The Project Wonderful script is collecting wrong info of the ad clicked by blog’s visitors. This is not really a big problem. I just don’t have ideas on what to write.

By the way, Project wonderful is a advertising network where advertisers bid for the ad spot offered by a particular ad publishers.

Here’s what I did before discovered this bug.

I am using the Top Blog (.com.ph) ranking website when hopping from one blog to the others. The first blog that I visited is the Blog of Sir Manuel Villoria. On his “$100 Dollars A Day” post, I found a comment of Jan Alvin asking Sir Villoria a help to increase his own blog. I checked Jan Alvin’s blog by clicking the link posted.

At Jan Alvin’s blog, I found the ad of Bro. Macuha which was served by the Project Wonderful. When I clicked the ad, I found out that I was sent to the address as shown on the screenshot below (boxed with red color):

The address tells the “Project Wonderful redirect script” this number  11385969 which is the ad number of Brother Macuha’s ad and the address http%3A//www.manuelviloria.com/archives/100-dollars-a-day/ which is the referrer’s address.

The ad that I clicked was actually displayed at the Blog Tambayan of Jan Alvin, however, the address collected by the Project Wonderful as the source of the click was the post of Sir Villoria, “$100 Dollars A Day.”

Talking about the Project Wonderful, I already changed the banner displayed at the header part of this blog.

Previously, I was displaying the 436×60 ad of Adbrite. My income to this ad (adbrite) is much better compared to my income when I was still displaying the Bidvertiser’s 468×60 on this spot. The only problem of Adbrite’s 468×60 is that it displayed ads of the Dating and Adult websites. So, got no choice but to stop using Adbrite ad on this blog. I better not to earn money than to promote real adult or dating websites.

Almost everyday, phishers are sending me phishing emails. But now, with the team work of Paypal, eBay and Gmail, Paypal users using Gmail emails will now be safe from phishers.

I was once fooled by this kind of emails (phisher’s email). I thought the message telling me that my account had been changed to “unverified” status is true and that I needed to verify it again. I clicked the supposed link to Paypal website from the phishing email and then logged in to Paypal from the fake Paypal homepage. The result is: My paypal account had been stolen. Well, I was not worried with that incident because that paypal account of mine has no funds at all and was actually an unverified one.

Last July 8, 2008, the Gmail blog announced that Gmail is now capable of rejecting fake paypal or ebay emails. Emails coming from them are now signed using the DomainKeys and DKIM (Domainkeys Identified Mails) which is the ones used by Gmail in identifying legit emails. With this, Gmail users starting to the date of announcement will no longer see any fraudulent emails coming from @paypal.com or @ebay.com email (source), not even in the SPAM folder.

However, you still have to be vigilant even if Gmail is trying to secure you from phishers.

Ad: If you don’t have Paypal account yet, Sign-up Paypal accounts now here.

P.S.

I have one question in mind: Should paypal users using Yahoo Mail need to change their email from Yahoo Mail to Gmail for their paypal accounts?

Kontera recently launched their new product called, “Kontera Hybrid“. It works the same as their original content-link ads but differs on the content of the ad shown.

To understand what I am saying, just take a look at the screenshot below. That’s the original ad served by Kontera.

What has been shown on that box is purely the ad of the advertiser. Now, take a look at the screenshot below. That’s the ad served by Kontera’s new product, “Kontera Hybrid”.

In the Kontera Hybrid ad, there are actually two ads shown: (1) Your website content - Related Content; (2) The ad of the advertiser - Advertisement.

With the Kontera Hybrid, you are actually giving 2 choices to your visitors: (1) let them stay in your website by offering them the related pages; (2) let them check the advertisers landing page. However, according to the email sent to me by the Kontera Publisher Services Manager, Kontera Hybrid offers not only the related content of your webiste but also offers related content from the web.

Additionally the Hybrid serves related content from the web, thus providing your users with highly relevant information.

But I think, it will be better if it will offer only related content of the website not of the web.

The Kontera Hybrid is really better compared to the old Kontera ad that this blog is currently using. It doesn’t only give us the opportunity to earn money but it will also give us the chance to increase the time spent by our blog’s visitors, and to increase the number of pageviews that our visitors did while staying here in our blog.

We’ll just wait for the time Kontera will open the “Kontera Hybrid” to all Kontera Publishers because currently Kontera are picking websites that will run the Kontera Hybrid.

For more info about it, please visit Kontera Hybrid page.

I failed to verify my PayPal account using the Value MasterCard of Metrobank. But with my EON Card from Unionbank, my PayPal account finally became “verified.”

What should I do next? Maybe, I will try to withdraw part of the funds from my PayPal account into my EON Card.  Then after that, I will again try to withdraw the remaining funds and transfer it to my Metrobank savings account.

After publishing my post “Unverified PayPal, Received Payments“, I immediately tried again adding my EON card into my PayPal account. Finally, PayPal accepted my EON card. Then I enrolled my PayPal account into its Extended Use program to lift the limitations set by PayPal into my account. PayPal debited $1.95 from the funds of my EON Card. So the PhP3,000.00 in my EON account was deducted by the PhP-equivalent of $1.95.

Just like what Oliver suggested, I used the mail function of the CyberAccount service of the Unionbank to contact the customer service of the bank for the EON Card and asked them for the PayPal Extended-Use Number. As of writing this post, there was no response yet from them.

Unverified PayPal, Successfully Debited

I know it’s obvious that it’s my first time to use PayPal for online transactions. So, I was curious if an unverified PayPal account can really be used to buy anything online. I tried it in buying ZP (zero points) for my character in the ZERO Online game. Well, the process was smooth and I successfully purchased 1,380 zp for $15.99.