Image via Wikipedia
Not only is he pregnant but he’s having 70 babies! That’s not humanly possible you say? Well you’re right, the father in question here is a Weedy Sea Dragon at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. If you’re in Atlanta you should swing by and take a look at this amazing father and all the other wonderful exhibits, if you aren’t in Atlanta then you can still swing by the aquarium website to learn more and see a video.
I was a little hesitant to install the Disqus comment system, but I took the plunge to see how I liked it and I find many of the features so helpful and superior to Wordpress’s native comment system that I’ve decided to make the switch permanent. The Disqus dashboard, the universal login for all other sites using Disqus, and the ability to reply and delete comments by responding to the notification e-mail are all major reasons that I’ve decided to stick with the switch. There were two concerns that I had that almost had me hit the uninstall:
1. SEO - I’m not an expert in SEO but I have explored the basics and have seen the value that comments on a post can add to your search ranking, so I was concerned about losing that traffic source. In looking into the subject this issue was one that many bloggers had expressed and is one that Disqus is taking seriously. For Wordpress users, the Disqus plugin uses their API and there doesn’t seem to be a problem. I did a little experiment to make sure that the Disqus comments are being indexed correctly, and while I can’t say they have the same value as a Wordpress comments, what I see is good enough for me:
Wordpress comment w/ #1 rank from my post helping people having trouble opening files with an .efw extension:
Disqus comment w/ #1 rank from my interview with Profy VP, Svetlana Gladkova:
Obviously not heavily searched terms, but it’s what I could quickly pull from my existing comments, I encourage you to try the same thing for yourself. You’ll also note that there is no duplicate content from Disqus showing in the searches.
2. Not Hosting Comments - The problems with not hosting your own comments were made clear this past week as a database error at Disqus made all comments unavailable for a short time. Hopefully this point will be moot in a month or so as Disqus implements the export to Wordpress feature that’s in the works. If Disqus goes down, you’ll still have all the data. It will be a huge reduction in risk and should help sway those bloggers who aren’t quite sure about making the change.
Image by Dekuwa via Flickr
My man on the inside has reported that the 3G iPhone was announced today to great fanfare. A few quick points:
- 8GB 3G iPhone - $199
- 16GB 3G iPhone - $299
- Small Battery (in size)
- 5 hours Talk time
- Real GPS instead of cell phone triangulation
- Many more countries
- Available July 11th
I also hear that it was a great keynote and one of the biggest cheers went up when India was announced as one of the new countries where the phone would be available.
See Also: More pictures and Live Blog
There should be a drop in price on ebay for the 1st generations soon: Read the rest of this entry »
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Image by aqhong via Flickr
Since participating in RSS Awareness Day I have found myself much more aware of the lack of RSS! There are so many things that are pushed to me by e-mail that I would rather have the option of pulling by RSS reader. I know both technologies have a push and a pull aspect but the bevy of e-mail notification tools make e-mail the pushier option of the two. I’m not after a mass switch here but options, give me more options! Anything on the web that can change should have an RSS feed available.
Here are some advances I would like to see:
- Social Networks - RSS is starting to show up more, but what these networks need are the options to filter by each item that can be updated and to create multiple feeds. For example if you are on Facebook you should be able to subscribe to an RSS feed(s) that you set up from your newsfeed. You might want one feed for everything and I might want everything in one feed except to peel off status updates to second feed.
- A widely implemented SRSS (Secure RSS) - Feeds of from your bank, credit card companies, and investment firms are among a few useful places for Secure RSS feeds, there are any number of other uses including private corporate feeds. If there is one single item needed to push RSS more to the mainstream, this is it.
- Advertisements - The ability to mass ignore posts in RSS also makes it the perfect vehicle for the spammy type e-mail services you may tolerate. I like to see what Dell has for sale and the current prices on all the random computer gear at the new CompUSA.com, but I delete those e-mails unread for the most part, it would be much better to scan them and trash them in bulk in an RSS feed.
- DRSS (Dynamic RSS) - I don’t know if this is a coined phase or not, but this is a feature that’s just starting to pop up and that I hope to see a lot more of, an RSS feed that builds itself from a site’s content and your interests. I currently get an e-mail from Bankrate.com when they write about 529 college savings plans, make this an RSS feed for me instead! Call it filtering or call it search, either way you’re making the feed dynamic for my interests. With RSS bloat and purges this type of focused RSS will keep me reading and less frustrated.
