Have you ever visited a website and had someone start talking to you.  No not over your shoulder, from the page itself?  I have and I’m still not decided on whether it’s a good thing or not.  I can definitely see it turning off some people, but it’s slick and can give a positive first impression if done well.

These website spokesperson videos are pretty easy and cheap to do.  Cheaper than I would have expected and I’ve just run across one company that does this.

The main annoyance I have with them is that usual my web browsing is done either quietly or in an environment where I have the sound muted.  Of course, there are times I forget and if I’m in an office and my computer starts singing or talking it is a bit aggravating.  However, having a talking spokesmodel on your web page would seem to give it a more human/personal touch.  I like that aspect of it.

I’m growing to appreciate that business done well is probably more about building relationships than we typically think and I would imagine that this is something that people probably respond well to.  They claim increased user engagement with the site and I suppose they would.  They also claim higher conversions.  I’m not quite sure if this is the case and would love to see testing of this.
Anyway what follows is a sample:

And… there was also a caffeine update.  Well, mid October there was an update to Panda – somewhere in there was a Vince update and then caffeine saw an update in early November.  Did you notice a change in the search results?  Do you feel like they’re better or worse?

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve had several sites that have “fluctuated” through these updates, some better, some worse.  One or two were dramatically worse.

I don’t seem to be alone in seeing some impact and here’s a summary of what the issue is and what to do about it.

Panda is about lowering the importance of sites that are thin in content.  It has been easy to rank sites without much content for some time.  Just throwing a few back links (in many cases also thin on content) and you could do quite well.

 

Another factor in panda is really devaluing cheap and easy to get links through article networks.  They used to carry a bit more power and now, they just aren’t as effective it seems.

It looks as though links from authority sites are still good and powerful.  So at this point from my testing if you have a good variety of types of links to your website it will probably be for the better!

Vince seems to have been an update to improve the strength of authority sites (especially brand names).  Now, personally I don’t particularly care for this… is Belk more relevant in a clothing search than your corner boutique?  Yes they’re more well known, but that doesn’t mean more relevant.  For years in brick and mortar there has been a move to big box stores.  Small independent stores are under more and more pressure.  One of the things I liked about the internet was that it helped level the playing field between big and small.  Now it looks like the playing field may be tipping back towards the big players…

The caffeine update – it looks like they’ve turned the dial a bit on the more time relevant searches.  So… in theory presidential election searches will be more likely to reflect the current campaign as opposed to the one in 1960.  It does make sense, but certainly has the potential to affect quite a few topic areas.

Potentially it could affect all subject areas – wouldn’t you rather see the most recent articles on cancer research than one from 1990?  They haven’t seemed to turn the dial that far yet, but I think the potential is there.

Going forward – what do you do?

Build a site with good, relevant, unique content and seek inbound links from a variety of sources.  Keep your nose to the grindstone, build authority sites and just keep publishing.  So, if you’re a small, local business build an offsite blog, social media profiles to post videos, etc.  Also look for links from other local sites and organizations including local directories and even industry directories.

Image via Wikipedia

Change is constant. The last couple of years I have been doing less onsite computer service. Health has been one large reason for that. I have been focusing on other things though. One of the things that I’ve been working on is now going live. I’ve redesigned my web hosting services. at one point this page was the main site for that, no longer. I have now setup a new page for my Asheville Web Design, Asheville VPS Hosting and Asheville SEO Services. Many of these things I’ve been doing quietly for the last 15 years or so, but now I’ve formalized certain offerings. This is not to say that I am not going to do SEO work or hosting for those outside Asheville, NC. However, that is where I’m based.

Most of my computer related work the last few years has been server related, vps environment setup, maintenance and configuration. 99% of that has been in the linux/unix environment which is typically preferred for web hosting. Further, I have a great depth of experience with wordpress, drupal and joomla. (Especially wordpress.)

