Google custom search is still in beta

In this post I’ll treat the case of integrating the Google Custom search engine in Wordpress, the most used free software platform for blogging.

What do you need?

• A blog running a self hosted version of Wordpress. Sorry guy, but no wordpress.com domains.
• An HTML editor (I use Notepad ++)
• FTP client (I use FileZilla)
• An AdSense account
• Some time and a few HTML/CSS knowledge

Steps required to integrate custom search in Wordpress

First, you have to sign in to your Google AdSense account and create a new ad slot for the custom search results ads: Adsense Setup – AdSense for Search. Once you get here select “Single page” to have all options on one page. I’ll explain to you what every field means:

• Search type: specifies where to search, the Internet or only your site
• Selected sites: put here every site URL you wish to search, one per each line
• Optional Keywords: if there’ any word combination you wish to add to the string of chars the used inputs in the Custom Search field here’s the place to mention them
• Site language: self explanatory, is the language your blog uses
• Your site encoding: go to your blog, right click on a free space, select “View Source” and look for “charset”. Select in the Adsense drop down list the encoding your website uses
• Country or territory for Google domain: to better list localized search results Google needs to know the region of your website’s visitors, where most of them come from
• Custom channel: give a name to the ad channel to better track its results in your Adsense reports
• Safe Search: specify if you want adult content to be omitted from displayed results
• Look and Feel: choose from a few themes available for the search box
• Text Box Length: specify the size of the search box as it will appear on your site
• Opening of search results page: here you’ll specify how the search results page will look like. Options are in the same page, in new windows (easiest to implement), or in a dedicated page on your site. For the last option you have to create a page on your blog (page, not post) and give it a name that you’ll specify in this Adsense wizard. Mine is called “search”, so the URL is http://www.johnpopes.com/search. Also enter the width of the search results area so that it will fit your theme layout.
• Ad location: where should google display ads on your search results page. Depending on what you choose the aforementioned Width of the results area has a bigger minimum value.
• The Palettes: here you’ll change the colors of the search results. Every change is reflected in a sample box on the left.
• Agree with the special terms
• Enter a name for this particular search unit and hit “Submit and Get Code”

The long Adsense setup wizard (click for large image)

Now you’re presented with two codes (if you chose to display results in the same page or in another page on your blog, not in a new window. Now the input box code goes in your theme. Mine was searchform.php. The second one goes into the page template (here is more info on how to create a Wordpress page template) I’ve created starting with page.php and replaced the part with the_content(). Use this template when creating the page that will you’re your results (see the “Opening of search results page” step). Remember that those file names in your Wordpress theme may be different, but also look for the code that displays your normal search box and create a new template for pages, where you replace the content with the provided code by Adsense.

Custom search results on my blog

If you want to change the look of the Custom Search you have to log back in Google Adsense and hit Adsense Setup – Manage Ads and Edit on your Custom Search module. That’s it. If you get stuck at one step or need more clarification don’t hesitate to post a comment below and I’ll help you.

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The goal of this post is not to tell you what I did and did not all this years but to make a list of the reasons I believe things are not better for me and why probably many others have failed before me and will fail after me.

Why people fail online and what has to be done to accomplish success

• Read less and practice more – don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to read first tons of books and then get to work trying to deploy everything you’ve learned. Try and balance the time spent reading with the actual practice hours
• Have a goal (or more goals for short/medium/long term) -  If this goal is measurable it’s even better as you always know where you’re at compared to your dreams. No goal means no focus which translates in working in vain.
• Don’t give up – results don’t show over night, always focus on doing everything needed to build a strong business that will always stand the test of time and will get you a decent and constant amount of money.
• Work hard – this is very important as only hard work will give results, but also work smart as efforts without brains are no good and don’t guarantee success
• Know your niches – if you get into a new niche make sure you did research about it to ensure better exploitation. It’s best to spend more time researching then wondering what went wrong and why you failed.
• Make friends with same interests – the best ideas come when you talk with people having the same problems like you. Don’t fear your secrets will help others as it’s best to be part of a group: there’s more chance you will get up helped by the current.
• Monitor your business – even if things are fine keep an eye on everything vital to your business as once things get broken it’s hard to get them on track. It’s like confidence, which is earned hard but gets lost easily.

There are I think the problems and mistakes people do very often, all which translates in bad results or no results at all. Do you have anything else to add to the list? Feel free to share.

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All Google needs to put every piece of data to a special profile is cross-referencing. They’ve already started to do that with the new Dashboard and by starting I mean displaying that data, as the gathering process surely started a while ago.

A theoretical example of what might happen to you

Imagine this scenario: you’re building a business online and heavily rely on Google services. All those services have Terms and Condition, which once broken will almost sure deny you access to that service, or even worse (here’s the evil part) access to other Google services.

