When I purchase my iPad

Things I can get done in 10 minutes on my laptop take 3 or 4 times as long on an iPad (if they can even be done at all). As it is, working on a laptop is already slower than my desktop where I have access to 3 monitors and every email and document I have created or received over the past 10 years.

This is not to say the iPad is useless for business. Its best feature is the ability to quickly turn it on and check email on a nice readable screen without fumbling with a laptop. For example, when I land at the airport I used to sit down and fire up my laptop to check and reply to important emails. With the iPad, I can flip it on and check my email almost instantly. Of course, if an email involving real work comes up I often respond with an “I am traveling, I’ll get back to you on this when I can access a real computer” reply.

I do like to use the iPad at conferences. While moving from seminar to seminar, it is easy to follow the conference Twitter timeline, keep up with email, and to look up web pages mentioned by the speakers. The battery lasts forever so you won’t need to join the battle for one of the power outlets that seems to occur at the various tech/seo/marketing conferences.

So now rather than taking just my iPad on a business trip as I hoped, I am taking my iPad and Laptop. Fortunately the iPad fits nicely in the laptop bag and is about the weight of a good size magazine so it isn’t a big deal, and since it is great for reading magazines, newspapers, and books, my reading material total weight has been greatly reduced.

Business Pros

• Great Twitter App that actually makes Twitter enjoyable to use.
• Keep up with your business related RSS feeds on the go.
• Quick checking of email without firing up a laptop or working on a tiny phone screen.
• No need to carry several pounds of reading material to pass the time as you travel.

Business Cons (Just one big one)

• Doing real computer work is a pain and not worth the effort. Fire up that laptop if you want to get things done.

Don’t expect miracles but if used realistically, the iPad can make your business travel a bit more productive and enjoyable.

Do you need it – No. Will you like it – Yes.

On May 20 I wrote this post and set up a new one page site. With the help of several web friends who linked to this page with only JavaScript links I was able to complete this test to my satisfaction. Result: It seems that Google can not or does not follow JavaScript links to any significant degree as the site has not been indexed or cached.

If I had standard HTML links pointing to this page from the same locations I am sure it would have been indexed within days.

So to reveal the site with yet another JS link here it is:

As you can see, the page is nothing fancy, easily spiderable but it still has not been indexed or cached (as of this moment). Now I am going to point the first HTML to this page and see if it gets indexed: XML Daily Test Site HTML link

IMHO Google would be wise not to follow JavaScript links in the future because guys like me could come up with all kinds of new ways to get LOTS of free links. Also, I figure Google has enough problems with using HTML links in there algorithm, they don’t need to add JavaScript links to the mix or they will have a really spammer mess on their hands.

I big thanks to everyone that helped out with this test!

Edit July 30: 

I just checked the test page and the single HTML link from this post got the site cached on July 26, just six days after the link was pointed to the page. So a single HTML link in a blog post did what several JavaScript links could not do in two months. 

Also, the site now ranks #4 for XML Daily – Not a hard ranking to get but it demonstrates the difference of an HTML link to your site compared to a JavaScript link. 

I just started a Posterous blog called the Ramblings of John Lessnau. I am going to use this mini-blog to post quick thoughts and ideas and use the mothership, Lessnau.com, to post more in-depth stuff. What’s nice about Posterous is that it integrates seamlessly with Twitter and Facebook, so when you want to give your followers just a bit more information it will tell them where to find it.  I also like the way it makes posting from mobile devices a snap.

For now I am just testing it out. What really got me motivated was the Google Caffeine update which gives Google the ability to instantly index and rank new web content. I figure posting more frequent quick thoughts will take better advantage of the new Google algorithm rather than just doing monthly blog posts here. It’ll be interesting to see how my ‘Random thoughts‘ will rank at Posterous. If they do well I’ll keep it going, if not, I’ll shut it down since I have enough to do already.

Did Google Spill the Beans?

I might be a bit behind the curve on this but an associate recently pointed me to this Google video I somehow missed where MCs talks about how the Google spider is now following and indexing JavaScript links. He even seems to point out, like standard links, if you don’t want the search engines to follow, index, and “flow pagerank” through these links it is possible to nofollow a JavaScript link.

Of course, the big ad networks that use JavaScript to display their ads this is of little consequence since Google knows about and handles the these ads without a hitch (your not going to gain any authority from your Adbrite or Yahoo ads). But it got me thinking… what about the little guy who wants to get his links on formally untouchable web pages? Could simple JavaScript widgets and programs be developed that could easily put now valuable JavaScript links on any website, including student run .EDU sites, with very little effort that will allow the creator to get viral backlinks like never before?

I am about to do some testing to see how much JavaScript links from sites with decent pagerank will help a brand new standalone webpage with no HTML based Linkage. If I can get a keyword phrase to rank and eventually get pagerank on this page with nothing but JavaScript links, it will certainly be a game changer for those involved with text link building.

BTW: If you are interested in participating in my experiment and pointing a JavaScript link to this test website, let me know and I’ll get you the code to place on one of your webpages. There is nothing blackhat or personal gain involved here, after the test, the results will be published and the site taken down. At this time I can’t reveal the URL because I need to make sure no HTML links are pointed at it effectively ruining my experiment.

Edit: 5/23: So far 3 days and six JavaScript links to the test page and Google still has not found the page and cached it.

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