 Christopher Butler Strategy and Resourcing Hi, I'm Chris. I've been working at Newfangled since September, 2004. | Chris Butler's Blog |
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Good Web Design According to The SEO Rapper
April 3, 2008 at 4:00 pm by ChrisThis one is my favorite- he's got the attitude right. "It's just common sense!" |
Tags: google web-development user-interface-design design video
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Video Newsletter: How to Do SEO
March 26, 2008 at 3:45 pm by Chris| Just on the off chance that you read this blog but not the Newfangled newsletter, check out Eric's latest video newsletter, How To Do SEO, Part 2, Farming vs. Hunting. It's about 15 minutes long, but well worth the time spent to watch. |
Tags: video google newfangled search
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Some Good Tech-Related Audiocasts
March 13, 2008 at 8:30 am by Chris| Here are a few links to some interesting tech-related podcasts from this week: Slate Daily Podcast: "Have People Stopped Clicking on Google Ads?" http://www.slate.com/id/2185926/ New York Times Tech Talk: Trends in Global Internet Censorship, iPhone development. http://podcasts.nytimes.com/podcasts/2008/03/12/13techtalk.mp3 Make Weekend Projects: "Make a PDA Notebook" http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/03/weekend_project_make_a_pd.html |
Tags: privacy design google software search video audio
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How to Do SEO
February 28, 2008 at 10:30 am by Chris| Eric just posted his latest newsletter, the first in a two-part series on SEO. There is a detailed video that accompanies it. Read it here. |
Tags: search strategy video google newfangled
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Gmail is Cool and All, but Man, so Much More in Russia...
February 27, 2008 at 3:00 pm by Chris...or in LEGO... ...or in sand... ...and yeah, free food, classes, laundry, massages, volleyball and what not is really cool until you realize that you're not allowed to leave the Google complex... ever... ...because when you're this cute, you couldn't possibly be evil! |
Tags: software video google
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Goodreads vs. Google Books
February 13, 2008 at 5:00 pm by Chris
Many people I know use Goodreads as a way to compile, share and review the books they've read, find out about other books, and possibly connect with other readers. I have an account, too, but just don't find myself using it much, either to connect with other readers or to find out about new books. I tend to find out about other books in three main ways: 1. from other people (in conversation, articles, and blogs), 2. from Amazon ("people who bought this book also bought..."), and 3. from browsing at my library. When it comes to the word-of-mouth referrals, I think I am just way more likely to read a book recommended by a friend or another individual I respect (like a NYT reviewer or a blogger I read) than by another Goodreads user that happened to read a book I also read. Sometimes, though, I do want to research a book online that I may have heard about from one of my three main sources. I will often search for it on Amazon first and skim through some reviews. However, I am finding myself often turning to Google Books to get even more information about the book- even being able to preview pages within it. The more I do this, the less I am using Goodreads, so I wanted to compare the two and figure out which features make one a better tool than the other. For my review, I used 'Time Travel in Einstein's Universe,' by J. Richard Gott, as an example book (I mentioned this book in a previous blog post about Mark's blog). Lastly, when you search for a book you haven't added yet to your profile, you'll tend to get many matches back if the book has multiple editions or title variances (Google consolidates the entries for you). 
Click here for full size screen capture. Google Books Google Books was initially put together as an effort to scan and index the world's books and make that information available online, rather than as an effort to build an online social community around books. This is why one of the main features of Goodreads is lacking from Google Books- the social connections made by adding 'friends' and communicating with them. However, the majority of the other features of Goodreads are also available on Google Books. Each book has a profile (see screenshot below) which displays images of its front and back cover, the title, author, publisher, publication date, library of congress categorization, page count, and isbn number. There are also links to online stores where you can purchase the book, including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Booksense.com, and Froogle. You'll also get a current price display for Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. There is also a 'Find this book in a library' link, which will query local libraries (based upon your Google account zipcode) for the book you are viewing, a feature which emphasizes the more 'academic' approach of Google Books. While Google Books lacks the 'social' features of Goodreads, like adding friends and the ability to browse their profiles, it does provide some other data which Goodreads does not. Google Books profiles will show 'popular passages,' which preview snippets of text from the book that are most often quoted elsewhere. You'll also have access to reviews of the book written by other Google users, listings of references to the book from other webpages online, listings of references to the book from other books, listings of references to the book from other scholarly works, a related books list, a 'key terms' (tags) list, and a list of other editions of the book that are available from Google. Again, these offerings cater more to an academic approach to online book research. Lastly, the search results in Google are a bit more finely tuned than in Goodreads, which makes sense given that search is the bedrock of Google. While Goodreads doesn't make the connection between various editions of a book, Google does and includes an 'other editions' link within the snippet on their search results page. 
