Once again, it’s the simple things…

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I am a personal fan (I like Zombomatic more than the later released Tunnel Trouble) of the gameplay, concept and execution. However, even with the game being promoted (it is featured on the home page) I would have guessed that the plug-in installation would have marginalized its potential.

Could Zombomatic make it to #1?

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I’ve tried a few free services and settled on one that does the job right.   It’s called readr.com.  The reason why I like this free solution the best is that it doesn’t monkey around with your feeds in a way that technically or aesthetically mucks up display on Facebook (which many other potential solutions did).  Setup is incredibly simple, and there’s more to aggregate than just RSS feeds.  Supported sites/sources include:

• MySpace
• Bebo
• Flickr
• Photobucket
• Blogger
• Wordpress
• Twitter
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• YouTube
• last.fm

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I also recently started a new online marketing blog - Online Marketing Performance.

These blogs were started as they held two of the main themes on this blog which were intertwined with a lot of posts of a fairly random nature.  I’ll continue to post to this blog, but both of the aforementioned blogs will likely bet getting more and more attention as time goes on.

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Zombomatic Swap the conductors to connect them into a path for the electricity to flow.

Play this free game now!!

A few months ago Terralever was again approached with a Silverlight game design and developement challenge: Create a casual/twitch game for Miniclip.com utilizing Silverlight 1.0. To be clear, Silverlight has evolved. The Silverlight team has released a more advanced Silverlight plug-in which allows far more flexibility in development. That said, Miniclip wasn’t looking to leverage that version of the plug-in. The game would need to be built with for the 1.0 plug-in.

Leveraging lessons learned from Zero Gravity, a team of Terralever designers, developers, and multimedia artists produced Zombomatic 3000, an addicting puzzle game. The game was created under an incredible time constraint, but the team wasn’t willing to push the game out until they were fully satisfied with the overall user experience.

 I did not have much involvement in this project, and have to say I was surprised (in a good way) at the resulting game. The extra effort the entire team put into “getting it right” shows. Zombomatic serves as a confident marker in the casual gaming space as the first Silverlight game to appear on Miniclip.com, one of the world’s largest causal gaming web sites.

Congratulations to The Terralever Zombomatic 3000 team (alphabetical order):

• Craig Budwitz
• Chris Hill
• April Holle
• Jen Johnson
• Robert Neal
• Joel Neubeck
• Shannon Owen
• Ryan Plemons
• Casey Rayl

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 How are they combatting automagic spam junk?  The community decides if content makes the mark or not:

At the time Epinions.com validates entries (some time shortly following the end of the submission period), each review must have an overall rating of at least “somewhat helpful”. Express reviews are not eligible. (Express reviews contain less than 200 words.)

Visit the site to help Epinions spend the remainder of their 2007 marketing budget.

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Facebook previously announced the availability of limited profile data to search engines. I’ve checked here and there and hadn’t seen any evidence, but Facebook profile data is now definitely being returned (by Google at least). A search for “Scott McAndrew” (yeah, that’s vain, I know) shows the Google result to be a standard search result listing.

When not logged-in to Facebook, a click-through to the Facebook site displays the limited profile data as shown in the screen-capture below. Although not logged in, and likely not an acquaintance of mine, you are still taunted with the offer to Poke me (please don’t).

More eyesight into the walled garden

Part of the excitement about Facebook Applications, lies in the ability to reach Facebook’s every growing, engaged user-base. That’s nice, but if you’re looking to launch on Facebook, you likely have grandiose visions for your application. A week or go or so the lack of visibility outside Facebook’s gates was addressed by Justin Mitchell in a Facebook blog posting entitled “Public Canvas Pages”.

In broad strokes: Facebook’s firewall quietly invited Googlebot to take a closer look at Facebook applications earlier this month. Depending on new settings controlled by the application developer Facebook applications can be fully functional to the casual browser (not require logging in to Facebook whatsoever), require login to be in any way functional, or (the most likely) fall somewhere in between the two extremes. Developers can find more information in Facebook’s Developer Wiki.

Per an October blog entry, applications that are in the Facebook Application directory are also automatically showing up in Google search results regardless of their stance on non-Facebook user functionality. If you search on “Apple Student Gallery” you’ll find a Terralever-built application’s directory listing in Google’s search results.

Did you say Open? How’s this for Open:

In the (relatively calm) wake of last month’s MySpace/Google Open Social announcement, Facebook quietly blogged their counter-punch today: Facebook’s platform is that open, too. If you want to leverage Facebook’s innards to push out your own social networking site, have at it. As Open Social has yet to launch, the question has to be one of relevance (or lack thereof) at this point. An excerpt from the aforementioned blog entry by Facebook’s Ami Vora (emphasis and footnoting mine):

[…]we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins* — users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications.

This is just another step toward the vision of easy, open sharing of information. We look forward to supporting other social sites as they release their own platforms, and look forward most of all to the added benefit for developers and users.

* I’m relatively certain that Google, MySpace, and the rest of the Open Social club don’t include themselves as a part of the ‘everyone’ cited in the Facebook blog entry.

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The list of participating companies included:

• Blitz!
• Cynergy Systems
• iCrossing
• Sapient
• Schematic
• speakTECH
• Terralever

PhizzPop Judges included:

• Bill Scott, Director UI Engineering, Netflix
• Lou Carbone, Experience Engineering
• Jim Long, Gabriel Venture Partners
• Danny Stillion, Head of Interaction Deign, IDEO

Over the next few days I’ll place some reflections on the experience on this blog. To kick things off right I’ve included the Problem Statement provided to us on Monday morning. It’s receipt fired a virtual pop-gun for all the participants to start the scramble toward the inevitable presentation to the PhizzPop LA Judges at Elevate Lounge on the following Thursday evening.

