Open Source and SEO

Car Parking through Web and Mobile

meravoice — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 04:53:59 +0000

Parking through Web and Mobile

You’re in a rush, you need to find a parking spot – and there’s nothing available! Well, how about finding a parking spot on your mobile phone; or maybe even reserving a spot from home via your browser? This kind of Web-based car parking solution is in its infancy, but we think this solution is going to change the way people park their cars – especially when in a rush!

As of now leaders in the parking space are the UK based Findacarpark.com, parkatmyhouse.com, peasy.com, the highly touted spotscout.com, and the Chicago-based ParkWhiz.com (although ParkWhiz has yet to fully launch their service).

These parking services aim to take a small percentage of the parking marketplace and/or provide targeted advertising through the mobile phone and web browser. Also I think that layering in sponsored events and activities with searches, could be very powerful – if they can better target me by my previous search history. In addition, I expect these online parking services to be mashed in to e-vite services and event 2.0 sites, as an added-value tool – like we commonly see with Google Maps. For example I’d love to get a classified listing on Craigslist, and click a link to see a Google Map and nearby parking in that area.

How to know who your LIVE competitor is

meravoice — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:51:48 +0000

I ve seen a lot of tools rely on Alexa database to give you some sort of information like rank, pageviews and visits to a site, I still do not know how reliable is alexa data to know who your competitor is because Alexa does not have a complete database on all the websites but it might actually monitor all the domains that were booked.

2. Not all the websites in the search engine ranking pages are your competitors, Check randomly some of the sites above or below your position that are actually matching your topic. But what if the competitor inner’s pages rank for the same keyphrase that your homepage is ranking.

3. Also We need to know on what basis does Google rank websites- i believe it mainly targets the websites based on the url structure, following with title tags, description, header tags, content, linking structure in the content(anchor text) which tell bots what to crawl and how to crawl and thus index the website.

4. Recently in the webmasterworld thread, there was a discussion on whether search engine ranks websites or webpages inside them and the outcome? still a mystery.

5. What does similar pages of Google results indicate? The sites on these results are in a particular order or not? but they have the similar kind of content as mentioned in

Similar Pages

When you click on the “Similar Pages” link for a search result, Google automatically scouts the web for pages that are related to this result.

The Similar Pages feature can be used for many purposes. If you like a particular site’s content, but wish it had more to say, Similar Pages can find sites with similar content with which you may be unfamiliar. If you are looking for product information, Similar Pages can find competitive information so you can make direct comparisons. If you are interested in researching a particular field, Similar Pages can help you find a large number of resources very quickly, without having to worry about selecting the right keywords.

6. I’m feeling lucky of Google also helps in finding the number 1 competitor but It again depends on whether you get an internal page as the result or the homepage.

7. Spyfu.com is another online tool which does help in finding your competitors and how are you faring in the search engines.

8. Well there are lot of tools on the net which give you some sort of results giving the list of competitors, which is again a good help. Some of the tools that I came across are quantcast.com, spyfu.com, compete.com, alexa and some of the meta search engines do help you to collect few sites that are on your target topic like kartoo.com.

9. One more way is if you have a neighbour or colleague who is interested in the same topic to compete with you. I guess you will have a full time war with this one person.

10. After you will get to know who your LIVE competitor is, find out how many pages are targeted for a particular keyphrase to know how your competitor is updating his content as per the offers, seasons etc, else you will loose to the competitor in the ranking.

Thus to sum it up all, It is like you want to reach the peak, you might reach some high position in that time, So It is always important to know who is your LIVE competitor to move ahead enjoying this race.

web 2.0 mantras

meravoice — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:05:43 +0000

focus on simplicity

long tail

open APIs

Remixability

User Participation

Convergence

Microformat

Web standards

Data driven

RSS

Audio

Usability

Ajax

CSS

Joy of Use

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines- the 14 rules to understand and then design

meravoice — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:59:39 +0000

Guideline 1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
Guideline 2. Don’t rely on color alone.
Guideline 3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.
Guideline 4. Clarify natural language usage
Guideline 5. Create tables that transform gracefully.
Guideline 6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
Guideline 7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
Guideline 8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.
Guideline 9. Design for device-independence.
Guideline 10. Use interim solutions.
Guideline 11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines.
Guideline 12. Provide context and orientation information.
Guideline 13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms.
Guideline 14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple.

Wikiasari – The New Rival to Major Search Engines in 2007?

meravoice — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:56:36 +0000

Wikipedia which comes in Search engine result pages almost all the time in the top 5 results

has come with a new search engine called WIKIASARI to compete against Major search

engines. It is a project to create a search engine.

Add a site

Browse keywords

Search the index

Search this wiki

In 2003, Wikia began to develop an open source search engine with user-editable search results. The search index is free, both in terms of cost and freedom. The data is available for anyone to download and use as they like. All content is licensed under the GFDL, and Wikiasari, the software which runs Wikia’s search index, under the GPL, allowing others not only to work with it, but to build upon it. See copyrights for details.

Anyone can add and edit the search index. 360,367 sites have already been added, and you can add more. See the forums to discuss the project and read the FAQ and the tutorial to find out how you can participate in the development of Wikia’s search index.

Wikiasari is in a beta stage and Wikia has not yet launched on a large scale but feel free to add URLs to the index and report any bugs you find.

Wikicity serves as a sounding board for ideas and development, and a place for the growing Wikia community to discuss the project.