Imagine that one day, because you placed too much Adsense units on your blog’s pages or placed them too close to post pictures of used any other practice that breaks their rules you get your Adsense account blocked and all your income is lost (or a significant part of it). This is not fiction as it happened to many people. Maybe you’re innocent, maybe not, but one thing is certain: contacting Google support might not help you at all as billions others are contacting them on many topics. If they respond and help you in a few weeks you may be already out of business.

Now, for those with bad intentions like selling links, buying reviews, black hat SEO and other wrong tactics be sure you can get caught by Big G if they start cross-referencing data about you. If you speak by email for a link sale and the other person uses Gmail or forwards email to Gmail (as I so for example) then Google might find out what you’re doing.

Imagine that you want to build a network of sites and link to/from them. If Google knows they’re all your websites the value of a single link is lowered automatically. And you can’t just create 100 Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts without Google knowing they’re all yours. You don’t have that many IPs and supposed you create those accounts, once you log in from the same 2-3 IPs you’re busted.

And examples can go on and on, but the reality is the same: if Google wants to catch you, it will, but that maybe is not such a bad deal for the rest of us, the good guys.

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Multitasking

Practically I write small articles (try and write on a phone keyboard for more than 30 minutes and your fingers will catch fire) and always put small notes in places where I must get a link or double check stuff or insert pictures. And I always write about topics I’m familiar with so I don’t need to get any documentation checked or I’ve already read about it the day before on my desktop PC.

What’s stopping us from multitasking on a phone and do some real work?

• first there’s the small screen which makes reading really hard, plus pictures download harder on a phone, taking more time and bandwidth to check
• limited power means you can’t run a browser with multiple tabs opened and you can’t also run a text editing suite, a graphic editor for pictures and listen to music in background without affected performance
• last but not least the interface of mobile apps prevent us from being proficient as we’re just at the beginning of the mobile revolution and we have limited mobile usability knowledge

How about the future?

I’m afraid things don’t look too good as screen size can’t increase too much without affecting size thus portability is compromised.

Hardware specs will increase but it’s just enough to cope with the increasing performance demand from software apps: it’s just like with PCs where increased performance doesn’t necessarily means faster overall experience but more like complex programs.

Software is the only one that will make a significant change in how we work using a Smartphone but don’t forget that we’re dealing with a small device after all, not a fully fledged workstation. So a laptop will always be slower than a desktop, but faster than a Smartphone. That’s the way things are folks but this doesn’t stop us from dreaming.

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Naturally I’ve accepted the invitation and went to with the jury part of my duties, on the last days of course, as a lazy ass person that I am. It stroke me then that it’s not easy to be a part of a jury and do your job right, without being biased or unfair to some of the participants. That’s when I’ve figured out that there’s a methodology to follow that ensures your vote is cast as objectively as possible. I thought to present you my ‘algorithm’ that I follow in order to evaluate web stuff. Of course this kind of methodology can be applied to numerous other evaluation processes, not necessarily related to a jury.

How to evaluate ’stuff’

First, there are a few things that need to be defined first, before the members of the jury start doing their work. In my case there was the categories for which Internetics gives prizes, each category was defined separately so we understood well what we were looking for in each subscription of a given category. This is by far the most important step, as it tries to put up a formula for evaluation. Also the notes range must be refined (in this case was 1 to 5, 5 being ‘very good’).

The second most important part of the jury duty is to go back to candidates from 1 to X-1 when you evaluate number X so that you make sure you’ve remembered how the current candidate fares compared to the other. It’s not enough to put every candidate in a schema or formula and give a note by measuring where on the scale the candidates falls. It’s critical to compare candidates with each other so that the verdict you’re giving is fair for all candidates subscribed to the contest.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can take a candidate out of context, so that the verdict won’t be influenced. You want to evaluate a list of candidates at a given moment, following a given list of characteristics. The next year the same candidate would get a different verdict 99% of the times, as methodology changes, mentality changes and the same thing can be seen differently over a given period of time. And this brings me to the third most important thing: compare the candidates in the shortest period of time. If you do some today, some tomorrow, you could be influenced by your mood, by the weather or by a headache.

Follow those simple rules and your verdinct can be impartial, as much as it’s possible, of course.

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Get links to you to win

Why is the link so important?

Look  at links like recommendations from friends to watch a particular movie. If you get many recommendations there’s a big chance you’ll get to see it. Also if it gets recommended by someone who has similar tastes you might need just one recommendation to get convinced.

Quantity or quality?

The answer is both: get many quality links, especially if you’re hunting to get on top searches for general terms which have greater competition.

How do I get links?

This is another story that needs another article (or bunch of articles), but the main method to get links is simple “write quality content and people will eventually link to you”, especially if you promote your writings in social media communities.