Click here for full size screen capture. Google Books also has an additional view (see screenshot below) which allows you to preview the book you are viewing. Depending upon the book's copyright, you'll be able to view varying amounts of pages within the book. If the book is part of the public domain, you'll be able to view scans of every page of the book, and do text searches within the entire book's text. 
Click here for full size screen capture. Conclusion I'm not sure that one tool can necessarily be seen as better than the other. Examining the features of each really shows that they were created with different goals and users in mind. If the social features are what you're looking for, Goodreads is the platform for you. You'll be able to add friends, see what they're reading, discuss books, and expand your library based upon your friends' recommendations, all within an attractive 'shiny' interface. On the other hand, if you're looking for a more academically-oriented online tool (and the familiarly austere Google interface) that will give you more detailed book information and help you connect to other books based upon other user's info and other books that have been archived, but not a social network, Google Books is for you (and for me, actually). Did I miss any features of either Goodreads or Google Books? Which tool do you prefer and why? |
Tags: social-media software books google
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How Does TinyURL Work?
February 12, 2008 at 2:00 pm by Chris
Using Twitter would be next to impossible without TinyURL being built in. If you don't know what TinyURL is, it is a service that converts long URLs into short ones by creating an alias for your request. How it works is actually pretty simple. But, what I wondered is how a service like this, assuming growing popularity, could sustain itself. Wouldn't the URLs they create have to get less tiny over time? The answer turns out to be yes, but... not so much.Currently, TinyURLs are composed of six alpha or numeric characters attached to the TinyURL domain name. For example, the TinyURL for this post (I just created it) is http://tinyurl.com/2j2xr9. Because there are 36 different options (26 letters plus 10 numbers) for each character in the alias, TinyURL has up to 2,176,782,336 aliases to work with until they'll need to start using 7 characters instead of 6. According to their website, they've made more than 62 million of them so far, so it will be a while until we see that 7th character show up in our TinyURL's. After that, it will be even longer until we see 8 characters (78,364,164,096 more URL's, to be precise)... Do I have that math right? If not, I can at least pass some of the blame off on to Eric, who just figured this out with me. |
Tags: social-media software technology google
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Get Yourself Out There
February 11, 2008 at 2:30 pm by Chris
Brian Solis says that lack of comments means lack of influence, but I say don't expect a ton of comments unless you are approaching A-list (or even B-list) status. In fairness, Solis also says that "measuring the success of a blog based on the amount of comments is just lame," and I completely agree. In fact, according to Jakob Nielsen's study, 90% of online community users are lurkers, meaning they read but don't comment, while only 9% contribute a 'little' and 1% contribute actively. While this study is not specific to blog comment participation, it's likely that the principle is applicable though the numbers may have a "+ or -" factor. This means that the majority of your blog readers will probably not be commenting on your posts anytime soon.As is obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I don't get a ton of comments, so this isn't going to be one of those "I did it and so can you!" posts. Like Brian Solis says above, comments are not always going to be the best judge of the current success of a blog. However, there is always room for improvement, and as readership increases, so, too, should commenting. So, my blog has a way to go. There just is no magic wand to use to instantly get lots of traffic to your blog. There are ways to gradually increase the amount of activity on your blog, but to do it, you've got to get yourself out there. Establish Your Hub The first step is to give readers a way to find your blog. If you already have a website that gets some traffic, your blog can be integrated into your existing site's structure. If your blog is your online hub, you can use your profiles on various social networks to point readers your way (to learn more about this, see an earlier post titled Is that Really You?). Read Other Blogs to Stay Informed Next, you'll need to find and start reading other blogs that deal with the same topics that you deal with on your blog. Being familiar with the larger conversation is crucial to both gaining readers and being properly informed on those subjects that you plan to write about. Use a feed reader (we like Google Reader) to subscribe to the RSS feeds for these blogs and get into the habit of reading through your feeds daily. If you've come to the determination that blogging is important enough to your web strategy to actually create one, you'll also need to realize the importance for making time to read other blogs. Once you've done that, you'll probably find yourself asking how anyone could possibly keep up with the amount of information delivered via RSS to their computer every day. Here's how. Leave Comments, but don't spam. Finally, reading other blogs will help you stay informed, but it won't help you to get noticed. Remember, at this point, you're just lurking (not that there's anything wrong with that!). However, at some point you'll probably have something to add to the