CyberCoded » Ramblings

Google SearchWiki

David Cooley — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:10:45 +0000

Don’t miss the Official Google SearchWiki announcement and intro video !

The new Google SearchWiki has some pretty cool features. Although changing page rankings will not affect everyones search results it is a great way to see the notes from everyone on any given page, and this just might become as important as the rankings themselves.

Seeing live reviews of other pages will certainly have an impace how what pages I go to when conducting a search.

What are your thoughts?

My Top 5 Desktop Applications List

David Cooley — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:18:43 +0000

I rarely talk about my computer, and the reason is that I try to do as much with Web Apps as I can. On any given day I will work on 3 different computers and I have to be able to keep working without skipping a beat.

However, there are several desktop applications that I have to install to be in my zone. I have been using each one of these for as long as I can remember.

Sam Spade - Sam Spade is an integrated network query tool for Windows 95, 98, NT and Windows 2000. This tool allows me to keep several sites in the options as I am running traces, pings and whois calls.

Agent Ransack - Freeware graphical file searching that supports regular expressions for Windows. I keep a copy of all software I download, such as a copy of each Wordpress Release. With Agent Ransack I can quickly find any reference to anything I am looking for in a very large file folder.

Process Explorer - Process Explorer, also known as procexp.exe, shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. If you want to know what is using up your resources on a Microsoft OS machine, this is the best way I have found. The biggest benefit to me is the ability to shut down and process without affecting the others.

TextPad - TextPad is an award winning text editor for Windows. with powerful features that will increase your productivity. This is probably the most used tool I have. Everything I write or code gets passed through TextPad. There are so many features and reasons I could not possibly list them all.

Lynx Text Browser - Lynx is the text web browser. Recommended by Google to see what a site looks like to a Search Crawler. This package should be required of anyone who is working on website (blog) development. If you really want to know what it looks like, you have to check this out!

Google Chrome & Gmail At Odds?

David Cooley — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:31:53 +0000

I thought this was pretty funny, seems Google may need to work on some of their custom error messages.

According to this error I received, Google Chrome is not a supported browser for Google Gmail?

Gmail Canned Responses

David Cooley — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:37:02 +0000

Now this is a pretty useful addition to Gmail, Canned Responses.

If you find yourself answering the same question over and over in Gmail, you can just add a canned response and then set a filter to handle who the response gets delivered to automatically.

This is not the same thing as autoresponders, this is more fine tuned to a specific topic or person and not just an email address. Check out the blog post about it at New in Labs: Canned Responses

One thing I realized quickly, there is no obvious way to add a Canned Response?

You have to do it from a Reply window, once you activate it.

Select an email to reply to and there is a new option link to add a canned response.

Keep It Simple

David Cooley — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:45:51 +0000

Most people have heard of the old KISS Principle, Keep It Simple Stupid.

The KISS Principle should also be modified for the Internet, here are some examples:

Keep It Simple Social (Networking)
Keep It Simple SEO
Keep It Simple SEM

One of the things I have noticed over the last few years is how so many people have complicated things, especially in the SEO and SEM markets. It is not rocket science, Keep It Simple works!

Some of the most popular destinations have a very simple design. Sure its cool to have videos and flash and all the latest widgets, but there is a fine line that can cross your site over to a cluttered mess.

The ironic thing to me is that some of the worst designs are those of the MSM (Main Stream Media). They are trying so hard to give you everything on the front page it becomes a useless mess of content that is not navigable.

Keep It Simple, be social, leave comments, make organic links to things that are relevant to what you are discussing. If you are concerned with SEO, start with a basic design, the more elements that have to be crawled through, the more chance you have of having searches miss the important content that you spent your time developing.

KEEP IT SIMPLE !!

Social Media in the Workplace

David Cooley — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:20:17 +0000

While doing research recently I kept coming across job postings for different Social Media positions with larger companies. In between the lines a couple things got my attention.