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In this article I will try and explain how you can secure your wireless network. You’ll need a minimum of computer knowledge, but I’ll try and post links to resources that explain best various terms that I’ll use in this post. I won’t be posting a screenshot step by step guide as router user interfaces are very different from one to another, but the names you’ll see for various options are the same everywhere. So, let’s get started:

Terms and things you need to know about your wireless router

1. IP address – it’s the Internet address of a connected device, it’s made or four groups of numbers, each with values between 0 and 225.
2. Encryption protocol – the method used to scramble the data being send/received so that someone without proper access right won’t be able to understand.
3. MAC address – it’s the address of the networking interface in a computer. Your router, computer network card, wireless card in your laptop have different MAC addresses (Example: 00-81-7D-31-3B-C4)
4. Network SSID (Service Set identifier) – is the name of the wireless network you’re creating with the router. When you search for networks in range or connect to a network that’s the identifier.

How to secure your wireless network?

There are a few options to secure a wireless network starting from the router. I’m referring here to security as in “no computer in range of my wireless router can access my network if I don’t grant it access”, I’m not covering Internet security, as it is a much broader subject and includes subjects like Firewalls, Antispyware, Antimalware and Antivirus software.

So, here are the methods you can use to deny unauthorized access to your wireless home network:

1. Hide your network SSID from being broadcasted by the router. In this way a person who want to connect to your wireless network won’t be able to do it unless he know the network exists and its name. Don’t be fooled tough as there are programs that can find wireless networks in range, with or without SSID.
2. Don’t leave the network traffic unsecured. Choose an encryption protocol that offers high security and use a long password with special chars like numbers, -, _, ?, * etc. I recommend using WPA and WPA2 variants, not WEP.
3. Filter MAC addresses that have access to the network. All wireless routers have the option of specifying which MAC addresses of network cards are allowed to connect. This is a very powerful protection method. Find your MAC address in Windows by hitting Start button – Run – cmd.exe and type “ipconfig /all”, then look for your network card name and copy the “Physical address” number.
4. Change your router IP address and password. By default many routers come with passwords like “admin” and IP addresses like 192.168.0.1. Changem both of them to not so easy to guess values.

Those are the most basic and at the same time efficient methods of securing your wireless network at home, so if you do all of them there’s little chance an unexperienced hacker can pass through them, but that doesn’t mean you’re bullet proof. If you have any questions leave a comment bellow and I’ll try and help you.

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This statistics makes me wonder if the same applies to movie downloads. I’m also sure it doesn’t fit with illegal software download, but none the less it seems that measures like cutting Internet access to pirates for life, as they intend to do in France if you’re caught three times, is not good for business, as you’re sending away your best customers.

Illegal file sharing

Of course, big music/software companies always say that they loose X millions from illegal use of their intellectual property, but forget to mention that they measure wrong: if I download music worth of 1000$ it doesn’t mean that I would buy it if I couldn’t download it for free (probably I would buy songs that cost 126$ a year, if this study is true).

The problem I see with illegal pirating is that it’s not really  stealing, nor correct, it’s something in between. I also hope things will come to a middle ground, where everyone will be happy, as it’s clear that stealing does no good to companies, nor does cutting access to those who steal (as they buy more that ‘normal’ users). If you have an idea I would like to hear it.

You might also be interested in what I wrote about online piracy.

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Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 in white

Starting today I believe things will return to normal for Sony Ericsson as they’ve released the XPERIA X10 Android powered headset, a very hot touchscreen phone. I believe is their first model to come with Android, and the first with a large 4 inch 854 x 480 pixels touchscreen. That’s impressive even by today’s standards and means you’ll have a lot of real estate to do all kind of things on your smartphone. So let’s break down the features of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 on a bullett list:

• 4 inch 854 x 480 pixels screen (FWVGA resolution)
• 13 mm thick body
• 1 GHz Snapdraggon CPU
• quad band GSM
• 8 megapixel camera with LED flash and face detection
• 3.5 mm audio jack and microUSB charger
• Android 1.6 OS
• WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth
• 1 GB internal memory, 256 MB RAM, 8 GB microSD card in retail box
• Sony Ericsson custom social networking and media UI, built-in accelerometer

You'll listen to good music on Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10

As you can see specs are top notch, the only question that remains is why didn’t they use Android 2.0 and when will it really be available as the problem with the XPERIA X1 was late arrival to market (over 1 year after official announcement). Sony Ericsson says we’ll see the XPERIA X10 on shelves in Q1 2010 and I’m surely very interested to get my hands on it. Hope it lives up to expectations.

Here’s a small video presentation (marketing shot of the phone):

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RSS Logo

What is RSS

First, RSS comes from Really Simple Syndication which means a really simple way of distributing content on Internet. RSS appeared as a response to the need to simplify the process of keeping in touch with news from multiple websites, a method that was meant to get rid of the habbit of visiting the sites you like once in a few hours to see if something new was published.

If you like, RSS is the opposite way of checking news on multiple URLs. RSS notifies you which website has new content and gives you links to that content. You then decide what is worth reading. You just have to check in one place to see what was published on 10 other places: your RSS reader program.