conversation that's happening in the comment threads of the blogs you're reading. That's a good thing, and you should do it. Most blogs allow you to add links to your comment, so if you have a blog post or webpage that is relevant to your comment, this is your chance to share it with the community. The more you participate by sharing insightful and valuable comments, the more you'll be able to share links without spamming the other readers of the blog. Participating in this way is crucial for developing recognized authority in regard to your area of expertise. (In the spirit of conversation, here's a link to a blog post which asks how bloggers interact with comments. The comments thread to the blog is a fairly good indication of people's varying opinions on how to interact with comment on their and others' blogs.) Then What? Once you're off and running, there are several other strategies you can employ to get a sense for how your blog is doing, including setting up an RSS feed for search results for your name or your company's name online. If your blog has become a significant part of your online strategy, being aware of your online reputation will become more and more important. It will also give you a chance to respond quickly to those blogs that have noticed and mentioned you (for positive or negative reasons). |
Tags: strategy software blogging google
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It's All About Skimming
February 7, 2008 at 11:00 am by Chris
Mark and I recently had a chat (of which you can read a transcript on his blog) about how anyone could possibly keep up with the amount of information delivered via RSS to our computers every day. Every day you gasp? How about every hour!? I mentioned to Mark that one of the most important skills to develop (I can't believe I'm calling this a skill, but...) is to be able to skim through that information well. Good skimming means that you can quickly scan an article and determine if its content is relevant to you, then either decide to read it more closely or file it away for future reference, and maybe even share it with a friend who will find it interesting while you're at it. If you can't skim well, you'll never keep up!Skimming might not be necessary if everyone blogged in the same manner. Think about it: if every blogger decided to post one substantial and high-quality post a week, readers would have more time to digest the information. We'd probably have to subscribe to fewer blogs in order to feel like we're keeping abreast of things, too. However, this is just not the reality. Even magazine and newspaper columnists, who have traditionally written daily, weekly, or monthly columns, these days keep blogs on which they post several times a day (if not several times an hour). This is is just the pace at which information moves now. However, because there is so much information being passed back and forth, it's likely that much of it won't be relevant to you. Unfortunately, you won't know one way or another unless you start sifting through it.  If you take a look at my Google Reader trends (see image above), you'll get a better sense of what I am talking about. Notice that over the last 30 days, I read (skimmed, more likely) through 4,715 feeds- that's around 157 feeds a day! You can tell from the chart that most of my feed reading (skimming, again) is done earlier in the morning. This is a good time for me to catch up on this stuff before my phone starts ringing. Good thing I'm a morning person... Also, notice that some of the feeds I subscribe to update between 10 to 40 times a day! Granted, some of them are from fulltime journalists who are paid to do it, but this gives you an idea of the pace and frequency I mentioned above. Believe me, my job keeps me plenty busy, so I don't have time to settle down and really read all of this content- and I wouldn't really want to, either. Remember, much of it is not going to be relevant to me. But, some will be very relevant to me, so if I don't skim through all of it, I won't find the 'some' that is worthwhile. 
One last point. Most people who value reading (myself included), will be initially disgusted by the notion of skimming as a means of staying informed, especially when it comes to content that is professionally relevant. In this regard I think two ideas are important. First, blog content is meant to move at a faster pace, so reading a blog post and reading a book are going to be very different experiences. Blogs will not render books (actual books or ebooks) irrelevant anytime soon. This is a good thing. While ideas can be batted around in blog posts and stimulate lots of conversation, books are still needed to present ideas in a well developed and well researched manner. Second, the accelerated pace of blog post publishing is similar to that of book publishing. In fact, statistics from 2004 show that a new book of fiction is published in the United States every 30 minutes. And that's just fiction. Only in the United States. In 2004! This is why a recent book titled How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard, shouldn't be scoffed at. Bayard points out that the only way for anyone, especially scholars, to keep up with the amount of information being put out there is to simply be aware of what's being published, because let's face it, you can't read it all. He even points out that sometimes it's more important to be aware of how a book fits in to the larger trends/mood/zeitgeist (wow I've used that word twice in one week on this blog) than to have actually read it. Have I read Bayard's book? No. ...His point, exactly! If skimming is legit for books, it had better be legit for blogs. |
Tags: software books blogging google
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Yahoosoft vs. Google?