Sites are chosen and assigned keywords and descriptions by Wikia editors. There are no hidden formulas; just thousands of people classifying links and giving their own rating of how relevant those links are to the keywords assigned to them. Because decisions are made by humans, not computers, Wikia is less affected by search engine optimization techniques as non-relevant sites won’t be highly rated in the Wikia index. Keywords are assigned to real results, not to link farms, giving you quality results when you search Wikia.

And Here is what the Founder said “Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken. Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency. Here, we will change all that.

IBM and Yahoo Team on Enterprise Search

meravoice — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 05:52:10 +0000

OmniFind Search tool is aimed at online companies too small to afford more costly search products by Google, Fast, and Endeca, three of the largest names in the quickly growing enterprise search market. The product helps them cope with more than 200 types of documents, from spreadsheets to memos to meeting minutes, not to mention contracts, calendars, Web sites, and wikis that have begun to clog servers with huge, messy stores of what’s commonly referred to as “unstructured data.”

Search can be very good at discovering all sorts of information that might be secure and otherwise private, Information that might be hidden in human resources or on network shares can be discovered potentially by a contractor.

Search tools, while immensely helpful for sorting, sifting, and culling through unstructured data stores, can’t help with the more basic problem of knowing what to keep, what to delete, and when to do it. There are some cases when you don’t want to find information.

The IBM/Yahoo OmniFind tool can be installed in three clicks after a brief download from IBM’s Web site. And while it’s free, IBM hopes it will spark interest in more advanced — and costly — search tools, while Yahoo expects it to shunt traffic to its Web site because users can pass queries directly from OmniFind to Yahoo’s search engine.

Both Yahoo and Google make free search tools for consumers, and the market is teeming with software and hardware solutions that promise to tame the information beast at firms of any size.

AskX.com

meravoice — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:35:36 +0000

I have checked the new AskX.com and the result page was in 3 column format where i have

seen

the narrow and broad keyword suggestions in the extreme left column with the middle

column

giving the search ads followed with organic listings. For the organic listings, we have an option

to save a particular result to “My Stuff” which helps the users to not go back to search the same phrase the next time. One can save as many relevant results as possible and can even send the results to friends and colleagues. On the extreme right you find the image results in the

top followed by RSS

and blog results and information from encyclopedia. These new search options look very

much

better when compared to the normal search options that we come across.

A New Linux Certification: Ubuntu Certified Professional

meravoice — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:36:16 +0000

Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, today announced it has partnered with LynuxTraining S
àrl to develop the first dedicated Ubuntu training courses for the ‘Ubuntu Certified Professional’ status. UCP is a training certification based on the LPI level 1 certification.

read more | digg story

Google has Site Status Update Tool to Reveal Your Good or Bad Standing

meravoice — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:34:22 +0000

Very cool little tool that can only help you if you’re the actual owner of the site.

read more | digg story

Google quietly axes search API

meravoice — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:32:46 +0000

Google has quietly axed the web services API to its eponymous search engine. The stealth move was made without any announcement, but visitors to the page now receive a blunt message, backdated to 5 December, advising them that the SOAP API is no longer supported.

read more | digg story

Firefox 2.0.0.1 Final is here!

meravoice — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:32:31 +0000

Firefox 2.0.0.1 Final – The award-winning, free Web browser is better than ever. Browse the Web with confidence – Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Enjoy improvements to performance, ease of use and privacy. It’s easy to import your favorites and settings and get started. Download Firefox now and get the most out of the Web.

read more | digg story

Fauxto.com: Flash-based Photoshop-like image editor

meravoice — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:31:47 +0000

This is the first online image editor that I know of that includes photoshop-style layers. It is still in early beta at this time, but it shows a lot of promise

read more | digg story

50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006

meravoice — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:31:28 +0000

2006 was rich on creative, beautiful and unusual design concepts. We
’ve seen a lot of whitespace, many examples of readable and usable text-design, badges, stars, rounded corners, shapes, gradients, mirror and 3D-effects – just name it. Let’s take a close look at some of the most beautiful designs we’ve seen in 2006.

read more | digg story

2006: The year that changed Linux

meravoice — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:31:14 +0000

Linux was already well along on its way from being the tech fanboy operating system of choice, to becoming one of big business’ favorite operating systems. But in 2006, that progress smacked many Linux fans in the face.

read more | digg story

A Reminder: Linux != Windows

meravoice — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:30:52 +0000

If you’ve been pointed at this page, then the chances are you’re a relatively new Linux user who’s having some problems making the switch from Windows to Linux. This causes many problems for many people, hence this article was written. Many individual issues arise from this single problem, so the page is broken down into multiple problem areas…

read more | digg story

Intel vs AMD – Integrated Graphics Shoot-Out

meravoice — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:21:25 +0000

Who’s best for games – and Windows Vista?

read more | digg story

Google Says Use Digg for Link Building

meravoice — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:14:08 +0000

Oh no, is this going to lead to a new influx of SEO driven Digg spam? “One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.”

read more | digg story

Enable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu Linux

meravoice — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:14:06 +0000

Ubuntu Linux has an option for font smoothing that isn
’t turned on by default for some strange reason. This makes fonts significantly smoother, enough to be very noticable.

read more | digg story

Google Says Use Digg for Link Building

meravoice — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:14:04 +0000

Oh no, is this going to lead to a new influx of SEO driven Digg spam? “One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.”

read more | digg story

Hundreds of Web Design Tools

meravoice — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 04:34:56 +0000

This web site has hundreds of links to web design tools sorted by category and popularity. The site stores your favorites so you can reference them later. The categories on the site are: color, css, fonts, html, icons, images, inspiration, tutorials, and widgets. You can even add your own links.

read more | digg story