Here’s the Problem Statement the teams received:

Congratulations!

You and your team have just been hired by a consortium representing all of the major Movie and Television studios. Your team constitutes the Office of the President of Products. You are responsible for determining the product strategy for this consortium. While your authority is considerable, it is not absolute.

You must pitch your product solution to the Board of Directors, also known as the Judges.

The media industry is facing an unprecedented set of challenges today. Digital distribution, a dramatic reduction in traditional advertising, the rise of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook and other factors have all combined to force a fundamental rethinking of the entertainment industry.

Your job is to:

• Find new ways to monetize the deep catalog of content that the consortium has. You should specifically be thinking beyond simply pay per download, subscriptions or advertising
• Look for new ways to create fans of our content. Sites like MySpace and Facebook (among others) have shown us that social networks are powerful tools. Figure out how to exploit the principles of social networking, integrate into existing networks, or both
• Look for ways to exploit the Long Tail. The consortium has a fantastic amount of old content that’s very valuable to many people. Figure out how to best help our users find existing content, discover other content, and share this with friends
• Figure out the device & platform landscape. Between iTunes, the iPod, Zune, Media Center, UnBox, Xbox Live, Joost, and everything else, it’s difficult to understand the overall experience system for our users. Explore creating your own, partnering, or both

A large part of this design challenge is to make whatever experience desirable, rather than simply a forced option. Specific features and functionality should be determined by the needs of the personas (see following pages). While your solution does not need to be functional, it must simulate the experience of each of the personas you’ve chosen to solve for.

Persona 1: The always connected gadget junkie

Name: David
Age: 32
Primary Computer: Sony VAIO running Vista; Alienware Mediacenter PC
Devices: iPod Touch, Zune, Xbox 360, 2 Tivo Series 3s, SlingBox HD, 2 AppleTVs, a 3G Phone (with SlingBox Player), PMP, Sony XBR3 LCD TVs, PS3, Wii
Internet Connection: FIOS 50Mbit downstream / 10Mbit Upstream

Overview: David is a high-tech executive. He’s the first to admit it: he’s a gadget geek. He as all the new toys, and rationalizes it by saying it’s important for his job. The truth is he just really likes toys. His secret love is when he has the gadget *before* Engadget or Gizmodo know about it!

David has recently had his house renovated. As part of the renovation, he had a high-speed network installed. Finally he can stream movies and TV from his media servers (iTunes and Media Center) to his various different TVs. Prior to this, David was very annoyed by the speed of his wireless network – he *hates* it when the program he’s watching skips.

David signed up for Joost when it was in beta, but it never quite clicked for him. He played with Democracy (now Miro), but could only deal with so much random and free media. I mean really, how many episodes of Democracy Now! can you really watch?

He’s also dabbled with P2P networks (shhh! don’t tell anyone), but recently has been spooked by the RIAA. On a more practical note, it’s a real pain when you almost get a file and then the last host drops. He doesn’t mind paying for the movie or album, he just can’t always find what he wants. He’s terrible with names, and usually remembers TV shows or Movies by scenes, rather than by actor or name.

iTunes, XBox Live, along with Amazon UnBox help, but he gets frustrated with having to split his catalog between services. Amazon / Xbox Live have some of the movies, TV shows, and songs he wants, and iTunes has others, but it still means that he has to have multiple accounts with his services, have multiple devices when he travels (and he does a lot), and multiple devices attached to his TVs. He also gets frustrated with ripping his NetFlix rentals. It should just be easier.

His other frustration is that all of his friends are scattered across all the different services. He know what he likes, but is only deep in certain areas (cartoons, crime movies, and electronic). He really relies on his friends to show him new options (and Amazon’s recommendation engine). With his friends so spread out, it means, gasp, he has to actually speak with them.

Persona 2: Isn’t impressed, and doesn’t care

Name: Erica
Age: 38
Primary Computer: ThinkPad X61 running Vista
Devices: iPod Nano, Verizon Chocolate phone, Bose Lifestyle 48 Series IV Entertainment System, Tivo Series 2
Internet Connection: Cable via WiFi

Overview: Erica is a corporate lawyer at a big firm down town. She just recently made Partner, and works long hours. Her focus is Entertainment Law. While she knows the legal issues surrounding digital distribution backwards and forwards (at $400 per hour, she’d better), digital media just doesn’t connect with her.

On the few moments she does have off, she usually spends them at the gym. Her iPod is always attached to her, and is the only thing that gets her through her hour long runs. She’s experimented with buying TV shows from iTunes Store, but hasn’t been happy with the quality (either the fact that she has to watch it on her very small iPod Nano screen, or when she hooks her iPod up to her TV). It just hasn’t seemed worth it.

She bought a Tivo Series 2 a couple years ago, which she uses a lot. That is to say, she has a lot of season passes but she almost never makes it through a show without falling asleep. At the end of the day, if she’s going to spend the time watching anything, it needs to be much higher quality than she’s seen to date. She’s got so little time, that she wants to feel like she’s spending it wisely. After all, she did buy that Bose thing.

At the end of the day, she just doesn’t care about the tech, or the ability to get new music, TV shows and Movies. What she’s seen hasn’t impressed her, and she doesn’t have enough time to find something she might like better.

Persona 3: Tastemaker without the matching wallet
Name: Jake
Age: 23
Primary Computer: MacBook
Devices: iPod
Internet Connection: DSL

Overview: Jake graduated college last year. His ‘day job’ is as a personal trainer at the local high-end gym. At night, he practices with his band as much as possible. He’s got a MySpace page for his band that’s gotten a lot of traffic, and he thinks he’s close to ‘making it.’