You have two options: install an RSS reader program (FeedDemon is free and one of the best), or use an online one (Google Reader shines here). After this step all you have to do is gather feeds and start monitoring them for new articles.

RSS feed signaled in Firefox

A feed is the URL where your RSS reader checks for new content on a given website. You can get that address by checking for the RSS logo on the websites you like and copy that link and paste it in the field that appears in your RSS program when you make a new subscription. Alternatively you can press that button that opens a dialog in your browser asking where you want this subscription to go (in which RSS reader program from your computer), or you can check for the RSS logo in your browser’s toolbar or Adress bar.

Why should I use RSS?

There’s one big reason: it saves you time, as you don’t have to visit every site you like to check for content: new articles show up in your RSS reader. Plus online RSS readers like Google Reader synchronize what you’re already read all over the Internet, so you won’t read stuff twice because you’ve accessed it at work and then at home.

Video tutorials about RSS

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I grew up with computers from the time where Internet was just a dream in my country and had my first email account in 2000, so imagine that I used computers without Internet for a long time, so far away in my past that I almost forgot that you can do stuff with computers, not Internet related. In this post I’ll try and make a list of things you could do with a PC when not connected to a network.

I’ll begin with the following assumptions: you have the needed software installed and your computer is working properly (doesn’t need updates or drivers). Plus I’ll assume you have all your media files on your hard drive. It seems fair to me that a normal computer is in this state after you plug it off the network.

What a computer can do for you without connection?

• You can entertain yourself in a single player game
• Watch movies and catch up with the latest TV shows you got through Torrents (I know you do that)
• Listen to your favorite tunes
• Write articles for your blog (assuming you did your research before or don’t need research for what you’re writing) or plan a list of future articles to do
• Do some work (programming, CAM/CAD, 3D modeling and animation, Photoshop some pictures or whatever your work implies)
• Backup your data on DVDs or on an external HDD
• Organize your files like you should have done a long time ago
• Defragment your disk in order to maintain the same level of performance longer
• Check all files with your antivirus via a thorough system scan

Many of those actions can be done simultaneously, of course, because now we’re not bound by performance anymore. But wait, my internet connection is back, so enough with those meaningful tasks, I’ll upload this post now.

Do you have other things to do when your Internet connection is down?

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SSD is the future, not the present

I have no doubt that in a few years SSD technology will mature and prices will follow, but for now you can’t deny the fact that you pay for a 64 GB SSD more than you do on a 2000 GB hard drive. So performance is 2-3 times better but price per gigabyte is 32 time worse. So, the question is: should we stay away from SSDs?

SSD, HDD or combo?

As the answer doesn’t have to be black or white there’s always a gray area and that means there’s a middle way to handle things, and my answer now is using an SSD drive for your system disk, where you install Windows and all your programs and use another ‘classic’ HDD for storing multimedia files, install games and save your work. You come up with a cheaper solution than buying one big 256 GB SSD (prices for 512 GB models are really prohibitive) and you solve the storage problem with a big storage disk.

Remember that you should plan carefully what you’ll install and see how big the SSD must be. I recommend you don’t go lower than 40 or 64 GB. You could do with 32 GB but you’ll be very limited (I know friends that use 32 GB models and there’s always the problem with space).

The only catch I see is that you can’t use this solution on laptops, as it means carrying around an external drive each time you travel, and that’s not a true option. Do you agree or you’re hoping 6Gb/s S-ATA interface will revive HDDs in terms of performance?

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Google Analytics is one of the best ways to monitor your visitors, plus it has the advantages of being free. In this post I’m going to present the main functions of Google Analytics, how it works and what are the main concepts of web traffic analysis.

How Google Analytics or any other web monitoring service works

First you have to sign up for a Google Account, if you don’t already have one, login to Google Analytics, and create a new website profile. The code that’s being given to you has to be inserted on every page of the website you’re monitoring. Google recommends you put it in the footer, so it loads after the whole page, giving you better statistics as it doesn’t include users that get bored and close the page before it loads completely in their browsers.

After Google Analytics validates the code you’ve inserted into your website’s pages you have to wait a few hours till stats gather up and then you can start learning more about your visitors. The stats are gathered thanks to the code mentioned earlier that registers data about every user loading a page from your site. This data includes, but it’s not limited to IP, Operating System, browser type, screen resolution, time on page or page impressions.