Why does a Social Media person need to be in a Corporate office?
Are we already painting ourselves into a corner with the term Social Media?
When will Social Media intersect with the local presence of a company?

Possible answers:

I guess this could go both ways. Being in the office the person would know what was going on and have access to more information. On the other hand, if this is a large company with lots of locations, the corporate information might not be in tune with the local store (see #3 below).
Social Media seems to already bring to mind certain Internet locations, such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter etc… Some companies are using the term Emerging Media and that seems to elicite a broader and continually growing area.
Not sure exactly what I am thinking here, but I know what I read, see and hear online does not always match up very well in my local store. And the locals seem to be almost unaware that there is even an online presence that represents them.

And none of this even starts to scratch the surface of how smaller companies could take advantage of Social Emerging Media to help themselves.

Google Chrome Under the Hood

David Cooley — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:03:31 +0000

I can not claim to really understand the in depth processing under the hood of Google Chrome, however, I have found it interesting to watch the processes it is doing compared to FireFox.

Using Sysinternals Process Explorer makes it very clear that each tab is using an independent process space while maintaining connectivity to some global files. Hence the way that Chrome has seperate processing for each tab, yet variables are seen across the tabs such as passwords.

Search the Web

David Cooley — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:25:01 +0000

One of the things that can be a little frustrating is working with people who really don’t understand the Internet and how to use it. But, at the same time working with these same people can be a real education if we pay attention to what they are doing. My wife likes to remind me that people do not use the Internet like I do, I have too much experience and actually know too much sometimes for my own good. And the bigger problem comes in when we as technicial specialists start getting a little to secure in our knowledge. Don’t forget we all started somewhere, and we did not always understand everything we now take for granted.

With all this rolling around in my head I am always amazed to watch people search the web. Take the election news of the past week, you can bet that a lot of people will type McCainPalin.com into a search engine. My guess is that someone just bought some domains and took a guess that McCain would pick Palin as his VP. But this choice could pay for a lot of specualtion that was wrong. If you go to McCainPalin.com it is basically a one page site with an ad at the top. I would love to know what the traffic has been on this site so far.

FireFox Still Preferred Over Internet Explorer

David Cooley — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:22:05 +0000

According to several sources Internet Explorer continues to have major security holes and the fixes seem to be coming too late if at all. While Microsoft drags their feet, you can expect FireFox and Safari to continue gaining market share.

I have preferred FireFox for a long time now, mainly for the great add ons that really help in development and programming, and nothing has sold me on going back to Internet Explorer.

The surprising fact to me is how many people still use Internet Explorer over these other quality browsers, but that goes to show the power of having pre-installed software on computers. Most people fire it up, and use what is there.

How to Get Free Web Hosting

David Cooley — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:30:58 +0000

Have you ever wanted to host a lot of domains, for a little money, while still getting a solid server with great support. Me TOO !! So I did.

A couple of years ago I went searching for the best deal on web hosting. I did a lot of research and tried a lot of different systems. Although there was some bad press on them, I settled with DreamHost and I have not had to think about changing since.

I have had up to 100 domain running on my account at one time without serious problems. Oh sure, there have been a couple of times where I was down, but I was always impressed with their email support and the response time.

I also appreciate their RSS support system. You know about issues usually before there is a chance for surprises.

But the best part, I have not paid for hosting in a year !!!

DreamHost lets you make your own Discount program to give to people, the more you discount the less you earn, very simple. I have had a lot of success with a $30 discount. Their standard account is $119.40 + no setup for a year of hosting, which breaks down to $9.95 per month. I have a promo code you can use CYBER30HOSTING that will give you a $30 discount, which then breaks down to $7.45 per month. With this system you can have any commissions applied to your bill and then cash out the remainder.

One more great feature is the ability to give other people access to any part of your account. I have used this feature to help others, and it sure makes it easier on both parties.

Link : Web Hosting by DreamHost

Disclaimer : This is NOT a paid post, just something I wanted to share. And yes, if you use my coupon I do make a little money!