His life is on his MacBook he bought during his senior year of college. It’s his juke box, his recording studio, and his home theater. The only time it leaves his side is when he’s doing a training session at the gym.

Jake ‘gets’ it: He knows that people deserve to be paid for their work. He also knows that he gets inspiration from lots of different sources and he’s not able to afford the amount of music he listens to, or the number of shows and movies he watches. Whenever he does get some cash, he tries to buy the best stuff he’s sampled. Before the internet, Jake’s most hated experience was buying a CD after hearing the single on the radio, only to find that the rest of the album was trash. Part of the reason he spent so much time on Napster was to get back at the record companies. The rejection letters he’s gotten in the past don’t help either.

Jake spends a lot of time on P2P networks right now - so much so that his cable modem was been shut off for ‘exceeding bandwidth limits.’ It’s now back on, since it’s in his roommate’s name, and he’s trying to be more careful. Also, his neighbors don’t seem to have mastered turning on security on their wireless network.

Jake is ‘the man’ everyone goes to for the newest music, TV or movie trend. His clients at the gym always ask for suggestions. Amazingly enough, they keep asking for more. Through his MySpace page, he’s also gotten a lot of people (700!) to sign up for his Twitter feed. He was amazed to get 300 people to his last show at the local bar.

Now that he’s trying to get into the industry, and more than that, understands how much work it really is to produce a song, much less a record, he wants to be certain that artists get paid for their efforts. After all, he’d like to stop working at the gym sometime.

At the end of the day, he really wants to support the artists that are good. He buys as much of the movies and music he really likes (most of the time he can get it at the used CD store). He drives so many sales, shouldn’t the industry be happy with what he does?

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Terralever was invited to participate in the Los Angeles Challenge. Other cities which are also hosting PhizzPop include San Francisco (the San Francisco event ran under another name), New York, Boston, Austin, and Chicago.

Last week (on the 29th and 30th of November) we attended the training in LA. Tomorrow (Monday, the 3rd of December) morning we receive the Design Challenge. After its receipt, we have until 6pm on Thursday to concept and create our solution. Our work and that of the other competing agencies will be judged on Thursday evening at Elevate Lounge in LA. Winners of the Los Angeles Challenge will then move on to compete with the other regional winners at SXSW 08.

Terralever’s team is made up of myself, Joel Neubeck and the blogless Craig Budwitz. Details of our sprint to Thursday will be posted here, but likely not until next week.

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More information:

• Machinist: Facebook: Shut down that privacy-invading ad program!
• Slashdot: Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking
• Wired Blogs: Facebook Backs Down: Beacon Now Offers Partial Control Over Your Data
• TechCrunch: Facebook Beacon 2.0: What You’ll See

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The still before the video started reads:

Keepon, the dancing yellow robot, was designed and built by his video co-star, roboticist and psychologist Hideki Kozima, for his clinical research with autistic children. Mark Michalowski is the grad student who programs Keepon’s smooth moves.

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1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Execution against these goals resulted in a very casual online word game which, for each correctly answered multiple-choice question, contributes 10 grains of rice to end world hunger.

In a quick session (that actually became somewhat of a contest with my wife) we contributed several hundred grains. It doesn’t sound like much, but it all adds up—between October 7th (when the program launched) and yesterday (November 20th) over 3 billion world-hunger-ending grains of rice have been racked up. Yesterday alone FreeRice donated over 218 million grains.

Wondering who is paying for all this? There are small advertisements placed on the FreeRice site. The money generated by the advertisements buys the rice. Thankfully the ads are placed on the site in a restrained manner. A ClickZ blog posting notes that Apple, American Express, Toshiba and Macy’s are among the participating advertisers.

The game itself (while incredibly simple) is fun, has an addictive quality, and provides an assessment of your progress by way of 50 game ‘levels.’ The game was designed with everyone in mind:

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.

Ready to test your vocabulary? Go help end world hunger! Report back with what level you made it to!

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This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).     

It was also announced last that Maxis (Electronic Arts) has donated the original SimCity game to the project, allowing for free distribution of the addictive classic which was originally developed for the Commodore 64.

Don Hopkins created a UNIX variant of the game in the past and has been advocating the use of SimCity for educational purposes for years. Hopkins commented on a Slashdot article earlier this year:

“The goal is to enable the open-source community to renovate SimCity and take it in new educational directions, by applying Seymour Papert’s ideas about constructionist education, Alan Kay’s ideas about interactive user interfaces and object-oriented programming, Ben Shneiderman’s ideas about direct manipulation and info visualization, and many exciting ideas about multiplayer games, blogging, storytelling, game mods, player created content, and lessons learned from World of WarCraft, The Sims, Spore, etc,”      

The cause sounds noble. One way or the other games will make it to the OLPC. Let’s hope the educational angle triumphs.More about SimCity on the OLPC XO from Don Hopkins:

• SimCity for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): Applying Papert’s Ideas About Constructionist Education and Teaching Kids to Program
• History and Future of OLPC SimCity/Micropolis

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Ease of development is emphasized. Projects begin with a BUGbase which is described on their web site as “…a fully programmable and ‘hackable’ Linux computer…” Examples of modules you can snap to the base include a GPS unit, a Digital Camera/Videocam, a Motion Detector, and a color, touch-sensitive LCD screen.

Bug Labs envisions device building as an experience that can be enjoyed by both the novice and the advanced do-it-yourselfer. Since the hardware clicks together, the next engineering challenge is the underlying software. A description of the software environment from the BUG site is quoted below:

BUG is built entirely with open source software. BMI, the BUG Module Interface, attaches devices to the BUG. Device-based services and applications are dynamically available based on which modules are connected to the BUG. Higher up the stack is Java, which hosts a service-oriented component runtime called OSGi.

