 Wednesday, 29 September 2010 05:25
Like Zombies? Me too. Like Snails? Who doesn’t! Oh…Most people? Okay. Well, check out this fascinating video on “Snail Zombies”! It actually sounds way cooler than it is. Basically, it’s about a parasite that is spread from birds poop to snails and back again to birds. It causes the snail’s eye stocks to puff up and look like worms and the parasite even seemingly starts to control the snail by forcing it to move in areas that will make it visible to birds. Long live the snail zombies!
3D Model Printer
Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 September 2010 05:47 Written by Enki Monday, 20 September 2010 09:48
This video is in Japanese, because that’s where this printer originates from, however you do not need to understand its language or its game show to marvel at the technology of printing 3D models. Yes, printing. This is the Z Printer 450.