February 6, 2008 at 9:30 am by Chris| The potential Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo is all over the 'net right
now, and I don't really have much to add to the chatter. However,
yesterday's OnPoint dealt with the subject and included commentary from
Kevin Delaney of the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Carr, and Dylan Tweney of Wired.com. You can listen to the program here. If you're unaware of this topic, watch the video below for a short overview: |
Tags: social-media software google search
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Understanding Bounce Rates
February 5, 2008 at 11:00 am by Chris| Understanding bounce rate is an important aspect of analyzing your overall statistics, especially when it comes to determining the effectiveness of an individual page. The bounce rate measures the number of visitors to a website that leave before a specified amount of time has elapsed (this time period varies among analytics tools, but typically it is 30 minutes). This means that if a user accesses your site and leaves it within 30 minutes or leaves their browser idle for that time, they will be registered as a bounce. The bounce rate for an individual page of a website is determined by the number of users that access a page and leave the site without clicking to another page within the specified time period. Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, has blogged about measuring the effectiveness of your web pages and writes: "My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis based on my experience, but hopefully it gives you a feel for what you are shooting for."One thing to keep in mind is that your expectation for meeting Kaushik's standard on any given page of your site should also be measured against the entrance sources for that page. Depending upon how a user is referred to your site, his or her understanding of the relevance of your site's content to their query will vary quite a bit. For example, if a user searches for "Chris Butler blog" and clicks the link on the search results page that leads them to my blog, it is quite possible that they will immediately leave once they realize that my blog is about web technology and strategy (perhaps the Chris Butler they were looking for is a wedding photographer). The point is that the more specific the search query, the more likely that a user will come to your page "pre-qualified" for the content he or she is about to receive and will not leave the page immediately. 
If you take a look at the image to the left, you'll see the top seven entrance sources for this blog, and the corresponding bounce rates for users that entered from those sources. Notice that users that came to my blog directly register a very low bounce rate. This is to be expected since these users know the blog and therefore know generally what information they will be getting. On the other hand, notice that users entering the blog from Google register a higher bounce rate (overall, not too low, though). This is likely due to what I mentioned above about search query specificity. In fact, one of the top search terms that lead users to my blog is "alexa above the fold," yet I only used this phrase once in my blog in a slightly peripheral comment. This means that users coming to my blog after having searched for that phrase should be expected to register a relatively high bounce rate (their bounce rate is 40%). One of the best ways that I have found to increase the number of "pre-qualified" users has been to post my blog articles to Digg. Since I've just gotten started with this, my Digg performance isn't that significant, but what has been important to me is that the users that do come to my blog via Digg register a very low bounce rate consistently. This is because Digg allows you to post a link to an article and then place it within a set of pre-defined categories. If a user clicks to your article from Digg, he or she will theoretically have at least narrowed down to a category of interest and will be "pre-qualified" for the information you provide. |
Tags: strategy software google search
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My Initial Thoughts on Persai
January 31, 2008 at 5:00 pm by Chris
This week, I heard that a new startup, Persai, was going to be opening up invite-only beta testing. While I waited for approval of my invite request, I went to the Persai blog to get any additional information I could before used it. In a post titled, "What is Persai," Ted writes:
Persai is a content aggregator that is specific to your interests. You specify a topic that you're interested in with a few words, and Persai will find new content relevant to that interest and recommend it to you. As you use Persai, it learns about you, and can better recommend content to you. Recommendations are based entirely on content, other users' feedback has no bearing on what Persai recommends to you.The Persai homepage has a more "markety" version of this explanation: "Persai is an intelligent agent who finds content that is relevant to your interests. You tell it what you're into, and it will find some stuff that you might like. The more you use Persai, the more it understands your interests. Persai recommends content for you and you alone. No other user's feedback influences its decisions."After playing with this tool a bit, I can definitely say that it has potential, though it needs work. It seems to offer similar functionality to what you can do by creating an RSS feed for Google blog search results (I wrote about this recently in Building Your Online Reputation), except that Persai's results do not seem to be limited to blog posts. 
