Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
I was reading an article entitled, “Mac fanboys should get a life and some Windows 7 common sense” today and came across a line that piqued my interest. The line was this: “Vista was a Windows failure.”
When I read that line, I stopped cold for a second or two. I started thinking and asking myself silly questions, like, “Gee, I’m working on Vista right now. What’s wrong with it?” and “Why is it that when ever I read something about Windows Vista, it’s negative?” and “Why do I feel like every computer I go near that has Vista installed on it is going to blow up like a giant stink bomb?” Seriously, I am typing on a machine running Windows Vista right this very moment and the world is okay.
I am not simply sticking up for Microsoft, although I was just saying a few days ago that it wouldn’t really matter what position someone takes, I am bound to take the opposite one. I am a debater by nature and right now Vista is the underdog. So there you are.
I will tell you this, I absolutely hate Internet Explorer. It doesn’t matter what version comes out, it pains me to open the program. Maybe it’s because it is excruciatingly slow. It’s not only slow to browse web pages, it’s also slow to just open and run. I read a comparison between the latest versions of IE, Firefox and Chrome the other day. They said that speed was generally the same among all three applications. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. I was like, “What planet are you from?” I only use IE for one thing now and I don’t look forward to it.
I also hate ActiveSync. I used to use it to sync my Treo with Outlook. It was such a waste of time. How many times can a person sever and restore the relationship between the phone and the computer? My fingers used to hurt from crossing them so much.
This brings me to the last thing (I think) I don’t like from Microsoft…and that is Windows Mobile. When I was using Windows Mobile on that Treo, I must have given that phone a hard reboot hundreds of times. It pushed me into the arms of Blackberry, where I have been warmly embraced ever since. I have had my Blackberry for about two years now. Do you know how many times I had to reboot the phone? Once. That’s right. I had to reboot the phone once since I got it and that was just last week and the problem wasn’t even with the phone. It had to do with a Google app that had a bug. Now that’s good.
So, back to my original question. What in the world is wrong with Vista? It is just that there were some compatibility issues when it first came out? Does it have to do with usability issues? Do people dislike the little box that pops up when they have to install or uninstall software?
Since I really don’t know the answer and really have only had a few problems with Vista, I decided to do a little Google search. Here are some sites that offered me some answers:
- The top five reasons why Windows Vista failed
- Microsoft admits Vista failure
- Why Vista failed – suicide by not fearing Linux enough
I guess there are some legitimate reasons why people are a little ticked off. Especially when the company that made the software admits it didn’t work out. I seem to think they are just pumping up Windows 7 though. You know, if you say your previous product (which is naturally dying off soon anyway) was so bad, it makes people want your new product that much more. “Gee, this new Windows 7 must be really GREAT!!!” Honestly, if you want to beat up on a version of Windows, you should have beat up on Windows 98. I am still having shivers from that one. Want to talk about blue screen?
I gotta tell you something. Maybe a lot of the people who are complaining about Vista are open source users. Over the last year, I have actually transitioned myself to use more open source programs than traditional ones. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. I use a few though. I really like what I use. Most of them are smooth, lightweight, fast and have frequent updates. I can’t wait for the day that I have the guts to actually switch to an open source operating system. That probably won’t happen for some time because I am not one to sit and struggle with configurations or trying to see what works with what. I am impatient. If it doesn’t work quickly, it gets uninstalled.
Here’s a question – What has Vista done to you? I would like to hear from real people with real problems. I’m sick of the biased bloggers out there who now have a venue to talk smack. I don’t believe any of them. The problem is, many people do. So, let’s have it.
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Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Obama wants to know: Why open source?
President Barack Obama is a smart guy. Where others zig, he zags. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that he’s been asking around about the benefits of open source, according to Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, who has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source.
10 Web Sites That Will Matter in 2009
You’ve probably never heard of many of them, but chances are you’ll be using some of these Web sites by the end of this year.
Obama inauguration marks new chapter for digital media
On March 4, 1901, a lone cameraman in the employ of Thomas A. Edison was dispatched to capture the swearing in of William McKinley. To posterity he delivered a total of 44 seconds of grainy footage showing a white-haired man on the Capitol steps solemnly, if indistinctly, raising his right hand.
Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows
Can a dedicated Windows user make it for two weeks using only Linux? Preston Gralla tried it and lived to tell this tale.
10 Online Learning Tools for Students
Second semester has started and many students went back to college. If you are one of them check out this list of tools, it might help you with your studies. All applications are web based, simple to use and free.
