This week I have WordPress, bike plows, Facebook, a cat organ and more.

Enjoy!

• Facebook comments vs Blog comments – This article argues in favor of using Facebook comments instead of the WordPress comments on his blog. Right now he is using both. I wouldn’t want to replace the WordPress commenting system completely and have never wanted to rely on a 3rd party service for my comments.
• Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More – Google is now censors terms such BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload from its instant and autocomplete services. Contrary to popular opinion that are valid reason for using torrents, such as Linux distributions.
• Kill Your To-Do List – This article discusses using a single-day schedule rather than a to-do list to block out your tasks and time. I agree with this article because this is how I manage my time. I don’t, however, like the use of the word ‘kill’ in the title. We throw that violent word around way too much.
• Faversham man’s pussy cat organ – Man plays Somewhere Over the Rainbow on toy cats.
• 4 Reasons to Spring A Few Bucks For That Premium WordPress Theme – A recent study showed that a number of free themes contain security exploits in their code. This article lists other reasons why it might be better to pay a little for a custom theme.
• The Moms Aren’t Wrong: Why Planning for Children Would Make Cities Better for All US cities aren’t designed with children and the elderly in mind. If they were, they would be nicer places for everyone to live. Currently they seem to cater to that non-human being, the car.
• Facebook’s New, Simple and Essential Safety Feature – Simple instructions for using https rather than http when logged into Facebook.
• 
  Old People Dancing To Rap Music @ Yahoo! Video
• 
  Cat Fights Washing Machine @ Yahoo! Video

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 2/6/11

This week I have zombies, WordPress, carrots, Deathspank and more.

Enjoy!

• 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly) – Finally! Some good news. A zombie outbreak would fail! I’ve had zombies on the brain lately – I blame John Haydon and a book I read while on vacation called Feed.
• Farm 51 – I just found about this full urban farm just a few blocks away from me. It’s not on my usual path so I haven’t seen it yet. I am definitely going to go check it out.
• Process and Scope for 3.1, Part I – Information about WordPress 3.1 due to be released in December.
• Baby Carrots: The New Junk Food – I guess it’s good if it gets people to eat carrots rather than chips but I just don’t get why people need to have something marketed and packaged like junk food to want to eat it.
• Vox is closing on September 30, 2010 – I’ve only known of one person who had a blog on Vox but if you are using it, you will want to export your data and get it into WordPress before the end of the month.
• Reduce, Reuse and Recycle Your Work – I’ve been trying to get better about this. I do write blog posts for questions that I am frequently asked and then refer people to the post and for things that I am always looking up. Once I write a post I tend to remember how to do it.
• How could I not want to play a game called Deathspank? It’s like Diablo meets Monkey Island, which might not mean anything to you ;-)
  

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(Anti) Social Lists 9/5/10

Recently Google announced that page speed will affect google page ranking. Matt Cutts, from Google, has assured us that this will only affect 1% of the sites being ranked and that for most of us this will be a non-issue. But we can still get all stressed out about it ;-)

One thing I do have an issue with is that frequently the cause of a slow loading site is Adsense, Google Analytics, and Google Maps. So, for google to take site speed into account when it is frequently their own scripts slowing things down seems a little hypocritical. If you want a 100% page speed score, then don’t use google’s stuff (or facebook’s bling either but that will the subject of another post).

So, even though most of us won’t fall into the 1% that this affects, it is still a good idea to test your site speed and to try to improve it. Not for google’s sake though but rather for your visitors.

The article at Google Webmaster Central lists different ways that you can test the speed of your website. Since I use Firefox and already have the Firebug add-on installed, I opted to install Page Speed, which is a Firebug add-on (it seems we have add-ons for add-ons).

After installing Firebug and Page Speed, restart Firefox and then do the following:

1. Tools > Firebug > Open Firebug in New Window (on the Firefox menu bar).
2. A pop-up window will open that looks like:
   
3. Select Page Speed and then Performance
4. When you are on the page that you want to test and it has fully loaded, click on the Analyze Performance Button.