Persai allows you to set up your interest groups by specifying any word or group of words that describe your interest. You can then label this interest. For example, I created an interest using the words "time travel, future, past, parallel universes, wormholes" and labeled it "time travel." I also set up another interest with only "web design" and labeled it "web design." I wanted to see if the results would vary depending upon how complex your word group is. Incidentally, both groups retrieved only about 4 results for each, so I set up another group with only one word, "technology," and labeled it "technology." This group retrieved about 20 results. As of this writing, the results have not grown. I'm not sure why they are so spare. I also noticed recurring urls in my results, which makes me wonder what unknown factors may skew even a general search. 
I'm not sure how Persai "learns about you." There is a feature to 'reject' a result that Persai delivers to you, but there is no indication of how this would impact future searches. Does it just remove a snippet from your results list, or does it actually affect your interest profile (similar to when you reject a song that pops up in a station you configure on Pandora)?When you set up an interest, the site takes a while to retrieve results. In fact, as of this writing, my last three entries never completed. I added two identical entries to see if they would come up with the same results, and they never got passed the "building" phase. This makes me wonder if the duplication uncovered a bug in the site. Unfortunately, if an interest entry is still "building," you cannot delete it from your profile. I also noticed that when you update the words you assemble for an interest, the results don't update or change at all. Overall, there seem to be enough significant issues with the site to hinder it's potential from shining through. Perhaps from a flurry of beta-testing activity, the site is also quite slow and I encountered many error messages as I tried to navigate through my interest groups. I'll be interested to see where this application goes, and if they expand to introduce any "social" features. |
Tags: social-media software google search
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Google and Privacy
January 31, 2008 at 11:00 am by Chris| Eric's latest WebSmart newsletter on Gmail has begun a nice little conversation about Google and privacy issues, so I thought I would throw together a few links on the subject: Wikipedia's "Criticism of Google" page This article covers the various criticisms and controversies that internet search company Google has been involved in. Read it here Google-Watch.org's list of 9 concerns Read it here CNet News on Google This article deals with the information Google collects and doesn't make public. Read it here Norwegian authorities investigate Google on privacy issues Read it here Google's Matt Cutts on Google and Privacy His personal opinion about Google and privacy, not any kind of company position. Read it here Here are some links about privacy from past Week in Review posts: Read about the FBI Wiretap being cut off after the Feds fail to pay telecom spying bills. Read about the all-seeing, all-face-recognizing, fingerprint-collecting, iris-scanning eye of our government. Then pack your bags and head for the hills! Read about Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd challenging Google to provide leadership in the digital world. Update: 02/01/2008: SSL Gmail Not As Safe As You Thought! A security researcher has found that even using SSL HTTPS to access your Gmail account -- which was touted at the time as a surefire way to protect Gmail users against attack -- is vulnerable. Read here > |
Tags: privacy technology email google
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Is that Really You?
January 29, 2008 at 9:00 am by Chris
Unlike some people I know (Able Parris), I have a fairly common name, which means that simply Googling "Chris Butler" won't retrieve any information about me among the top results. I just can't seem to compete with the Chris Butler who makes Space Art or the Chris Butler who does wedding photography in Austin... Even Mark O'Brien has this problem! But then I realized that performing well in an unqualified search (i.e. just "Chris Butler") wouldn't really be that valuable to me, anyway. What would be much more valuable would be to perform well in a slightly more specific search that is actually relevant to who I am (i.e. "chris butler web"). Contrary to common belief, achieving this is actually well within your reach.Since I am happily employed, I am not really looking to improve my standing in search results for any other purpose but to unify my online identity. However, many people will look to improve their standing in a name-based search in order to boost business, especially if their name is their brand (talk to the Chris Butler who does wedding photography in Austin- I'm sure he'd agree). The first step is to determine what your online "hub" is going to be. This could be a personal website, a particular online profile, a blog, or something else. Your hub should be the place that will have the most up-to-date information about you, as well as be the source which you keep up with most often. I chose my hub to be my Newfangled blog. The second step is to utilize social media to point traffic to your hub. If you haven't yet participated in any social media applications, now is a good time to start. Most of these applications allow you to set up a simple profile free of charge, though many offer other utilities that you might find pretty useful for connecting with others based upon interests or other common criteria. Your profile should be consistent among all your social media accounts (stick to a common username, contact details, profile photo, etc.) and should all link to your hub. I would recommend at least setting up profiles with Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Digg. Because your social media profiles will indicate your areas of interest or expertise, you should begin to see an improvement in your standing among qualified search results within a few weeks. Prior to linking up all of my social media profiles to my hub, my standing was pretty poor. Even though I've been consistently working in the web/design/development industry for years, I was nowhere to be found! However, I actually now show up among the top results for many specific searches that are actually relevant to me (i.e. "chris butler blog," "chris butler web," "chris butler design," "chris butler technology," "chris butler risd," etc.). |