What are the main concepts of web analysis

Even if different monitoring systems give different numbers that has to do with the data gathering methodology, the way information is processed, the code placement and so on. Although, there are a few common metrics that are widely defined the same way, so here’s a list of them:

• A visitor: is a person that enters your website in a given amount of time. Same person can make multiple visits to your website the same day.
• An unique visitor: is an unique person that visits your website throughout the period you’re getting the metrics.
• A page impression (or pageview): any page loaded from your website is called a page impression. The same page can be loaded multiple times in a period of time and is counted every time it refreshes.
• Bounce rate: the percentage of people that exit your website from a page without loading another one from the same domain.
• Time on site: is counted as the average time a visitor spends on your website during a visit.
• Time on page: same as above but refers to time spent on a single page.
• New visits: this is the percentage of new people that have never visited your website before.
• Referral: is the domain/site/service previously visited by an user, which pointed him to your website through a link.

What are the main statistics provided by Google Analytics

Once you select a website in your Google Analytics profile to see its stats there are 5 important types of statistics you can browse, and those are:

1  – Dashboard

Hare you can see the main stats of your website. It defaults to past 30 days (not included current day) but this period can be set in the upper right part to any date interval. The main metrics are easily displayed here: visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, time on site and new visits. You can also see a top of your most visited pages, referral sources and geographical location of your visitors.

Google Analytics Dashboard: where it all begins

2 – Visitors

Here you’ll learn about your visitors geographical location, screen resolution, operating system and browser used, connection speed, language used by their system, loyalty (number of times they visited your website in a given period) and so on.

All about your visitors

3 – Traffic sources

This is the tab that tells you where your visitors come from (referring sites), which keywords they used in search engines to get to your pages. The keywords tab is a very important piece of information to better understand what your visitors are interested in, so you can better cover those topics in the future. Also you can understand which pages you need to push in Search Engines to get better traffic on them.

See who sent traffic to you

4 – Content

It’s the place where you see what are your most visited pages, entrance paths to those pages, the referring source and bounce rate for every page and site overlay, a function that shows you where people clicked on any of your pages, so you can better understand how they navigate in your website. Top exit pages (pages where the most users left your website) are also monitored here so you’ll know which pages are the worst in the eyes of your visitors.

Most visited pages are displayed here

5 – Goals

This is a more advanced area of your Google Analytics stats. Before info shows here you have to set up goals in your site: set up visiting patterns that start with one page and lead to an end page. You set up also an amount of earnings for each successfully completed goal. This is an useful part of GA that can be used by online stores to record the number of people that had put products in their basket and then completed the checkout process.

I tried to keep this guide about what is and how Google Analytics can be used in your interest to monitor and analyze your websites from traffic and visitors point of view. Hope you like it. If you have any questions post them below in comments.

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Ninite doesn’t even install itself: it runs in the background and installs all the applications you’ve checked on the first step, saying No to features like toolbars, ads or MP3 player  of the day, if you know what I mean. There’s only one downside: not all applications are included in the list, but for a typical user there’s more than enough programs to install.

I’ve tried it on Windows 7 and it works perfectly. Check Ninite out and tell me what you think. Below there’s a screenshot of the list of programs that you can choose from:

Ninite first step: selecting programs to be installed

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We all loose hours and hours watching clips on Youtube, following people on Twitter, posting on someone’s Facebook Wall and so on. All this time would have been better used to do constructive things, earn more money and free up more time for our offline life, you know, the one we had before the Internet was all over the place.

Now we are all spending at least 8 hours at work in front of the computer and then a few hours more in front of it at home. Besides the health factors involved here there is the problem of alienation, which I’ve talked about here. Thing are not getting any better, as the Internet becomes more and more addictive, especially to young people.

So, in this post I’ll try and present a short list of things I do when I want to get a lot of work done in a relatively short amount of time. It doesn’t always work, but when it does it makes me realize how much time I’m loosing on a usual day at the office, time that I’ll never get back.

How to be more efficient while working on Internet

No, without too much ramblings, the list of things I do to be more efficient while I work on Internet (a dream job, by the way).

1. Take a paper notebook and make a list of the things you need to do each day, putting the most important tasks on top. Put an estimated amount of time needed to finish each task. Check the ones you’ve completed and put the remaining ones on the list for next day
2. Make a habit to check your email at most two times a day’ preferably at lunch time and afternoon. Both sessions should include reading and answering to emails
3. Do the tasks that involve writing and thinking at the beginning of the day, when your mind is still fresh. This way you get things done faster and better
4. If you must check social networks, post pictures, status updates and so on do that in your lunch time, or at night, when you get home
5. Same goes for Instant Messaging, a total waste of time if you get bothered a few times an hour while you concentrate on a really important task
6. Get a QWERTY phone, as you might use any precious minute to write a post/article for your blog while you’re waiting for your next train/metro or whatever

Well, that’s my list of things I do when I want to get some work done and don’t really want to be distracted by all that ‘junk’ on the Internet. It doesn’t always work for me but when it does I can really see the difference. So how about you, what are your tricks?