Your analyze performance results will look like this.

When I first tested my front page, my score was a 78. Since I’m the type of person that thinks the only good grade is an A, I wasn’t very happy about this. And since my page seems to load quickly, I was a little surprised.

I did some research, added some code to my .htaccess, installed a couple of plugins and uninstalled others and raised my score to 87. This has been variable with each test – I’ve scored between 85 and 94 depending on different things I added and removed.

Unfortunately, the documentation on what the different sections of the results mean is not written for us mere mortals but seems to be tailored toward techie robots. For example, one section suggested to “Leverage Browser Caching”. Ok, sounds swell to me but what the heck does that mean. In google’s documentation, I found the following:

HTTP/S supports local caching of static resources by the browser. Some of the newest browsers (e.g. IE 7, Chrome) use a heuristic to decide how long to cache all resources that don’t have explicit caching headers. Other older browsers may require that caching headers be set before they will fetch a resource from the cache; and some may never cache any resources sent over SSL.

To take advantage of the full benefits of caching consistently across all browsers, we recommend that you configure your web server to explicitly set caching headers and apply them to all cacheable static resources, not just a small subset (such as images). Cacheable resources include JS and CSS files, image files, and other binary object files (media files, PDFs, Flash files, etc.). In general, HTML is not static, and shouldn’t be considered cacheable.

Clear? Great! Know what to do to correct the issue? You don’t? Well, neither do I – well, I didn’t until I did some additional research.

But, you will need to wait for my next scintillating article on page speed fixes. Here I wanted to tell you how to test it and in the next article I will let you know what I did to raise the score as well as things that will raise it more but that I decided not to do. I will not be ruled by google. ;-)

And I bet you can’t wait ;-)

(I think I’ve used this photo for a previous article but am too lazy right now to check)

photo credit: - POD -

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Page Speed Will Affect Google Page Rank – How to Test Your Page Speed

I’ve got quite an assortment of links this week – I didn’t have many when I started but found a bunch at the last minute.

Enjoy

• 6 Ways to Kill Your Community – A snarky article that discusses how to increase your comments and completely destroy your community.
• Not Every Facebook Fan Page Needs an Application – A great article on creating a custom facebook fan page with the FBML application.
• How to Personalize Your Google Calendar Background – I don’t spend too much time staring at my calendar but it’s good to know that you can change the background, if you want to.
• Phineas Gage – I came across the strange story of Phineas Gage (awesome name) and thought I would share it. I don’t want to give anything away but the whole thing is pretty unbelievable.
• 40 Awesome Tutorials and Techniques for WordPress Theme Developers – A lot of great resources for developing WordPress themes.
• 27 Ways to Breathe Life into Your Blog’s About Page – This page has a lot of great tips for your about page. I know mine needs to be updated.
• Things are amazing and everyone’s unhappy.
  
• Bert and Ernie Rap
  

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(Anti) Social-Lists 8/16/09

7/1/09 – Please note that this add-on is not yet compatible with Firefox 3.5, which was released yesterday.

Sometimes people complain that comments aren’t included in their feed reader. I’ve often wondered how hard it is to click from the feed reader to the actual article, but maybe those extra clicks use up a lot of time. I know that if an article in my feed reader really interests me, I WANT to visit the site to read it.

There is a solution to this, however, if you use Firefox and Google Reader. There is a great Firefox add-on that will add comments and tweets to the posts in Google Reader.

gReactions is an experimental Firefox add-on that will integrate comments with Google Reader.

Install the add-on like any other and then restart Firefox. When you open Google Reader you should see the following at the bottom of each item.

Click on Show comments to see the comments for that article.

You can select View All, Comments, or Twitter.

I’ve found it to be small and a little hard to read. If I want to read and comment on the article, I click over to the site anyway but it is kind of cool to see the comments right in the feed reader.