As the development community shares their hardware and software creations a programming-free scenario also emerges. In a recent podcast Bug Labs’ CEO Peter Semmelhack describes a future where a builder combines a few bricks together and interfaces with the BUG SDK where (s)he is presented with the top applications currently being used for that hardware configuration. Software can be downloaded onto the device without the need to start from scratch.

The BUGbase, aforementioned modules and SDK are all slated to ship before the end of the year.Interested? You may want to catch BUG Labs speaking at SXSW 2008. For more information including a list of additional modules visit the BUG Labs web site.

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What’s the XO got going for it? A lot. Again, it’s not going to replace your business productivity laptop anytime soon (nor is that its intention), but it has plenty for its sub $200 price tag (David Pogue sums it up well). A few standouts:

• High-resolution (1200 x 900 200 dpi) reflective, sunlight readable display
• Sealed keyboard, sealed case construction
• WiFi (802.11 b/g) and Mesh (802.11 s)
• Can be charged without an AC outlet (physical process)
• Integrated game pad
• Integrated touch pad
• Speakers
• Integrated 30 fps video and still camera

It’s not running Vista or XP, nor is it running OS X or Linux. The OLPC’s operating system and software is all open source. It’s a laptop for education geared toward countries where technology is inaccessible, and, conditions may be less than hospitable for the device.

Now, a bit for the philanthropists and the geeks. There’s a few ways you can score some good karma with the little laptop that might:

Philanthropists: You can donate an OLPC for a child in need. They’re $200 each (of course, you can donate more than one).

Philanthropist Geeks: You can donate an XO for a child in need, and get an XO for yourself with the “Give 1 Get 1″ program. $399 pays for both laptops (yes, it is a tax write-off). This is a limited time program starting on November 12th.

I’m anticipating some great XO stories next year and sincerely hoping the domestic “look what I did with my XO” stories are the exception, not the rule.

Learn More:

One Laptop per Child
Give 1 Get 1 Program

UPDATE: 8 November 2007
As noted by Dan in a comment below, the gOS is Linux. I was typing a little too rapidly when I said that the XO wasn’t running Linux. It’s been stricken above-thanks for pointing it out, Dan.

UDPATE: 27 November 2007
You haven’t missed out on this yet! Going beyond the initial 2 week Give One Get One promotion, it was announced last week that the XO will remain on sale in North America through the 31st of December.

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Source: Silicon Insider

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I briefly blogged about the Facebook Developer Garage Phoenix a ways back (it’s coming up on November 14th). One of the traditions of the Facebook Developer Garage is to open up the mic for anyone who is developing or conceptualizing a Facebook App who would like to get some feedback from the collection of Facebook minds at the Garage.

It’s a unique opportunity—it’s not often that you get have the ear of a group of Facebook App developers and marketers (including the likes of Dave Morin, an incredible mind from Facebook).

That mic is also open for those who would like to speak about Facebook applications from a marketing perspective, what’s happening with social networking, etc.

If you’re interested in speaking, let me know-I’ll put you in the right hands.

And, of course, if this sounds like something you’d like to experience come to the event!

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Situationally, they’re in a can of worms here. For their strategy to be effective, they’d really need to check sites by hand to decide if they should be put on their demotion list. On the flip side, if they do nothing at all, the burgeoning text link ad business will run amok, adding false positives to Google’s view of all things meta.

What to do, Google… what to do. Clearly this is the safe route, and one that is hard to challenge at face value: Kick the link farms in the stomach. But, many sites of a different caliber have reported negative repercussions (read the SEOmoz article below). Forbes? The Washington Post? I had heard rumors that there were a good number of highly respected sites that have stealth pages (that users never see) where they sell text links for top dollar. Maybe it is true.

Regardless, Google policing in this manner when looked at from a slightly different perspective is unsettling. Want to get a leg up on your competition? Buy them a nice present. Hook them up with involvement in some highly visible link farms. Get them some text link ads from a really visible source, too. Google will help you screw them over.

Read more on TechCrunch:
Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms

SEOmoz is also providing commentary and the effect on more mainstream web sites:
Google Toolbar PageRank Losses For Hundreds of Websites

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What’s is it? Twine, the product of Radar Networks, is one of the more promising semantic search engine efforts to date. Yes, the phrase “Google killer” is being used. Venture Beat did a great write-up on Twine yesterday if you want to learn more about it. The post on VentureBeat does a great job explaining not only Twine, but the concept of semantic search. There is also a more concise post about Twine on TechCrunch.

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From Microsoft’s press release:

Popfly goes public. Microsoft today announced the public beta release of Popfly, a tool built on Microsoft Silverlight, which provides a fun and easy way for anyone to build and share “mashups,” gadgets, Web pages and applications. Popfly provides anyone — even those with no programming experience — with a simple way to make creations without code and share them on social networks such as Windows Live Spaces and Facebook. Popfly enables users to do the following:

• Add some pizazz to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page by adding games, slide shows, “Halo® 3” stats or eBay auctions.
• Build a Web page for a club or organization, such as a soccer team page that would include a schedule, photos and videos from past games, directions to upcoming matches, and more.
• Leverage blocks from Popfly partners, such as Twitter, Facebook and Dapper, to drive site awareness and traffic.

Initially saw this mentioned in Erick Schonfield’s post on TechCrunch.

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Attending or hosting a Facebook Developer Garage is an opportunity for a deep dive into Facebook Platform: it is a forum to share ideas with local developers, look for partners on your latest project, see and participate in Facebook App demonstrations, seek technical support, or just network and socialize with other developers interested in the Facebook Platform.