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I'm a PC guy

Mac OS X from a Windows user point of view

There’s a saying, ‘old habits die hard’, that applies perfectly in this situation. Once you’ve used Windows for 10 or more years, there’s hard to switch to something completely different. You’re used to the problems Windows has, and you already know how to solve them. Once you get on an issue with Mac OS X, like the Radeon 4850 video card not working (or working only in safe mode) you don’t know how to solve it and the few guides on forums that address your problem don’t help much.

I’m sure Mac OS X works flawlessly on Apple hardware (or at least 99%, as there are problems on dedicated hardware too), but using it on a PC which doesn’t have the same configuration as a Mac is a mistake, as OS X isn’t that supported by manufacturers from drivers point of view and you won’t get it to work as it was meant to. Let’s face it: Mac OS X isn’t too flexible when it comes to hardware configurations, that’s the truth. Here’s where Microsoft shines.

Why I love Windows more than other OSes?

1. I’m used to it and I accept its flows
2. I know how to do things fast in Windows, which greatly helps productivity (but I admit you can get used to any OS after a period of time)
3. It’s flexible enough to accept any new hardware you throw at it
4. Want to do something? There’s an app for that (and is probably free or has free alternatives)
5. Windows it’s free in my country (or at least that’s implied in a country where home user piracy is over 90%)
6. Hardware is cheaper and there’s tons of components to choose from, more of them way too powerful compared to Apple hardware
7. Games are great on a PC, not so much on a Mac
8. A lot of guides on Internet help you when something goes wrong or doesn’t work from the first time

Those are the things that will make me stick to Windows for a long time. If none of them changes on the long term I don’t believe I’ll switch to Mac OS X, but you never know. So, how about you, what’s your take on this matter?

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Imagine in this context how a modern CPU is held down when it needs data stored on a turtle slow HDD. Things are moving tough in the right direction, with SSD becoming more and more affordable. The ancient floppy disk was replaced by USB and external drives.

My recent deja-vu with old problems

I’ve switched from Picasa to Flickr so naturaly I’ve started getting the pictures from one place to another. As Picasa doesn’t have an open API I had to get my old DVD disks, copy them to my system and then upload them one folder at a time.

The ‘operation’ begun, everything went perfect with the first few DVDs, but I got to one that blocked the copy. I ejected the disk, cleaned it and did try again. No luck. I went to google for programs that try and recover bad files from scratched DVDs. I was optimistic as the disk wasn’t that scratched and I had worse disks that copy fine.

… After 3 days of using various programs for file copy/recovery I just gave up. What is lost is lost (I still got the small resolution files from Picasa), but I cannot stop and wonder why on earth none of my optical drives managed to copy from a CD that’s not too badly scratched.

Also why programs used for copying files still freeze if they find a file that’s unreadable. I’ve also used programs that skip through bad files but they were so bad that after 10 hours they’re read 7 files and skipped only 2.

There are problems I’ve had with optical media since I’ve started using CDs. None of them lasted 10 year (projected life of recordable disks) and I bet a stamped disk (mass-produced) won’t last 100 years.

The future?

Imagine you’re using 6-7 years from now the optical standard of that time, a disk that can store all your multimedia collections, all your work and programs in a multi terabytes space. What it you get a perpendicular scratch that affects all tracks (worst case, but highly possible). You loose everything. I’ve lost a few hundred megabytes of pictures thanks to a few surface scratches (disks were stored, not lended or exposed to dust/sun). What if it was something more important?

I don’t know about you but I don’t plan on using optical disks for storage in the future.

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From hardware point of view the Nokia N900 is an up to date device, featuring all the bells and whistles a mobile gadget has in 2009, but what sets it apart is the Maemo, a Linux derived operating system that runs everything on the N900. Maemo is Nokia’s bet on the future of their high end smartphones. They’ll stick to Symbian for their entry-level and mainstream devices, but the cherry top gets Maemo, an OS that puts special care on multitasking, connectivity, integration and multimedia.

Nokia N900 can be alredy pre-ordered from Amazon

A conversation on Nokia N900

Nokia N900 main hardware specs

• ARM Cortex A8 superscalar CPU running at 600 MHz
• 1 GB applications memory (256 MB RAM + 768 virtual memory)
• 3D graphics accelerator chip with OpenGL ES 2.0 support
• 32 GB internal storage, expandable to up to 48 GB with an external microSD card
• 3.5 inch WVGA touchscreen display (resistive, with 800 x 480 pixels resolution)
• Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3.5G HSDPA (10 Mbps download/2MBps upload maximum), WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS
• 5 megapixel digital camera with Carl Zeiss lens, dual LED flash and 800 x 480 video recording
• Full screen browsing (Mozilla based browser) and Flash 9.4 support

Maemo 5 OS

As I said before, Maemo is the big change that makes the N900 a special device. It’s a Linux based OS that offers 4 virtual panels which can be easily accessed with a swipe of a finger. All 4 screens can be customized with widgets. The Dashboard is the place where you see what’s currently running on your device. You can focus on any running up from the dashboard.

