Recently my Internet connectivity has been shotty at best. I use Comcast for an ISP and normally I would assume their service is fine. But Murphy's Law rears it head once again...


For the past few months I have noticed that my internet access/connectivity has been going down for a few hours each day. The times vary, sometimes I am in the middle of something and it goes out, sometimes I am sleeping or out and don't know when it went out. When I wake up and my internet is out I have no way of knowing when it went out so I can't calculate the actual outage time.

Remember folks, I PAY FOR AN ENTIRE MONTHS ACCESS, I should receive the service I pay for!

At anyrate, I needed a way of calculating how much time their service was out so I could begin calculating how much I should deduct from my monthly payment. My solution was a quick script I wrote that:

1) Pings both Google and Yahoo
2) If one of those can be found it writes a 1 to a results file
3) If neither can be reached then we assume no internet connectivity and writes a 0 to the results file.
4) It runs this check once a minute
5) The results file is date stamped for reference

Example: You open the results file and count 120 0's. This means that for 120 minutes there was no connectivity.

Notice in the below screenshot of the results file, I can tell exactly what minute I lost connectivity. In this case it was the 767th minute of the day.


I) This code could easily check more remote sources before deciding on outage.
II) One could easily add a function that automatically counts the 0's in the desired file and display/log the output in easy to read format.
III) This code was written in Perl on Linux. Windows users may need to comment/un-comment some of the code...read the code.



I may write a real windows version, maybe even a GUI program if there is a demand for such...

#!/usr/bin/perl
                                             
# ICMv2 - Internet Connection Monitor v2                                                                
# For testing connectivity outages  
# Published by Tropical PC Solutions

use strict;
use POSIX;

# Verify results directory, if it is not found then create one
check_dir();

# Run in a continuous loop...
while(1){

 # Attempt connection to both Google and Yahoo, write the results 
 # to 'check' files. If you run linux this section can be edited 
 # out to avoid writing data to disk. Windows users still may
 # need to edit the below system call ? ping and grep args
 #system('ping yahoo.com -c1 > yahoo.results; grep "received" yahoo.results > check.yahoo');
 #system('ping google.com -c1 > google.results; grep "received" google.results > check.google');
 # Grab the size of the 'check' files. 0 size = no connection
 #my $google = -s "check.google"; my $yahoo = -s "check.yahoo";

 # The above system call and file operations can be edited out and 
 # the below code can be used if you are running most linux pc's
 # Windows does not support `backticks` :(  try system()
 my $google = `ping google.com -c1 | grep "received"`; 
 my $yahoo = `ping yahoo.com -c1 | grep "received"`;

 # Write the results to a date-stamped text file
   my $datestamp = strftime("%Y-%m-%d",localtime) ;
 my $results = "results/".$datestamp.".txt\n";

 # If connection was possible with either Google or Yahoo then Internet is active
 if ($yahoo != 0 || $google != 0){
  open (FILE, ">>$results");
  print FILE "1\n";
  close (FILE); 
 }
 # If Both 'check' files (or $variables) contained zero data 
 # neither site was available i.e. No Internet
 else {
  open (FILE, ">>$results");
  print FILE "0\n";
  close (FILE); 
 }
 # Repeat in 60 seconds. Run checks once a minute
 sleep(60);
}

sub check_dir(){
 my $dir = 'results/';
 unless(-d $dir){
  mkdir $dir or die;
 }
}

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We have launched a new widgets site called NoBull Widgets. We hope you make use of this new project and we welcome your input as always.




NoBull widgets is our latest project. All new widgets we make or host will be via this domain. We have some pretty good ideas we plan on rolling out within a month or two and a members area. The members area is currently a work in progress.
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Today we released a new widget that displays a live weather map and an option to view a larger map. To get this widget click here.

Get this widget at NoBull: Click here Get this widget for iGoogle:

NoBull widgets is our new sister site we plan to use to host our widgets and iGoogle gadgets. To visit our main domain click here. We will not be moving our TPCS widgets to NoBull, we will simply host all new widgets on the new domain. [Read more ...]

Yesterday I received the below email from Google. I was curious if any other Adsense publishers received this letter, and if so, do you plan on attending?


Hi,

As an AdSense publisher, you've been part of a media revolution that has allowed tens of thousands of online publishers to create businesses powered by interactive advertising.

Together with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), we'd like to invite you share your AdSense experience and story at a special national event on June 9th and 10th. Political campaigns have been launched at the federal and state levels to seek government regulation of many of the core processes and technologies that support interactive advertising. We believe this regulation will have a disproportionately negative impact on publishers like you.