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008
This is a follow up post to my “Sudden Drop In Google Ranking post.
This morning, I checked the ranking of the website in question. To my surprise, the site had again ranked number 4 in the Google Search Engine Results. This was most definitely good news. In fact, all key phrases now ranked on page one of the Google SERPs.
I can only hope this persists. So, what did we do? Here is a short list:
- Noticed the website had dropped in Google ranking.
- Took a unique phrase from the website homepage and searched Google using quotes, “like this.”
- Found a direct copy of the website and discovered it had been “Proxy Hijacked.”
- Found IP address of website that Proxy Hijacked our website and blocked it using the .htaccess file.
- Submitted a “Reconsideration Request” to Google.
After about a week and a half, our website had regained its ranking in Google.
I read a long article about Proxy Hijacking and it mentioned that Google had fixed the problem. If this was the case with my friend’s website, this certainly isn’t true. While I can not be totally sure Proxy Hijacking caused this case of Google ranking loss, the facts seem to lead down this path.
What is my advice to you? Check either Google or Copyscape once a month to see if someone has taken text or Proxy Hijacked your website.
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Sunday, September 21st, 2008
We have no shortage of ideas when it comes to making money on the internet. If you would ever like to discuss them, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. We will surely reply…simply because we love this stuff.
Now, I am generally going to talk about business ideas we wouldn’t get into for one reason or another, but rest assured, we have seen these type of ventures make money with very little start up cost. The reason I am only going to talk about ideas we won’t do is because we need to have some sort of competitive edge in the industry. We do a lot of profitable things “behind the scenes” to keep those prying eyes away. I guess you could call this the free stuff.
This idea is basically creating templates for successful web applications. If you are into launching websites, you probably are aware of the issues you can have when it comes time to make your new website look presentable. You know as well as I do, many of the web’s best applications come with a “bare bones” template and it’s up to the template designers to pretty these sites up.
Just to give you an example, I was looking for a premium Wordpress template a few days ago. I came across a few websites that had some good ones, but the designs fell off a cliff when I got to the second page of Google results. Actually, now that I think about it, there are only two design firms I am aware of that I would actually get my credit card out for.
So, knowing that there are about a zillion popular web applications out there and knowing that there is a demand for premium templates, don’t you think if would be a good idea to make some money while the opportunity is staring you in the face?
Ok, so how do you do it when you have absolutely no design experience? That’s easy. The internet is full of awesome design firms based in Russia and India. Get in touch with them, lay out your plans, have them complete the projects, but be sure to get the license to resell the end product. Then, start up your own blog with all your designs and get ready to sell. Open up a store front that sells digital media and do a little SEO. By the time you are done, you’re in business.
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Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Do you remember my article from yesterday about the sudden drop in Google search ranking for my friend’s website? Well, I just can’t stop thinking about it.
From what I have been reading, it seems as though my conclusion may be correct. At least I am hoping it is. If I ever conclude anything semi-concrete while thinking about Google, it’s a good day for me.
Ok, I found this very helpful and thorough website that pretty much described the exact problem my friend is having. It’s titled “Google Proxy Hijacking” and tells the whole story.
Here is what struck me as I think about this some more.
- My friend’s website has been live since 2004.
- The site seemed to be in the Google sandbox for the entire 4 years.
- For his most competitive keywords, he was ranking past page 20 on Google.
- About two months ago, he made some changes to the homepage copy as well as an HTML overhaul.
- About a month after that, the site ranked number 3 for his most competitive keywords.
- The site ranked on page 1 of Google for about a month.
- The site now sits at page 25 for its most competitive keywords.
Here is my theory. I think the website has been proxy hijacked for a number of years. This is what caused the poor rankings for such a long time. When the homepage text and HTML changes were made about 2 months ago, Google visited the site and found it unique. Google ranked the site well, due to this new unique content. During the month, Google noticed the proxy website was now a duplicate of my friend’s website once again and dropped the website’s ranking.
Does that make sense? From what I read on the website I linked to, it does.
Here are the similarities with what we are experiencing and what the author wrote on the other website:
- My friend’s website has never been banned.
- We did a quoted Google search for supposedly unique content on my friend’s website and a proxy website showed in the search results.
- The proxy URL looked like this: proxysite.com/cgi-bin/pxy/nph-pxy.pl/000010A/http/www.friendssite.com/
- The proxy site was an exact duplicate of my friend’s website.