The Mozilla based browser is said to function like a desktop browser so you’ll be able to visit the same websites with no difference whatsoever (well, minus lower the resolution). Contacts is one of the best applications on Maemo, as it integrates all of the contacting options for a friend in the same place. You just decide how you want to communicate with them. Search in contacts is very easy: slide open the keyboard and start typing the name of the person you’re looking for.

There’s also a possibility to share your status in various social networks like Ovi, Gtalk, Facebook, Twitter, all in one place. That’s a super powerful integration feature that I would love to use on Nokia N900. Images taken with the 5 megapixel camera can be tagged, edited, organized and shared online, so another plus here. The multimedia player is excelent, integrating music, video and Internet radio in one place. Everything can be of course synchronized with your computer.

Email support is great, like we are used to on a Nokia smartphone. There’s support for multiple mailboxes and Exchange servers. HTML email is ok couse on board. The Calendar application can be kept synchronized with your computer of work server, so we see unification once again. OVI maps come preinstalled on the Nokia N900 and benefit a lot from the high resolution screen

Video presentations of the Nokia N900

N900 presented during a show by a Nokia employee

Nokia N900 first impressions

Nokia N900 walkthrough

Nokia N900 photo gallery

 

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A buying carbon footprint or carbon offset is just like a fine, it does not reduces your emissions. If the fine is not big enough there’s no incentive to make you reduce those emissions. It’s like to bribe your way around if you pass a certain amount, more that you were allowed to. That’s no way to get things on track for global warming.

What we need is a way to make technology affordable. Everyone would use an electric vehicle if it’s cheaper and performs batter than a gasoline car. Now going Green is a costly option and that’s what holds us back. What’s your take on this matter?

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Amazon Kindle International version

I hope there are also plans to bring the bigger, Kindle DX into International space as it features a much bigger 9.7 ” e-Ink screen. The Amazon Kindle for International users is available for preorder starting today at 279 $ price point, not much more expensive than the US only version (20$ more). The main specs remain the same: 1500 books storage capacity (this is for medium size books), text to speech, books are delivered in under 60$, whispersync. The Kindle Store has the same titles, over 350.000 to choose from. Warranty remains the same: 1 year from manufacturer.

The International version practically offers 3G compatible network cards for other continents and allows non US (over 100 countries are supported. See more info about the Kindle International version here) users to set up an account for the Kindle Store.

Kindle comparison table

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URL shortening become popular when Twitter begun his ascent because people wanted to share links and a message into the 140 characters limit imposed by Twitter. When your URL is 100 characters long there’s not much you can say in 40 letters, so you have the main benefit of URL shortening: it makes links small enough to be used in communication when the length of the message is limited.

Long versus Short URL

Benefits and uses of URL shortening

1. Short URLs are useful to communicate using protocols where message size is limited. Ex: Twitter.
2. It’s aesthetically pleasing to the eye to see a short URL rather than one filled with session info and command structures.
3. You can keep track better of who clicks on a link, because many URL shortening services give you stats on the links you’ve send if you register with them. This is particularly useful when you have affiliate links on your posts and want to double check the stats given by the service you’re using.

Dangers of URL shortening

As expected there are dangers when using short URLs. The problem occurs when you access those links as you can’t see what’s behind them. It may be a page that infects your computer with malware. Using normal length URLs have the advantage of trust: you know from the name of the domain if it’s trustworthy or not, if you’ve visited it the past or not. Antivirus manufacturers say that currently short URLs are the biggest threat to user security.

What to look for when choosing an URL shortening service

Choosing a website to shorten your URLs might seem easy but there are things to consider before declaring your favorite service and those things are (list made using this post):

• Is there a way to get stats for my links?
• Does it have 301 permanent redirect? This helps in SEO if you’re getting a lot of short links pointing to your own blog or site.
• Is it stable enough to redirect all short links, without downtimes?
• Twitter client support, if you use Twitter, of course.
• Minimum size of the URL
• Does it support custom short URL, or it generates one for me?
• Sharing options. Does the service I use have a list of popular URLs that are recommended to other users?
• Country of origin: some domain names don’t play nice with Google, so better check the origin of the domain name the URL shortening service uses
• Does it handle long URLs with strange parameters?

Popular URL shortening services

• TinyURL
• Bit.ly
• List of 68 services

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Shared hosting: my take on it

Shared hosting is probably the form of web hosting you’ll be using 99 % of the time, mainly because is cheap and doesn’t require too much knowledge to operate the environment. The drawback? You don’t have control on the server’s resources and it’s not your server, as it is shared with other people having their own websites up and running. If one of those websites goes berserk your’s won’t run smoothly or won’t run at all. If the administrator isn’t fast enough everyone has to suffer.