The site address is AAAVPSSolutions.com

When you are hiring someone for most positions a criminal background check is a high priority. Especially if the person you are hiring will interact with your family or with children. The internet has made criminal background checks commonplace and easy to conduct. There are many services that make this an easy and quick process. One such that I have found is inteligator.

Criminal Background Check Services

Inteligator is a well done, professional service that offers you the ability to do unlimited background checks and criminal record checks for a monthly subscription. If you are in the business of hiring people it would be well worth your time to visit and take a look at their services.

I would even suggest using a service like this if you are going to be hiring tutors or caregivers for your children. So, really whether you are an organization or an individual you can make use of these criminal records search services to keep your family safe.

The small fee for these services can be well worth the sense of security that the results that a criminal background check might provide. I know that one business in particular that I work with routinely screens new contractors that they bring in to search their criminal records and make sure that they are who they say they are. These days you really can’t be too careful.

Criminal Background Checks – Why a Subscription?

If you are an individual that is screening one person you may not need a subscription to a service that allows you to do criminal background checks, however there are some situations that you may need to perform multiple checks over time. Many organizations use criminal background check services multiple times throughout the year as employees come and go. In this case you should check your costs over the last six months and compare those costs to that of a subscription service.

It is surprising how low a volume of background checks you need to be running for it to be worthwhile to consider a subscription service. In some cases as few as 10-12 checks a year and it may be worthwhile to look at one of the popular services such as inteligator. What kinds of organizations may need this? Some Churches and other daycares make use of these services to screen individuals who will be working with the care of children. Many schools now are also adding this to the list of things that must be done before a teacher is hired.

In fact, many places will normally go ahead with a criminal background check of anyone involved with contact with children whether it’s a teaching position or something along the lines of a volunteer position. The requirements vary, but it is becoming more and more common to see any position requiring a background check. It has become an accepted cost of doing business.

Criminal Background Checks – Recommendations

If you are seeking employment and have to go through a background check you should not feel as though you are singled out. This is very common. Certainly if there were anything that you thought might turn up in your history it might be a good idea to be frank with your potential employer and go ahead and tell them what they will likely see in the background check. Depending on the situation then they can make a decision as to whether the information is something that would prevent your employment. Personally I would give someone credit for going ahead and laying all their information on the table from the start as opposed to trying to hide it or hope that something wouldn’t be noticed or found.

For the business or small organization I would highly recommend that you do criminal background checks on new hires especially if you are in a job that involves any kind of interaction with children. Why? Well, the cost of NOT doing the check certainly. This cost is on several levels, the least of which is the legal liability that you could find yourself in by NOT doing everything in your power to make sure you knew that your employees did not have a history that should prevent them from interacting with children.

I highly recommend Inteligator for your background check needs.

Image via Wikipedia

Absolutely shockingly high interest rates…. Wow. The last year or so I’ve seen a lot of westernsky.com ads. They are an LLC that is native-american owned and operating in the sovereign nation of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. (Within the borders of the US, but federal jurisdiction is on iffy ground there.)

Now, they do say they’re loans are expensive, but they are advertising their loans as being more affordable than many payday loans and I took a look at their site. Read on to see why I call it the westernsky.com scam …

WOW….

Loan Product Borrower Proceeds Loan Fee APR Number of Payments Payment Amount
$2,600 Loan $2,525 $75 139.34% 36 $298.94
$1,500 Loan $1,000 $500 194.70% 24 $166.95

So…. for a 1500 loan you only get $1000 because of the $500 loan fee!!!! But over the life of that 1500 loan for the use of $1000 you pay back $4006.8

But what if you go for the $2600 loan? The loan fee is much less at $75 (so you get the use of $2525…. but over the life of the loan you wind up paying $10761.84

!! That is why I call it the westernsky.com scam !!

Are they doing something illegal? no

You would be better off defaulting on whatever you need the 2525 or 1000 for, because you are going to regret getting a loan like this. Please do not consider something like this or other payday loans to cut your credit card balances down to size.