As with other experimental add-ons, this one can be a little buggy. Sometimes I get a no comments found message even for articles that I know have comments. It hasn’t affected the Google reader in any negative way though.

So what do you think? Useful? Would you use something like this? Do you even use your feed reader anymore? ;-)

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

gReactions: A Firefox Add-on to show Comments and Tweets in Google Reader

Some of you may know that I used to work in tech support. I actually really liked the work but had numerous issues with management.

Before I had a face to face interview I had a phone interview. I was asked questions like, “what web browser do you use?” and “what is a firewall?”. I thought it was odd but must have been their first level screening process.

After watching this video, I think that manager may have actually been onto something with the questions that she asked. Only 8% of those asked “what is a browser” answered correctly.

My friend Rick Castellini from Help Me Rick raised two good points when I showed this video to him.

1. While young people have grown up with the Internet and technology, they don’t seem to be any more tech savvy than us older folks.
2. Google has HUGE name recognition. To many of these people, google is the Internet.

What do you think? Do you think the responses indicate what most people think about browsers, the Internet and search engines? I was surprised but sometimes I find that I live in a sort of tech bubble and assume that what I know is common knowledge.

On a somewhat related note 50% of country music fans polled do not have Internet access at home and don’t want it. Make of that what you will.

photo credit: Jerrold

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

What is a Browser?

Did you know your twitter profile page has a page rank? I didn’t realize this until this week when someone tweeted about it. I access twitter via tweetdeck so I rarely see the site or my profile page.

So, I went to check the rank of my profile page and was really surprised by the results.

The page rank of my twitter profile page is 5!! My site is only a 3.

Are there more quality links to my profile page? Does it contain better content? Am I better known for twitter than for my blog?

Perhaps this video will provide some enlightenment. Google explains the factors involved in determining the page rank of a twitter profile page. According to google it has nothing to do with the number of followers you have but it my spot tests, profiles of people with more followers tend to have a higher page rank. This could just be a coincidence based on the people I chose to test.

So, what do you think? Did you know your profile page had a page rank? Do you even care? ;-)

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Page Rank on Twitter Profile Page

Last November my page rank dropped from 3 to 0 overnight. I was completely bewildered because I wasn’t buying text links, writing paid reviews or doing any of the google no-no’s.

This article quickly became my most commented. Some people offered advice and others stopped by to commiserate telling me that the same thing had happened to them.

I intended to write a follow-up to that article but never did. I decided to try not to care about page rank and got distracted by much more important things.

A week to 10 days after I lost my page rank I submitted a reconsideration request. I figured it couldn’t hurt but I didn’t expect to hear back or for anything to come from it.

At the beginning of the year Ajith emailed me to let me know that my page rank had been restored. It was kind of like a New Years gift.

Note: I am told there was a page rank update on New Years so my ranking probably came back because of that, not the reconsideration request.

I am only assuming that the reconsideration request made a difference because there wasn’t an update in rankings at that time. But like I said, I never heard anything back from google about the request.

At the end of last week Google posted a video with tips on submitting a reconsideration request, which I have included below. I think the information is valuable although the reading of the script from the laptops is annoying.

So, if you’ve had ranking or indexing problem I would recommend submitting the reconsideration request. It can’t hurt. Just don’t expect to hear back. But maybe you’ll be lucky like me and will get your ranking reinstated.

photo credit: yewenyi

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Google Page Rank and Indexing Reconsideration Request