Tags: social-media google search
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Sitelinks and Search Snippets Updated
January 22, 2008 at 10:00 am by ChrisIn a past post (Sitelinks and Search Snippets) I mentioned that Google was rolling out a more expanded snippet for URLs that included a mini sitemap for the URL shown. I had also mentioned that Google had not implemented control of these site links for webmasters. As of recently, this is no longer true. Eric sent me the following screenshot (see below), showing that you can now control the sitelinks using Google's webmaster tools.  |
Tags: google search
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Life in the Cloud
January 10, 2008 at 8:30 am by Chris The Cloud refers to the concept of cloud computing, which is achieved by harnessing the collective power of multiple servers to run applications and distribute information to users across the internet, rather than individual users running applications installed on their local systems. In a way, this concept is already the reality for many people who work in web-related fields- especially those who are self-employed and utilized web-based applications as a cost-saving measure. Given the availability of many web app options to replace just about every kind of productivity software on the market, cloud computing becomes just a matter of assembling and connecting various existing online services. Companies like Google and Microsoft have taken this a step further already by creating many tools that are becoming increasingly more integrated. The next step would be to fully move the operating system online, making our hardware- whether a desktop, laptop, ultraportable, phone, etc.- simply a terminal to access the cloud. Some companies are already experimenting with this (see Craythur, Desktoptwo, EyoOS, Glide, Goowy, Orca , Purefect , SSOE , XinDESK, or YouOS among others). 
In a recent interview with Wired, author Nicholas Carr commented on the gathering momentum of the cloud:
"Most people are already there. Young people in particular spend way more time using so-called cloud apps — MySpace, Flickr, Gmail — than running old-fashioned programs on their hard drives. What's amazing is that this shift from private to public software has happened without us even noticing it...Yeah. Welcome to Google Earth. A bunch of bright computer scientists and AI experts in Silicon Valley are not only rewiring our computers — they're dictating the future terms of our culture. It's terrifying...The scariest thing about Stanley Kubrick's vision wasn't that computers started to act like people but that people had started to act like computers. We're beginning to process information as if we're nodes; it's all about the speed of locating and reading data. We're transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us. .."Some people have reacted strongly to Carr's statements, but I think he's basically correct about the two general statements he made: many people are already well immersed in the cloud, and this shift in capability is affecting our thinking and behavior. Whether the effect is positive or negative, though, is certainly open for debate.
Update: 02/01/2008: Read this article from CNet.com about the future of web-based software for the workplace. 04/04/2008: Paul Boutin feels that Web-based applications are all well and good, but there's still no beating the desktop computer. |
Tags: the-future google social-media software privacy computers
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Custom Google Search Engine
January 7, 2008 at 3:30 pm by Chris
|
This is not exactly news, but Google offers a nice tool for creating 
Tags: google search
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Sitelinks and Search Snippets
December 10, 2007 at 10:00 am by Chris
Several Newfangled clients have asked recently about Sitelinks, the list of links that display below some search results in Google which often look like a mini sitemap of the site linked in the results. Google introduced Sitelinks as a snippet feature to make it easier for users to get to the pages on your site that they want. They do this by analyzing your site's structure to find simpler ways to navigate it. Currently, Sitelinks are controlled by Google alone, so there is no way for you to ensure that your site will have them in its snippet. However, a well-structured site that is fully indexable by Google will be more likely to be chosen for Sitelinks. Google has recently updated the algorithm to show up to eight Sitelinks per site, double the amount that used to display, as well as increase the number of websites that will appear in Google with Sitelinks included in their snippet. Also, Matt Cutts, of Google, has recently created a nice short video explaining the overall 'anatomy' of a search snippet. You can read his post here, or watch the video below: http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/191055117/ |
Tags: google search
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Google's Shared Stuff, etc.
December 7, 2007 at 2:30 pm by Chris| In September, Google released (very quietly) a service called Google Shared Stuff, which allows you to post and share links that you find interesting with friends or other Google contacts. Google has set up a help file to show you how to add the 'shared stuff' bookmarklet to your browser. Currently, the landing page for your Shared Stuff is lacking pretty much any structure (see screenshot below, as well as my profile page), however, there are pages set up to show the top shared stuff (sorry, no link for that one since there appears to be a significant amount of pornographic content linked on that page...), as well as stuff filtered by tag or domain.  