The moral of the story is to be VERY careful for any kind of loan (including credit cards). For all of your loans and credit lines it is a good practice to be familiar with your interest rates (I like having them all in a spreadsheet.) This way you can know which of your card balances to “attack” first. (Highest interest rate first!) Avoid falling victim to the westernsky.com scam!

Read the details, read the fine print, read the interest rate information and be aware that rates may increase if there is a missed payment. Try to avoid finding yourself WASTING 10,000+ dollars over the next few years just to have 2500 today.

By the way, it’s not clear to me if the terms at westernsky.com require monthly payments or weekly payments. Some other notes though are the following quote:

“Please be aware that not all applicants will qualify for every loan product or the lowest interest rate for a particular loan product. Some applicants will not qualify for any of the products. ”

SO, you may not be lucky enough to get the LOW (?) rate advertised on their site. (I’d be really surprised if they turn any applicants away.)

Desperation loans like this only put off the inevitable crunch and will more often than not make your financial and credit situation MUCH worse than it already is.

I have reprinted this from another site that I operate as a public service to remind people to be wary on approaching any loan like this.

Image via Wikipedia

I have been absolutely addicted. A week ago Thursday I discovered a new site. It was an article over at the makezine blog talking about the benefits of learning mandarin for what they do. I’ve always been intrigued by mandarin – I remember learning a bit of cantonese in Hong Kong and have a short book on chinese symbols. I must admit a lifelong fascination with languages (there’s the study new languages site, my how to learn spanish for beginners site and my onlineradiotv.com site which each have highlights of my interest in languages and the great exposure to other languages that the internet can bring. Anyway…. I’ve used a flash card program for a long time to work on vocabulary (mnemosyne) – I have around 10,000 spanish cards right now – a bunch of french (200) and italian (400) and german (6000+) cards as well. I’ve cracked the book a bit on chinese, but not much. So, one of the resource sites they mentioned was memrise.com

First off, let me say, this has been a busy week for memrise – after the mention in makezine which had them swamped with traffic, there was a mention on the Kim Komando show which swamped them with traffic and so…. at times this week, their site has been painfully slow. That much said, most of the time this week it’s been okay enough to work with.

Image via Wikipedia

So, what’s there? Basically, they have several languages that they (or their users) have created word lists for. You can edit word lists, add sounds, videos, mems (which might be mnemonics or other ways to help remember a word). Words can have pronunciation attached as well. So, I started by diving into the french list that I found of 200 basic french words.

Their analogy to memorizing words is “planting seeds”. So, you start by being introduced (7 words at a time) to your new words, and get multiple choice questions to identify them after their initial presentation. After a certain period of time these seeds will be ready to harvest (to move from a potted plant into the garden in their analogy.) After they have been harvested and are in the garden, regular watering keeps the memory from wilting. As you are more familiar with words, you will find the multiple choice entries progress to type in the blank entries. I’ve been impressed at how forgiving the type in the blank entries can be (missing diacritics work out just fine – typing a instead of á or n instead of ñ both are passable.) Some may not like this permissiveness, I think it makes the bar a bit lower (easier) for just anyone to sit down and try to learn without having to figure out keyboard mappings or copy/paste from character maps.

The other thing to note is that you have a fixed time limit to answer the questions – typically it varies based on the length of the word. You also get points for your answers 20 points for correct multiple choice, 50 for correct type in the blank and sometimes you’ll get points for being “close”. They have daily/weekly and all time ratings for site members (I’ve made it to #26 in one week!) At this point in time I’ve jumped in feet first to the russian alphabet (already learned it, but could use brushing up – this was something I needed a keymap to deal with.) the greek alphabet – I was always fuzzy on a few of those, morse code (yes, I already know it but it could use brushing up.) spanish, french, italian, german, swedish and mandarin comprehensive wordlists…. along with a few others. Yes… I’m ambitious I guess. So, in one week I’ve seen 1412 words on their site and racked up 353,759 points – expanded my vocabulary a bit in spanish – I found a two or three words I hadn’t run into before, expanded quite a bit of my italian, french and german vocabularies, learned my first 14 words in swedish and have got over 250 chinese characters (and pronunciations) under my belt.