Are you a marketing professional looking to learn more about Facebook applications? You are also more than welcome at this event. While most of what you’ll read online about Facebook Developer Garage seems narrow-cast to developers, marketing professionals have become a fixture at these events. It just makes sense—there’s nowhere better to get a feel for what can be done on the Facebook platform (or find a developer for that matter).

Facebook Developer’s Garage - Phoenix

Location: Tempe Center for the Arts
Date/time: November 14th, 2007 - 6 to 9 pm
Guest Speakers: Dave Morin (Facebook), Nate Warner (Red Bull)

To learn more and RSVP for the event visit the Facebook Developer’s Garage Phoenix event and Group on Facebook.

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The Two Dollar Multi-touch Pad: $2.00 *

Manufacturer: You
Target Market: Subscribers to Make magazine
Pros: Icebreaker with huge nerds
Cons: It’s a Ziplock bag full of water and dye

Yes, for the lowest priced multi-touch device you have to roll up your sleeves. The $2 variant is cheap, but it’s not ready for prime time-nor is that the intention of its (far more clever than myself) creator Erling Ellingsen.

* OK, the price is misleading, but even if you add the price of a Mac laptop, it still comes in as the second cheapest solution out there.

iPhone: $399

Manufacturer: Apple
Target Market: Everyone but people who use Microsoft Exchange
Pros: Portability, Price
Cons: Depends on your perspective

Let’s just not describe the iPhone. I’m pretty sure Apple has beat into your head what it is.

To clarify on the cons for Apple’s iPhone: there might be no cons whatsoever (ask anyone who would sit in front of an Apple store overnight to get a $79 OS X upgrade), it might have a few stumbling blocks (these people are referred to as ‘the general public’), or, it flat out sucks (Steve Ballmer).

Surface: $5,000 to $10,000

Manufacturer: Microsoft
Target Market: Consumer and Commercial (Everyone)
Pros: Leverages Microsoft’s developer ecosystem
Cons: It’s a big ass table

The Surface multi-touch computer is the product of years of R&D at Microsoft. Pricing is said to be between $5,000 and $10,000 - which, on the low end, doesn’t price it that much higher than a high-performance PC and monitor combination.

Surface’s form factor returns memories of the original sit-down Pac Man machines which have established beachheads in homes across America. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn’t envisioning Surface in your basement (whether you are or not). Combine the price with Microsoft’s developer community and expect to see Surface pop-up (I couldn’t say ’surface’) in a variety of venues. Hospitality industry first.

If you haven’t seen the Big Ass Table Surface parody, view Microsoft’s videos first and then get a laugh out of it (both are below).

Interactive Media Wall: Starting at $100,000

Manufacturer: Perceptive Pixel
Target Market: Affluent people like Steve Jobs (but not Steve Jobs)
Pros: Looks incredibly fluid
Cons: Prices Starting at $100,000

Perceptive Pixel is Jeff Han’s company which launched after the oooohs and aaaahs wound down following his NYU experiments and TED appearances hit the ‘net. The company’s first product, the Interactive Media Wall, is an 8 foot by 3 foot screened computing device. The single-page Perceptive Pixel site is curiously quiet about its first product. It does, however, have a great video showing more recent experimentations.

Definitely cool. Curiously being sold at Neiman Marcus. That’s right, it’s at Neiman’s. Details are less than inspiring. Could we get some indication of what kind of software it comes with? Are companies developing software for it? OS? And, I hate to ask, but can I step back a few paces and just watch a HD movie on it from the couch?

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Friedrich Kirschner: 3d LEGO Milk Scanner

Ryo Watanabe: LEGO Mindstorms NXTway-G Balancing Robot

Daniele Benedettelli: Mindstorm Rubik Cube Solver

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Highlights:

• The platform will consist of a set of APIs and a markup language to create applications
• Applications will have the ability to use Flash and iFrame content
• Deep integration will be possible - access to members of the social networks’:
  • Profile information
  • Friend list
  • Activity
  • History
• Monetization - Developers will be able to monetize their applications by way of advertising and keep 100% of the revenue.
• The announcement will be made in tech savvy San Francisco

No, I’m not late to the party. Following rumors which first surfaced this June, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is reporting the launch of the MySpace Platform will take place next week at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

UPDATE: 10 Oct 2007: Meghan McCarthy says it’s not so over at Valleywag. Her sources are saying that MySpace will have an announcement at the Web 2.0 Conference, but it won’t be in relation to their platform launch.

UPDATE: 17 Oct 2007: Looks like Arrington was dialed in on this one. During a Q&A session with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 conference Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe devulged details of the MySpace Platform.

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What is Uniqlock? A clock, some catchy music, interpretive dance, data visualization, and a blog widget. It’s also viral advertising pay dirt for Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing retailer who created it.

Launched in June, there are more than 14,000 Uniqlocks set, and the site has been viewed nearly 3.5 million times by visitors from 200 countries. Uniqlock (and Uniqlo) is better experienced than explained (go ahead, click on it).

The performance art piece wasn’t what got my attention, it was the WORLD.UNIQLOCK’s data visualization piece. To get to it, go to the Uniqlock site, click on the “MENU” on the left-hand side of the screen, then select the “WORLD.UNIQLOCK” option.

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Fast forward to today. While running through some email from that time period I came across Mark’s response and wanted to post an excerpt from his artist statement (as opposed to trying to embellish upon or pull from it) and provide a link to his work:

The typological array’s inherent ability to depict prevalence and repetition make it the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, and meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption. Part of my intent with this work is to answer the question implied by the title of Robert Adams’s book What We Bought: If there is some kind of big sellout occuring, what are we getting in the deal?

The typological form achieves an uncanny synergy and resonance with this subject matter because it mimics the mental images I suspect many of us form as a way of ordering the chaos of abundance that surrounds us. We can’t help but form in our heads lists, groups and categories based on product, brand, price point, style, market segment, country of origin, etc.