If it’s your website then probably it will be shut down, as it happened to me today on JustHost, who suspended my account and noticing me after all my websites went down. I managed to get things back on track, but I don’t have to tell you how stressing this was for me, as I couldn’t see what the problem, which script caused the problem. I managed to convince them to re-enable my account and move my files to another server (using my persuasion skills) but I’m already looking for another host (any advice is welcome).

So, when using a shared hosting always backup your data frequently, as you might need to pack your things and move at any time. That’s the price of cheap I guess.

Options to shared hosting?

There are options, better but expensive as you might expect. One is Virtual Private Server and the other is Dedicated Server. The first one is like a virtual machine with fixed hardware resources. When you exceed them your websites start to move slowly, but don’t affect other virtual machines on the same physical server. A dedicated server means exactly that: you’re getting your own physical server, with root access and all that and you’re paying a monthly fee for rack space rent, power, bandwidth and security (in case someone decides to stole a server from a database you’re covered). All the administration is done by your or someone you hire, so that’s the professional version.

There’s also a solution that makes you less depending on someone and that’s server collocation: basically it’s your server and the provider offers you a place to store it, powers it and connects it to a backbone (a subscription which you pay).

As you see the more expensive a hosting solution for your websites is the more resources you have and the more complex the administration is. So chose depending on your budget and networking/servers/Linux knowledge level.

Web hosts I’ve used

I can’t finish this article without making a short list of hosting services I’ve used, with a few pros and cons:

• Dreamhost (if you like them use promo code IONUT97 for 97$ discount the first year of hosting)- reliable, pretty slow connection from Romania, nice support (who don’t jump and suspend your account because you’re passing the 10% CPU load limit), doesn’t have on demand general backup (which is a nightmare as you have to do it manually) but have a one time general backup and save snapshots of your files on each FTP account (not including databases)
• Justhost - very cheap, fast, reliable, jumpy when it comes to closing down your account (but you can talk to them and get things back on track), has general backup feature which is great
• HostGator (see available coupons here)- I’ve used them for a few days so not a lot to tell about them (I’ll update the article at some point). They seem fast and have general account backup feature

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That’s why it’s important to backup the blog’s database, but usually people don’t do that because they’re lazy or don’t remember to do so. Don’t despair, as there are plugins that can do the job for you. In this post I’m going to show you the most popular database backup plugin for Wordress (the most used blogging platform), named WordPress Database Backup.

How to use WordPress Database Backup

The plugin installs like any other Wordpress plugin: copy the directory in the archive to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder on server, activate it in Wordpress Admin and the configure it in the Tools – Backup section.

You have the options to select which supplemental database tables to be stored in the backup file, besides the default ones and the backup destination: server, computer or email address. Those are the options for manual backup. There’s also an option for automated backup where you specify an email address, the tables to be stored and the periodicity of the Wordpress Database Backup.

Database Backup plugin automatization settings

I’ve also made a short video explaining how the backup process works in the Wordpress admin:

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I don’t want to say that Google Wave is a bad thing, not at all, but don’t expect it to break the 20 + years of daily sending emails (email was invented almost 40 years ago) in just a few weeks. Email is not only in our blood, but also in the DNA of the Internet, being integrated everywhere, plus there are tons of applications using it, for desktops, laptops or mobile devices.

Google Wave

Google Wave might prove itself to be a very good conversations archive or collaboration tool but won’t replace Email anytime soon, nor it intends to do so (I don’t think Google is enthusiast enough to make this kind of grandiose plans). It might be Google’s answer to social media, that I believe.

Now that I bored you with my ramblings, what’s your take on this and do you have a Google Wave invitation you don’t need?

Google Wave presentation

In case you don’t know much about Google Wave here’s a short video presentation.

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Internet alienates people

Reasons and signs alienation happens

• when was the last time you got home after work and did not open the computer? If it’s been that long then it might be nice to do it, as computers and Internet shouldn’t be your only way of spending time.
• did you called your parents last week, or you’re waiting for them to call you? Don’t blame it on your busy schedule as there’s always 2 minutes for a chat with your folks
• when you were in college I bet you were hanging out with your pals every day, drinking beer and talking nonsense. Do you still spend time with them offline or you’re just sending them twits or Facebook updates? If the latter applies it might be wise to go back to the roots just a little
• how many times you’ve met with someone you haven’t seen for a long time and were surprised how much they changed? They don’t look like their Twitter avatar picture, do they?
• compare the number of people you interact with online each day versus the people that shook your hand daily and if the first one is way higher then you’re in trouble already mister
• when did you last time went with your buddies on a camp trip and enjoyed the nature without being disturbed by a cellphone or laptop?

This is why I believe the all mighty Internet alienates people. Is something I’ve experienced on myself, not a made up list. I believe now, more than ever that it’s necessary to strike a balance between your online activities and your personal life, as the future won’t be so bright when we will grow old and feel the need of physical presence of others more than we do now, so it’s up to you what to do to counterbalance this effect the Internet has on ourselves.

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