It’s been very addictive as you can see. If I were planning a trip, maybe I would be a bit more focused and could add word lists of my choosing here.

So, how does it compare to mnemosyne which is what I’ve used in the past for word lists? Quite favorably. I’m still using mnemosyne and the one thing that it has going for it a website will not easily beat – SPEED. I can go through 60 words to review in mnemosyne in 5 minutes give or take. On the memrise site, it takes quite a bit longer to get through that many. They do plan to give a dashboard view showing all the items needing watering at a glance, currently you have to go to each list you have and then see what items are “wilting”…. All in all, the competitive and collaborative aspects of memrise.com make it a great option for learning vocabulary (or really any other list of information – I saw one list of world capitals for instance.)

Drupal 7 has become the flagship version of the content management platform. Last year I was setting up a couple of webstores with Drupal 6 and e-commerce modules (addons) for it collectively called ubercart. Ubercart was somewhat complex but things worked. For the rough edges there were other modules to smooth the edges.

Recently I’ve been working with an install of Drupal 7 and building an e-commerce site. Ubercart is available in a testing state for Drupal 7, but many of the developers have left in favor of a module called Commerce. Which also is in a testing state. What follows is a BRIEF summary of my trials and tribulations in building an ecommerce site with Drupal 7.

First, let me say that Drupal 7 presents a much cleaner, easier to approach interface than Drupal 6. The options you are most likely to need the most frequently are presented front and center (add content/find content). Further the navigation by default is given to you in the form of a header bar if you are logged into the site. I feel like the learning curve with finding things in Drupal 7 is not as steep as it was for drupal 6.

I also found the means for installing new themes and modules much improved, but still leave something to be desired. I have only just discovered drush which is a command line tool for managing a drupal install which can make adding themes and modules trivially quick and easy. (But that is fodder for another story.)

So, I began my adventures with drupal 7 and working on a shopping cart with ubercart. Somewhere along the way I ran into some serious problems with module dependencies and had to blow away the database and start over. There were modules that threw out php errors. Unfortunately the module that caused the errors was an advertising module that was unrelated to ubercart. I disabled the modules and the errors were still there, it was, in short, a mess.

So I started over and carefully worked my way through finding the required modules. I had things looking pretty good and then went to trying to solve a few rough edges with the cart. I intend to offer flat shipping and so the “click to calculate shipping” button seemed extraneous. Also, I preferred when an item is out of stock for the “add to cart” button to be unavailable to click. Both of these problems were solved by addon modules for ubercart. Modules which, unfortunately have not been released in a version compatible with drupal 7.

My choices were to review the source code myself to try to make them compatible, hire someone to do so, or look for another solution. At this point I had seen that most of the lead development interest had shifted from ubercart to a new module called commerce. So…. I thought that might be the path of least resistance. So, I disabled ubercart and installed commerce.

In doing so I found that there were some features that simply did not work. Why? Module dependencies. There are some features that require the current development version of several modules. So, I upgrade to those modules. Unfortunately upgrading to the dev modules is not enough I needed to only install from the development branch first. Argh…. nuke the database and start over again was my only solution.

So, I have now rebuilt the site AGAIN very carefully pulling in the required development versions of the pre-requisites and then installing commerce itself and some of it’s companion modules. Now that I have it correctly installed and working I have a great appreciation for it. it seems leaner than ubercart and less complex. (Not a bad thing.) I’m liking the simplicity.

Getting to this simplicity has been a frustrating task though. I look forward to the modules stabilizing and not requiring such careful installation. As for drupal – I hope to see version 7 become more robust in dealing with install and removal of modules. The problems I ran into seemed to have to do with tables not being correctly created on reinstall. Although at this point I could be mistaken in my statement of the issue. I do recall that there was a bug filed in drupal on the problem and was an issue cited by the creators of Commerce as something that would need to be fixed before you could upgrade to the dev version of the required modules and expect things to work.