To see one of these turned into a group of images lined up together can be unnerving, though. In print, they confront us in a way never possible when they’re just in our heads. We are presented with order, and while it is often an absurd, seemingly pointless order, it is one that we recognize immediately.

I’m glad I came across that email. View the work: Mark Luthringer - Ridgemont Typologies

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BlogRush sprang onto the web scene “…to help bloggers solve their #1 need: More Readers for their Blog.” The concept is simple. You register your RSS feed, and then place a widget on your blog which displays the titles of posts on other blogs that are of similar subject matter. In return, your articles are featured on other blogs.

It all works on a points system. For each impression on your blog your receive a point. When you have a point, you get impressions for your articles. But, there’s more. There is a multi-level/pyramid aspect to it also. As people join BlogRush as a result of a referral from you (clicking on your BlogRush widget, or, by a URL supplied to you that credits you) and earn credits, you earn credits also. There are several ‘tiers’ of earning percentages.

Note: Not all multi-level systems are bad. The word “pyramid” describes a structure, but also had the stink of being illegal in some way due to its usage, and I want to clarify that there is certainly nothing apparently illegal or foul about BlogRush employing a multi-level structure to drive user promotion.

OK. So far, so good. The multi-level thing sounds a little creepy, but its nothing new. It makes enough sense. And, the way it comes together there is enough surplus that they’ll be able to easily introduce pay-per-view advertising into the system later (or some other monetization model). Yes, plan on monetization. John Reese is an entrepreneur and marketer. His URL is income.com. This isn’t being built to make the world a better place, it’s to make money at some point.So, what’s not to like? Try these on for size (and, again, at the time of writing this, I do have BlogRush on this web site to test its impact or lack thereof):

#1 - BlogRush may violate Google’s AdSense Terms of Service

Don’t have AdSense and don’t care? Skip to #2. Have AdSense? Here’s the AdSense verbiage that is being spoken of (bolding is mine):

We understand that our publishers are always looking for ways to attract interested users to their sites. But using third-party tools or services to increase your site traffic may lead to invalid clicks or impressions and result in your account being disabled. For this reason, we’d like to provide you with some guidance about this.

As many of you already know, our program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs. These programs offer incentives for users to view web pages or click on ads, resulting in activity that is harmful to our advertisers.

We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don’t recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity. We realize that you may have questions about a specific traffic service and whether it could potentially create invalid impressions or clicks. However, please understand that we’re unable to comment on any particular third-party service.

My honest take on this one is that I’m not buying it, but I can see how some people may. BlogRush is promoting your articles, not traffic. For someone to end up on your web site, they will have to (a) be interested in the title of your article and (b) click on it.

However, while the system doesn’t encourage bad behaviors, it certainly does reward them. Since it is based upon a points system where views on the blog owners’ sites drive traffic back to that site, sitting on your own page and cranking on the refresh button is like patting yourself on the back. This is precisely what has happened on BlogRush since its launch (although it’s likely something more automated than a human pushing the refresh button), and the reporting system has been down for two days as they are making changes to the system in a frenzy to eradicate what gaming they can detect.

#2 - BlogRush in no way guarantees you traffic

How do you get traffic from BlogRush again? As mentioned above, for you to get traffic to your blog, someone will need to read one of your headlines on another blog, and, be compelled to click on that title. Er. You can currently get your blog posts syndicated on a myriad of sources, also free, where your article title (as well as an excerpt) will be displayed for clicking. Let’s forget about that for a second.

So, you could still get some traffic from BlogRush. But, let’s think this through, there’s likely a very low conversion rate, unless people are having the BlogRush widget masquerade as their primary navigation, which they probably are not. So, what’s the best thing you can do to drive traffic to your site? In both models mentioned, one thing always works in your favor: increasing impressions. In the syndication model, I don’t have to do anything to ensure my posts are being displayed. But at BlogRush I do. Further, I can increase the impressions that my blog titles will get if I have more ‘credits’. Again, credits can be gained by impressions that occur on my blog, and impressions on sites of those whom I’ve signed up (and so on, and son on). So, what is the biggest motivator right now: Getting on board and getting people to sign-up as your “downline.” There is some conversion rate out there (albeit dependent upon how catchy your headlines are, and how relevant the site they are placed on), and regardless of what it is, the more visibility your headlines get, the more potential you have for traffic.

Is it all hype? No, there are people that think it is a great idea. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad idea, I’m fairly certain that what it provides is not what people are being led to think it will.

#3 -Communication that comes from BlogRush is worthy of infomercial status

Every email I get from BlogRush makes me feel like I’m being marketed to by a used car salesman. Reminiscent of those oh-so identifiable ClickBank sites. Late night TV. Kevin Trudeau. You know the drill.

This might change. But, at this point, the kettle is black. The easiest way to explain their communication style is to read the last email BlogRush sent out before addressing the fraudulent activity that members were taking to game the system. The email was posted in its entirety on John Reese’s “income.com” blog: Shocking Changes at BlogRush!

So, take BlogRush for what you want to.

I have a strong feeling that it will have a surge and then flame out. The idea isn’t all bad. I just don’t forsee it driving a substantial amount of traffic to anyone’s blog, and based on that alone, I think it will likely fade into obscurity.

One last take:

Could BlogRush work (as a business, not for the bloggers out there)? Absolutely. Here’s the scenario:

• Hopefuls install BlogRush in force (this is happening now-there needs to be far more users, but it is underway),
• Google either isn’t offended or doesn’t take action, thus regardless of good or bad traffic volume, people don’t have a compelling reason to remove the BlogRush component.
• BlogRush leverages the number of blogs that they now have a footprint on and introduces advertising into the mix bringing an ad format to the table that has a better page presence than a text ad would (think multimedia or video-something more compelling than some text links on a page).
• Voilà. Bring on the investors.