Now, I am not sure if this is what caused my friends ranking to drop, but all the factors are there. The keywords we are talking about are very competitive, but the fact that his site showed so well in the search results for a month shows me that the potential is there.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
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Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
There may be cases when you would like to see what your webpage HTTP headers look like. Why? Well, because they are kind of important. As Wikipedia states, the HTTP headers define what the returned data looks like.
Still you ask, “Why in the world do I care about that?” Ok, I’ll keep going. The main reason I look at the HTTP headers is to find out what the HTTP status code is. The reason the status code is important to me is because this is the code the search engines use for a multitude of things.
Let me give you a little example, and this related to my previous post regarding the sudden drop in Google rankings. As I was doing research into what the problem may be for this particular website, I came across an issue where someone had recently put custom “404 Not Found” error pages up on some of their websites. Everyone knows that custom “404 Not Found” error pages are cool, but what some people don’t know is that if those 404 error pages show a “200 OK” (successful HTTP requests) code, the site may be in big trouble, SEO-wise. The reason for this is because there are going to be many “404 Not Found” error pages on a dynamic website. If you have your custom “404 Not Found” error page showing a “200 OK” response code, the search engines will think that all the instances of this page are duplicate. You know as well as I do, that spells trouble.
What’s worse is if you set your homepage as your “404 Not Found” page. Your homepage is going to return a response code of “200 OK.” That’s not good, because now you have multiple instances of your homepage…all duplicate content.
It’s my opinion that the search engines are smart enough to figure this out. The page (such as your homepage) with the highest Pagerank will prevail. Still, I have some websites that I am working on that have multiple instances of the homepage and they all have Pagerank, which isn’t good, because the duplicates are taking the Pagerank from the real page. Now, again, that’s my opinion.
Here are two tips:
- How to check your HTTP headers – visit this website or just Google “Website header check”
- How to set a particular page as your “404 Not Found” error page in your .htaccess file – Just place this code in the file: “ErrorDocument 404 /404.php” without the quotes. The 404.php file is the actual error page in this case.
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Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
Matt Cutts 3 Step Process to Building a Really Good Site
This post is a combination of transcribed content from video recorded at a PubCon 2007 evening session that featured Matt Cutts, my organization of that content, and related resource links for websites or articles Matt spoke about during his presentation.
The offices of today’s leading internet companies
Charl’s post showcases some really innovative workspaces at some of the hottest Internet companies today. These workspaces are generally informal and designed to bring people together rather than keep them locked away in their small, grey cubicles.
The Twice Shy Entrepreneur
A number of venture capitalists I’ve spoken with have said that too many “old guard†entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it’s hurting their startups.
Top 10 Worldwide Rising Search Terms – Google
Earlier this week Google released the fastest rising search terms in the US. I have received the fastest rising search terms Globally from Google and there are some interesting conclusions to point out.
Facebook Wakes To Find Its Members Making Money – G-A-S-P!
Looks like Facebook does nont like people making money off their own profiles.
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Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
I was doing a little research this morning on search engine ranking factors and came across a great web page.
The page is pretty good. I read it almost to the bottom (it’s kind of long). If you are into SEO, this should do you some good. Here, check out the first line…
This document represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization.
Now, that is something that might help your website.
Here is my favorite line. Paul should get a kick out of this. It pertains to HTML validation…
Validation? Please, oh please, make it go away. Validation zealots just plain freak me out. Walking under ladders, breaking mirrors and stepping on cracks probably has more influence on your SERPs than validation.
I like that one.
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Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
I thought this was interesting. I just found this article on Digg.
The article lists the top 25 eBusiness websites based on a few factors. I like this list, because I have visited a few of these websites. I do get a little jealous because I hate to see these huge numbers from other websites than my own. I mean, hey, more power to ya’, but still, it’s not me. Oh well.
Here is the list of the most popular eBusiness websites. I have probably visited the top six at some time or another.
If you are into SEO, eBusiness and things having to do with being a webmaster, you might want to bookmark this.
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Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
Yesterday, I was updating my website sitemaps in Yahoo! Site Explorer and came across a post in their blog called, “Webmasters Can Now Auto-Discover With Sitemaps.”
This got me thinking, so I did a little more homework. Basically, this semi-new feature allows search engines to auto-discover website’s sitemaps. The syntax looks like this…
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
All you have to do is to add this line to your robots.txt file, or course, with your URL inserted instead of the example one above. This helps, because there are many search engines that now recognize Google sitemaps, but have no idea where yours is. Ask.com is a big one.
I found some resources and decided to list them here for you…
- Sitemap hint in robots.txt
- Sitemaps XML format
- What’s new with Sitemaps.org?
- Robots.txt Checker
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