I think drupal 7 has a bright future. It seems to be a great improvement on version 6. Commerce appears to be a great improvement on the structure of ubercart as well. I think within 6 months to a year, it will be the stack for open source shopping cart stores. I do expect to wait on the upgrades from drupal 6/ubercart sites though for some time. Perhaps a simple drupal 6 site with no shopping cart would be a safe upgrade, but it will be interesting to see how quickly the commerce/drupal 7 solution matures.

Image via Wikipedia

I use linux. I prefer it over Windows for many reasons. It’s more resistant to viruses, less of a target, but that doesn’t mean that malware or other viruses are impossible. If someone were to trick me into running something and even worse, trick me into using my administrator password to install something system wide, it could be the same end result as a windows malware infection. To be fair Microsoft has improved their security over the years. They are still the most likely platform though to get a drive by virus just by visiting a site (with no user interaction.) That much said, Mac users and Linux users should avoid being smug. Why? They aren’t completely safe. No one is. Social engineering is the most common (and most effective) path to getting malware on a computer.

I’ve done computer service for a number of years. Mostly small groups, home users, small businesses. But sometimes at larger organizations. It has many times amazed me that people let me at their computer by explaining that I’m there to look at the computers and _________ sent me back. I many times remember Face from the A-team…. “Hi I’m billy bob and this is my assistant sparky – we had a trouble ticket filed about the _______ and need to check out your workstation.” I can’t think of any time that I ran into someone new that wanted to call and check with someone else. Not once in ~15 years.

Recently there’s news of Mac Shield a malware for the mac that resembles rogue antivirus software on windows. Apparently a popup appears claiming that your mac has an infection and your administrator password is needed to remove it. Once it receives the administrator password…. game over you NOW have malware and it’s going to serve up illicit content over a public webserver, it’s going to collect passwords, bank account logins, credit card numbers and who knows what else on your nice secure smug mac.

The key learning moment here should be that it’s the user that was vulnerable – not the system!

Smugness should step aside.

Now, if you’re a mid size company that hires outside computer help – do you have a procedure for making sure that the person showing up is who they say they are? if you are large enough for an in house it department – are there name tags and ways to know that this guy that says he’s “the new guy” in IT really IS with your company?

Unfortunately in most organizations you can’t have a quick look from an IT person everytime you have a popup claiming that you have a virus. So, it’s important to become familiar with the legitimate popups of your antivirus software so you can discern better what is authentic and what isn’t. Sorry, but even that is no silver bullet. The malware writers are clever and who knows they may find a way to mimic whatever is preinstalled on the system for antivirus.

It seems that things happen in clusters, sometimes it’s more of a chain reaction. My longtime working laptop lost the ability to backlight the display. Yes, the backlight is replacable with a couple hours tear down and rebuild. Of course, they’re fragile parts and although I’ve replaced them in the past. I’ve got to a point that I didn’t feel it was worth it. The laptop was a ~1Ghz single core PIII or PIV with 2GB of memory. It has had flakey wireless lately, sometimes the machine will wake up and the wireless isn’t working. It’s clone had died with a power switch issue that could have only been solved with a motherboard replacement. So, I switched to an older spare while I ordered a replacement from Dell.

On looking at the dell site I still had my dell financial services account and a credit line there. We decided that monthly payments would work out better right now, went through the order process and their 30 second credit reauthorization and the order looked good. It was an inspiron 15R I think customized. Not exactly what I wanted (really wanted linux preinstalled – but their options for that at dell are fairly limited – the place I had looked at was a good 400-600 more expensive,etc…)

So, I watched and waited for a week. The day before the laptop was supposed to arrive I had logged in to see if there was any change in the order status and…. It showed up as canceled. ?!?!? It was after hours so I dropped an email to customer support. They “must have called or emailed first”. was essentially what I was told. No voice mail messages, no emails from dell. It escalated through several customer representatives over a few days, but the bottom line was they canceled my order without an attempt to call me.