Only time will tell.

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Excerpts from the Great Firewall of China site:

[The aim] of this website is to be a watchdog and keep track of which and how many  or how many times sites are censored. Help to keep the censorship transparent. Each blocked website will automatically be added to the great firewall on the homepage.

How it works
We’ve opened a website in China and route your url request on greatfirewallofchina.org through to our server in China. The server in China opens the url and the result is send back. Our testing is only based on one server on one location in China. We have different backup servers in different locations in China might one go down.
Other locations and other servers may give you different access to the various websites.

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There’s a few things you might want to consider before making the leap:

1. Can you perform the upgrade somewhere other than your live blog? I know, I know, everything is going to go great, but, what if something does go awry? You probably can’t afford to lose your blog for a few days (or more), so do your upgrade on a development server and be sure everything is tested before you push to production.
2. Don’t be paralyzed by your plugins. WordPress 2.3 is not compatible with all WordPress plugins. Check to be sure your plugins are supported in 2.3 before flipping the switch.
3. Are you using a tagging plug-in? Well, WordPress 2.3 has taken the tag movement to heart, and tagging is built-in in 2.3. If you go the tag route, you’ll need to modify your theme.

Just a few things to consider.

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How Beta Invites are Distributed
When a startup with a killer moves into a limited beta phase, they delve out a small number of invitations to friends or people who have requested participation online. Each of the people receiving the invitation are granted the ability to invite a few more people. And so on… And so on…

Enter InviteShare
InviteShare’s has formalized (and in essence taken control of) the whole process by creating an exchange for beta invitations. Since the distribution of invites usually proliferates exponentially, if a user who receives an invite simply returns the favor to other InviteShare members, the ball keeps rolling.

My first experience with InviteShare was great. After creating my account I logged in, and, after a bit of fumbling around with the site I arrived at the Streamy.com invite page and gave my last Streamy invite to the next person waiting in the queue. Then, I searched on Mash and requested an invite. Less than 5 minutes later I had an invite in my Inbox from another InviteShare member named Ian. Genius.

Any negatives? One glaring one: This ain’t no 37signals app. InviteShare’s user experience needs an intervention. Applying some sound usability principles would go a long way for InviteShare.

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It turns out that seventy of Right Media’s ad servers were infected.  Some of the web sites that were effected included MySpace, Bebo and Photobucket.

In a recent press release, Dan Nadir, vice president for product strategy at Scansafe said “this is another example of how legitimate ‘trusted’ Web sites can unknowingly host malware. Online ads have become a primary target for malware authors because they offer a stealthy way to distribute malware to a wide audience”.

Read the entire article on ClickZ.

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Before we get ahead of ourselves, a quick caveat: We’re beyond the “How do I blog?”, “Why would I blog?” and the dreaded “What is a blog?” phase here. If you’re at that stage, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m assuming you already know why you are blogging, and what it can offer you or your organization. You just might not know what you can do to give it a nudge so people can find it.
OK. So you’ve set yourself up a blog, and you want to be sure your efforts bear fruit. Here are some easy, basic, and FREE techniques to promote your blog:

Tags and Categories - Cost: $0.00

• Internet and blog search engines use the keyword/keyword phrases in tags and categories to file your postings so they’re ready can be served back to Internet searchers. Use them thoughtfully and creatively!
• If you use both tags and categories, your categories should be broad; your tags should be specific.

Submit Your Blog to Search Engines - Cost: $0.00

• Submit your blog to credible, qualified directories (Google, Yahoo, Live, ASK, DMOZ.org)
• For some sites (such as the Yahoo directory) you do have to pay. However, you can submit your site to Yahoo without submitting to their paid directory.
• If there are any niche RSS syndication services for your content, see if there are fees associated with adding your feed to their service. Often, aggregation and syndication services don’t charge a thing.

FeedBurner - Cost: $0.00

• FeedBurner allows reporting on the number of subscribers to your blog as well as some high-level web site traffic reporting. It is also useful to promote your blog.
• After doing the basic FeedBurner setup, enable the ‘PRO’ settings. The ‘PRO’ features previously cost money; they are now complimentary (thanks for buying FeedBurner Google!),
• Finally, go through each tab in FeedBurner and read the options that are available. Scores of additional options exist from pinging other aggregation/syndication sources when you post an entry to placing ads in your feed to monetize your syndication.

Technorati - Cost: $0.00

• Technorati is the Google of blogs and a great source of traffic.
• There’s no excuse to not sign-up with the basic information Technorati needs.
• Don’t stop at the bare minimum. Go ‘Favorite’ blogs you enjoy. Don’t forget to ‘Favorite’ your friends’ blogs; maybe they’ll stop by and ‘Favorite’ you too. Add a ‘Favorite on Technorati’ badge or link on your blog.
• Add a post to the Where’s the Fire (WTF) every now and again. Make sure they’re good posts. Even if you don’t get a lot of votes, you do get people coming by to see what your blog has to offer.

Google Analytics - Cost: $0.00

• Google Analytics allows you to get more detailed web site usage reporting than FeedBurner can supply. Free or not it’s a great tool.
• Figure out which reports help you the most. You can gauge affinity for your content based on how often articles are viewed, how long visitors stay on your site when they arrive at a specific individual article (etc.). Sky’s the limit. Get to know Google Analytics.
• Learn and adapt. Viewing reports on usage of your blog isn’t blog promotion. How you interpret and apply what you learn will provide a strong foundation for your future blogging and blog promotion efforts.