As a result, the IAB is organizing a Small Publisher Fly-in in Washington D.C. to give you an opportunity to advocate for your business and the industry at large in front of Congress. During this two-day event, you'll meet with industry leaders, Congressmen, and members of the press to share your personal experience of how online advertising has impacted your life and sustained your business. We believe it's important to demonstrate that ad-supported publishers like you exist everywhere in the U.S., and your presence in Washington will be critical in conveying the deep economic value and impact of interactive advertising.

To show our appreciation for your time, those who join us in Washington will also receive a one-year small publisher membership to the IAB, a potentially valuable tool in growing your business.

If you'd like to be part of this special event or want more information, please visit http://www.iab.net/flyin or contact Chris Glushko of the IAB at chris@iab.net or 212-380-4722. We appreciate your time, and hope to see you in June.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email Preferences: We sent you this email because you have indicated that you are willing to receive occasional AdSense special offers. If you do not wish to receive such emails in the future, please visit your AdSense Account settings page under the 'My Account' tab (https://www.google.com/adsense/lang-change - AdSense login required), edit your 'Email Preference' by removing the check next to 'Google market research', and click 'Save Changes.'

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
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These days those 125X125 ads are very popular with bloggers from all niches. I don't understand why Google and other larger ad networks don't make obtaining and placing these ad units easier. For instance, If you have an Adsense account you can use Google's Ad manager to build a large square ad which contains 4 125X125 units. This is a great feature, but a bit too involved for those new to online advertising. This is where ClixGalore can help...


If you are looking to set up those 125X125 ad units on your blog and are having trouble locating a good network to obtain them from, then I would recommend Clix Galore. They have just what you need!

You have the option to choose to promote service/products based on a sales or leads option (see below image)


If you look around you can really find some great deals to promote and make some decent money while doing it! So, if you are looking for those 125X125 ad units then check out Clix Galore.

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From time to time we run across a book that we feel needs to be read! This is most certainly one of those books...

The Tropical PC Solutions Featured book: Is God a Mathematician If you have ever wondered at the marvelous order of the heavens, the overall complexity of life and the physical laws which govern the world, then this book is a must read. I found Is God a Mathematician to be a read that was hard to put down. A powerful perspective into the realm of science (or at least scientifically based logic) meets a spiritual awareness.

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Over the years we have dealt with many advertising networks. Some with great success and others with little to none. In our dealings with Adengage we have found their product to be less than desirable in many ways. How so???


Any old ads will do...

Many ad networks such as Google and Chitika make an effort to deliver targeted ads to your visitors. This is very useful to both the visitor and advertiser. On the other hand, Adengage will display just about anything! It's true they have an area where the publisher can ask that certain topics NOT be included into their ad pool, but we found this feature to be quite buggy. For instance, we chose NOT to show ads related to health/pharmaceuticals yet we were constantly served "Colon cleansing" ads. Is this the ad service you want to deliver to your visitors?

Test new ad services on newer unestablished projects!

Considering the unpredictability of how well an ad service will perform I would recommend you test newer networks on unestablished projects. You can't be sure they will deliver what they say they will and I wouldn't test ANY new product on an established commercial site!

I would NOT run any Adengage product on ANY established commercial site. What constitutes an established commercial site? Well, if you have a site that is older than 2 years, gets millions of visits a month and generates $1000's of dollars in monthly revenue, DO NOT even think about using Adengage on that site/project!

Adengage will probably penalize you for this but I would stick to my guns! Don't ruin the credibility of a well established site to run unrelated, buggy ads!

Our Adengage test...

We placed Adengage ads (both text and image) on a few of our lesser/newer projects (including this little blog) and we were not impressed.

• Adengage ads were completely unrelated to our content even though we carefully checked the correct options in our account settings.


• Adengage gave us the lowest CPC we have seen with ANY ad network. We can't explain it, nor can we say that everyone has the same experiences, but the clicks we received while running Adengage ads were not even half of what we would receive from Google, AdBrite or Chitika etc...


• A few times that we were running the ads we noticed the arrow images that come with their text ads were dead. When I went to go to their website, the whole site was down. This happened more than once and although the ads were still being served, the images were "broken". Although this is easy to work around (download image and store on your own server), it shows the level of unprofessionalism found with Adengage.

Bottom line...Adengage rates at the bottom

We certainly can't speak for everyone, as we are sure some publishers have had a measure of success using this product and we don't want to take that away from Adengage. But in the end the facts remain:

Adengage is an inferior ad network, and a waste of time to the majority of publishers who bother to set up their ads.
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