I have bought 3-4 computers from Dell for myself and others in the last 15 years or so. I can’t remember how many dozens I’ve walked through the process of buying through dells online store. Then there are the 50-100+ that I have suggested just go look at dell when they wanted to talk to me about buying a new computer.

I told them about it.

As I thought… I went to hp and found a better machine for about 200 more and ordered it. (Billmelater – gives a no interest 6 months and then payment like dell financing does.) I’m using that right now. I have officially bid farewall to Dell. I don’t plan to buy from them again.

So, I got a pavilion dv6z se (special edition). It has an aluminum case which I think makes it feel like the most solid and well built laptop I have ever had. (4 core – amd processor – 6GB memory.)

While the laptop ships with windows 7, my first task was to make a backup image of the original drive state (clonezilla). Then I installed ubuntu lucid 10.04 and haven’t looked back. To say that this flies in comparison to the old laptop is an understatement.

I hope the increased productivity that I’m going to find here will help me get back into a routine of posting here and other places so keep an eye out for more upcoming posts. In fact I would like to give coverage to a cloud backup service I’ve started using.

I can’t tell you how slow the old machine was in comparison. I have looked at my cpu usage and typically am keeping two cores busy with my work flow which says to me I was severely overtaxing the old machine.

When the laptop first arrived with the HP preinstalled Windows 7….. This was a 500GB drive and 50GB was already in use. There was the rescue partition weighing in around 20GB and then there was the windows partition with windows 7 at 30GB. I suspect there was also a metric ton of other junky software that I wouldn’t have wanted anyway. HP advisor or HP hoosit or whatever other “utilities” are sent along from hp these days. Trial antivirus from whoever, and other programs that I would have probably never used.

After my ubuntu install do you want to guess how much disk space was used?

Go ahead try….

5GB (and that was with some of my data already copied over and most of my preferred extra software installed over the base install.)

So in many ways it’s just as well they don’t do ubuntu preinstalled on these – they’d probably hulk it up with a lot of useless junk….

On the plus side – HP has been very communicative along the way with email updates when the laptop shipped. (Shipped from Shanghai on a Friday and was on my doorstep Monday at 10:55….. with free shipping…. ) I’ve had a followup survey through which I expressed an interest in ubuntu preinstalled models.

So, how does ubuntu 10.4 work on the hp pavilion dv6z se? Very well. Let’s see… I installed and have wireless working, 3d working pretty much out of the box…. There was the hardware advisor to get the wireless and 3d working.

My biggest annoyance was the special function keys (volume, media player controls) took precendence over the f1-f12 keys. A change in bios solved that. It’s not a linux issue – it’s a design decision on this laptop – they decided wouldn’t mind pressing fn+ the key to get a f12.

Right now the only thing that I can think of that isn’t working is the fingerprint reader. It looks like it’s a slightly newer model hardware than those that are currently supported. I suspect in a short time it will be supported. (By the time I upgrade to the next Long Term Support release it probably will.) Although…. I don’t really care that it works or not.

Camera and audio all work well too. No tinkering required.

So, today there is an advertising supported kindle that sells for $25 less than its cheapest cousin which is the kindle wifi. What will it look like? The screensavers are one place that ads will show up. Also at the bottom of the home page. (It appears that you won’t have ads in the middle of your book.) I’m wondering if a $25 discount is enough to encourage someone to go for this version over the wifi?

It’s hard for me to say since I went ahead and sprung for the 3g version at $189. From their descriptions the advertising support seems relatively unobtrusive. (Much less so than google ads…. I could see them setting aside a part of EACH page of a text to put ads which would be annoying.)

So what do you think – will the $25 discount make for more sales?

Is any kind of advertising too much on this kind of device?