These are my major wishes for RSS, what are yours?
Image by lloydi via Flickr
CA Internet security and I haven’t gotten along very well in the past and my attempts to get rid of it were just a continuation of the same problems. Previously I had had problems getting a Removed by HIPS FW error on webpages and that led to me researching the efw file problem that so many people were having. Well, the next and hopefully final problem I’ve had is when trying to uninstall. I was signed in as the administrator but still got a W9011 error claiming I didn’t have the correct permissions and giving me a registry key.
It’s pretty easy to give yourself the correct permissions, but we do have to dive into the registry so you’ll want to be very careful and change only the items that are listed in the error message (or 10 messages as mine ended up)
Here’s what you need to do to fix the problem
- Run the uninstall and leave the error message up on the screen
- Click on the Start Button and the Click ‘Run’ and type ‘regedit’ and press enter
- You should now see the registry editor
- Find the correct registry key (this is set up like normal folders so just navigate like you would in the windows file system
- Right-click and select permissions
- Click on your user name
- Check the Full Control box and apply
- Close the error and rerun the uninstall process
- Repeat as needed for more error messages
Image via Wikipedia
If SEO, or search engine optimization, is of interest to you then you probably saw the recent Google blog post Introduction to Google Search Quality, if you didn’t then take a look - one of the most interesting parts of the announcement was this paragraph that breaks down some of the tools that Google uses to rank search results:
The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system. Other parts include language models (the ability to handle phrases, synonyms, diacritics, spelling mistakes, and so on), query models (it’s not just the language, it’s how people use it today), time models (some queries are best answered with a 30-minutes old page, and some are better answered with a page that stood the test of time), and personalized models (not all people want the same thing).
As a searcher this just means that Google is trying it’s best to get you the best results it can. As a new blogger this means that you should really spend your time writing quality content and think about SEO later because until your site and posts get some age and respectability, you’re just not going to get great ranking. For the more established bloggers and SEO experts this sounds like Google gently trying to sway people away from schemes with a firm statement that Google is interested in the best content for the query, and if you can deliver then you’ll get the best rank.
I don’t think that anything ground breaking was revealed in this post no matter how much coverage it’s been getting, but I did notice one link into the article that peaked my interest, and that was someone who worked on the search team posting on their personal blog. Who better to get ideas about SEO from than someone who works on the team? And even if they aren’t telling any secrets on their own blogs, then maybe their site source will shed a little light on the subject. This particular search team member’s blog was a little used and fairly barebones install of Wordpress that offered no insights, so I went looking to the only other source I could think of, Matt Cutts.
Matt works for Google and is well known for his SEO expertise and antispam work. I expected a search on Google SEO to put Matt at the top of the list and figured that if you looked at Matt’s blog and his source you could probably get some great tips (I’ll leave this as an exercise to the reader) One surprising thing popped up on those results - at the time I ran the search Matt is listed after a Google help page on the subject and by a site titled Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist. A page that lists many of the top confirmed SEO tips and tricks along with the rumors that seems to have some backing. Any site that outranks Matt Cutts on a Google SEO search is certainly doing something right so take a look and I’m sure you’ll learn something useful!
Some sad news from Wesabe this week, CEO Jason Knight is stepping down to care for his new son:
If you follow Wesabe on Twitter, you know that a few weeks ago, Jason Knight, our CEO, and his wife Jane welcomed a new son into their family. Unfortunately, their son was born with a serious respiratory disorder, and has been in and out of intensive care since his birth. While the prognosis for his long-term health is good, he has required and will continue to require very close care for a period of years. The amount of care and attention Jason’s son and whole family need at this point have led Jason to decide that he must resign from his position at Wesabe and focus on his son’s health.
You can read more on Wesabe’s blog. I’m sure this was probably one of the hardest decisions Jason has had to make in some ways, and the quite the easiest in others. It’s a brave and noble thing to do and Jason and his family will be in my prayers. I briefly met Jason on my visit to Wesabe last month and he immediately comes across as a kind and good natured man, I have no doubt that his presence will be a nurturing and comforting presence for his new son.
Wesabe will be in good hands as Marc Hedlund steps in as interim CEO. I know Marc stays very busy already and I wish him well as he takes on the CEO responsibilities. I have no doubts that the wonderful staff of Wesabe will pull together and support both Marc and Jason.