• The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites – Are you looking for some freelancing work or just want to earn some extra cash? Well, Freelance Switch has compiled a huge list of freelancing job sites. Have fun and go earn some extra money.
• WordPress TV – If you’ve watched all of the WordPress tutorial videos I’ve linked to recently, you can start watching WordPress TV. An online “channel” devoted to all things WordPress.
• Game Industry Tweet – Well, you all know that I love video games so here is the list of Video Game Industry Professionals on Twitter. Their stats don’t show that they are great about following back but it might be a great way to get some extra info about your favorite game or company.
• Make the Move From Feedburner to Google – Well, as you probably know Google has owned Feedburner for awhile now. And Google is requiring that you move your feeds by the end of February. (You will be assimilated). ProBlogDesign has an awesome step by step guide that makes the process super simple.
• Inauguration Photos – Flickr has a set of Inaguration Photos through the years. There are photos of Kennedy, Taft, Wilson and many many more.
• Cats In Sinks – Earlier this week I walked into the bathroom and discovered Capt. Courageous curled up in the sink as pictured below. This then made me remember a website totally devoted to photos of cats in sinks. Apparently it’s something cats like to do.
  
  
• Old Calendars Never Really Go Out of Date – I was surprised to discover that there are only 14 combinations in the Western Calendar, so if you are a packrat, eventually that old calendar will be current again. I don’t have any old ones as my daughter and I usually cut up the photos/pictures for art projects. This then made me remember a particular Simpsons episode. Who knew Homer was so wise? ;-)
  
  

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(Anti) Social-Lists 1/25/09

]]> http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/anti-social-lists-12509/feed/ 10 http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/google-page-rank-a-sudden-3-point-drop/ http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/google-page-rank-a-sudden-3-point-drop/#comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:12:57 +0000 Kim Woodbridge http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/?p=1614 Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Google Page Rank – A Sudden 3 Point Drop!!!
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I’m not that bright

I will be the first to admit that I am ignorant about SEO, backlinks, page rank and all of these important things that assist in getting indexed by google and a good position in search engine results. I didn’t know anything about this sort of thing until September when Ajith wrote, Google Page Rank update – DollarShower.com is PR3 now!, and I discovered that I had a PR3. I then became slightly more interested in the topic and became a regular reader of his site. I also started emailing him questions. I also installed the Firefox add-on Search Status, which tells you the PageRank and Alexa Rank of any site I am visiting.

And much like Twitter, rankings don’t really matter to me. But I liked being a PR3 and was hoping to move up to 4. And PageRank seems to matter from a monetization point of view and I suppose it gives a site credibility.

PR Drop

Last Friday I still had a PR3. Late that night, however, I dropped to PR0. I don’t have paid links or write sponsored reviews. As far as I can tell I haven’t done anything on the google no-no list. I have not been blacklisted, am still indexed by google, and am getting the same amount of traffic from google that I am accustomed to.

Panic!!!

The first thing I did was panic. I even felt sick to my stomach. I emailed Arjith and he took a look and said the only problem he could find is I am not using nofollow and am allowing my rank to leeched out (my words, not his). It never occurred to me that I should use nofollow. I did some research about this and read Matt Cutts on Nofollow, Links-Per-Page and the Value of Directories. Apparently Matt Cutts is the go-to guy for this issue. I wish I knew him. I have started following him on twitter, @mattcutts, but don’t really expect a follow back.

Don’t Panic

I then encountered ProBlogger’s article from two years ago, What should you do if your Google Ranking Falls and you lose all your traffic?, where a similar thing happened to him but in his instance he did lose search engine traffic. His first piece of advice was “Don’t Panic” so that calmed me down some. I read the rest of the article and realized that no one is immune to this happening.

Additionally, a big PageRank drop happened a little over a year ago. Again, ProBlogger was impacted by this and he wrote, ProBlogger – PageRank 4. Could something similar be happening again?

Reconsideration Request?

I am signed up for Google Webmaster Tools and other than the nofollow issue I haven’t found any problems.

What I can’t decide is whether I should submit a Reconsideration Request or not. ProBlogger recommended to sit tight but that is a two year old article. Should I wait a little bit or should I submit it immediately?

As anyone, who isn’t writing paid reviews or buying links, had this happen recently? And does anyone have the ear of Matt Cutts?

photo credit: kevinsteele

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Google Page Rank – A Sudden 3 Point Drop!!!

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