My honest reaction to this service is that it is not even close to being "there" yet. It is essentially a 'socialized' version of their bookmarks and notebook tool, but lacking in the interface details that the other services have. However, if it were combined with Google Bookmarks and Google Notebook, utilizing the full features of these services within a 'shared' environment, they could really have a serious competitor to services like Delicious and Diigo. |
Tags: social-media software technology google
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A Permanent Work in Progress
November 9, 2007 at 7:30 am by ChrisI borrowed the title for this post from Harry McCracken, who used it in his Techlog column in PC World's December issue. He writes:"More than any communications medium before it, the Web is a permanent work in progress that's always new." 
McCracken goes on to write how current technology is allowing for more and more connectivity throughout the world, and what that will mean for consumers and ISP's. In fact, he notes that the United States is not necessarily on top in terms of the average user's connectivity power. For example, the Communications Workers of America reports that the average American download speed is 1.9 megabits per second, far less than 61 mbps in Japan, 45 mbps in Korea, or even 7.9 mbps in Canada. However, his comment also generally pertains to the core of what the internet really is, and the reality that we confront daily at Newfangled as we develop technology for use on the web. The web is a work in progress indeed, and that means that everything we build for use on the internet is also a work in progress. Your Proximity to the 'Net
However, this potential 'omniweb' may not be such a great thing for those of us who like having some boundaries between our work and time off. I can't help but fear that someday 'not having access to my email' or 'not being in cellphone range' might not be valid reasons to not work while on vacation, or that no matter where I am in the world, I might be easily findable. I also wouldn't mind being able to escape from the ubiquity of technology every now and then, either, but from the looks of things this is going to only become more difficult. Even now, we'll soon be seeing good ol' Google at the gas pump. Helpful, yes, but just one more step towards an all-Google-all-the-time lifestyle... Your Proximity to Me Via the 'Net Another aspect to this work in progress is that because internet access is available in more places, more can be accomplished (theoretically) by more people in groups regardless of the locations of individuals. One immediate caveat I would propose is that often work relationships are enhanced by personal, face-to-face contact (see my post, 'Social Media Tools and Synthetic? Communities' for more on this). However, I also was able to work for Newfangled for an entire year while living in Penang, Malaysia, thanks to Telekom Malaysia, Skype, and my Dell laptop. Oh, and of course, the flexibility of my employers! 
Being thousands of miles away from friends, family and co-workers didn't seem so extreme because I was able to communicate with everyone so easily. I would call people using my Skype Out account and nobody ever seemed to notice. In fact, I'm not sure I ever used a landline while I lived overseas! Motoring down many streets in Penang also demonstrated to me that others were catching on, as a common sight there were many support centers being set up by companies like Dell, SeaGate, Sony, etc. (So, don't be surprised if a friendly Malaysian helps you next time your gadget's on the fritz.)This proximity idea has also enabled us to serve our clients better. We can now more efficiently work with one of our agency partner's clients, even if they are in Dublin and we are in humble little Carrboro, NC. For example, in addition to having integrated VPBX phone systems and BlackBerry's into our daily work life, we also use Adobe Connect frequently to demo our CMS to prospective clients, as well as to conduct training sessions to current clients without having to be in the same physical location. Other tools, like Mantis and DotProject allow us to maintain active projects even when the client, agency, developer and project manager are all in different places. It's Still a Work In Progress Despite all these achievements and potential, the reality is that the internet is still a work in progress. GMail will still go down sometimes. Google Maps will still not find a location every now and then, or leave you frustrated by bad directions. Facebook will reorganize your photo albums by accident. Your blog will disappear. The site you're on might not work in Internet Explorer but will work in FireFox (or maybe the other way around). Your BlackBerry just won't work when you're in the ski lodge. You will get spam. Lot's of it. Embarassing spam. Your email newsletter won't look the same in everyone's inbox. Your video might not play back perfectly. Your online store might need to be rethought now that a new payment gateway is available. I could go on and on... Suffice it to say that on the 'net you will have problems, but the point is that the internet is a work in progress and we are all participating in the effort to make it better... except for the creators of the animated mortgage ads. They are making the internet worse. |
Tags: the-future web-development social-media software google
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