Link to your Blog - Cost: $0.00

• If you send out any regular communication (online or off) provide a link to your blog.
• If your email program allows it, place a link to your blog in your signature.
• When you comment on other people’s blogs, be sure to provide your blog’s URL if you are prompted.
• If you keep a LinkedIn or Facebook profile, be sure to add a link to your blog. Facebook also lets you import your blog’s RSS feed as “Notes” so they display on your Profile page.

Ping when you Post - Cost: $0.00

• If your blog doesn’t automatically do it for you, ping Technorati and other services when your blog is updated
• If you’re not sure if your blog platform pings aggregators and syndicators when you post, check your documentation (most good blog platforms do this automatically, such as WordPress and Blogger).
• FeedBurner also has a ping service. Be sure it is activated, and take advantage of their offer to let you specify more sources to ping.

Participate in the Greater Blog Community - Cost: $0.00

• You want people to interact with your blog, be sure to do the same yourself!
• When you provide meaningful commentary on others’ blogs, you will benefit from visitors and/or the author stopping by your blog to learn more about you.

Finally Write Good Content - Cost: $0.00

• This is the big one. Without good content, you’re toast.
• Write provoking titles that speak to your audience. If the title is good, you have a much better chance of drawing viewers to your content.
• Be sure to post regularly! Post as regularly as you can. Search engines (and your readers!) like to see stability and frequency in the amount of content that comes from your site.

I hope these tips help. They are all free, and they will promote your blog. If you write compelling content and use the methods above, you will get traffic. How much blogging and promotion of your blog you commit to will determine how popular your blog becomes.

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I haven’t seen any in the wild, and likely no one has yet-that’s because they haven’t hit the search engines yet:

In a few weeks, we will allow these Public Search listings (depending on users’ individual privacy settings) to be found by search engines like Google, MSN Live, Yahoo, etc. We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data.

As noted in the quote above, privacy settings are available to the Google-shy. Insofar as greater search engine exposure, easy money says this is just the beginning.

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So, I’ve carved out another space on this big series of tubes, and this time it is just for those Apple topics. Please visit On a Mac for a continuation of the conversations which started here as well as new Apple-related content altogether.

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In addition to all of the standard analytics features, Gatineau can correlate your web traffic data with our massive database of demographic information. This allows you to slice your logs based on gender, age and other characteristics of your visitors. The service is free.

Read the whole post on the Visit Mix web site, or go directly to the Gatineau beta sign up.

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What’s view state? Web sites created with Microsoft’s ASP.NET which leverage view state (by default all .NET web sites utilize view state) place a hidden field in a form named (you guessed it) viewstate (or more correctly ‘__VIEWSTATE’) which retains values of control elements on a page between reposts.

Depending upon how it view state is used on a .NET page, view state can be a short string, or, it can be a long string. It can also be a VERY long string. So, what’s the concern?

The ‘__VIEWSTATE’ variable is placed high up on the page, inside the BODY tag, and above all text-content. From what is known about Google’s crawling activity, Google only consumes the first 100k of a web page (at least until it has established some level of trust or respect for the page). Therefore, one could argue that viewstate has the ability to truncate the real content on a large page.

It’s also arguable that pushing the content further down the page will be frowned upon (in general) by Google. Here are a few example .NET web pages exhibiting view state of varying lengths (visit a page, view the source, and find ‘VIEWSTATE’):

Terralever - Contact Us Page (and example of a relatively small view state)
Ensynch - Request Info Page (an example of a medium to large view state)
Cambridge Properties - List Page (an example of a fairly large view state)

Can anyone point me to a Google authority with a clear answer?

There’s a few articles that mention (and address) the problem below. What I’m trying to determine if it is in fact a problem.References:

WebProNews.com

…And the value of this field can continue on for a long time. I’ve seen cases where the viewstate is over 100k or more. The problem this has with search engines is many times a search engine will rank your page based on where a keyword occurs in the document. For example, say you’re searching on ASP.NET and you first have 100k of viewstate and then your keyword appears within the HTML document. This could affect how your page ranks for that keyword since many search algorithms base relavancy on where the keyword appears or how close to the top of the document it appears.

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen

I was working on some ASP.NET hacks and wanted to move the ViewState to the bottom of the page in order to get Google to pay more attention to my page and less to the wad of Base64′ed ViewState.

UPDATE: 9 September 2007
At the time of placing this post, I had reached out to Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor) who is a Google Evangelist. He did reply, but unfortunately let me know that he did not have an answer. He suggested the Google Webmaster Forums as Google engineers would come across the question. I submitted the viewstate question there but unfortunately haven’t received any feedback from anyone with an authoritative answer.

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Those voices seem louder than ever as of late. You may have heard them. Sentences usually start or end with something along these lines: “Apple is irrelevant,” “M$ is evil,” “F’ing Apple Fanboyz,” or “Windoze sux.”

Truth be known, both companies make products that are excellent. And, both make products which are lackluster. It largely depends upon the needs of the individual. One more thing—hold on to your chair—neither company is angelic, nor is either in cahoots with the devil.

Of course, we’ll never really know what Archie Bunker’s stance would have been for sure. On the computer my first instinct is to say that he and Edith would have a Celeron PC. But, who knows, maybe, just maybe after playing with Meathead’s iPod he’d head down to the Apple store and at least consider the options.

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With all of the new improvements we’re introducing (Coherence with minimize and Expose support, new Shared Folders and more), this is shaping up to be one of the best updates ever. The best part? It’s COMPLETELY FREE to all Parallels Desktop 3.0 users!  

Great news! And, the Beta 2 build brings more new functionality to the table. Some New Features in Parallels Desktop 3.0 Beta 2 - Build 5120:

• Visually, windows minimized to the dock now have the same transitions and behavior as windows minimized with Mac’s OS X
• You can now share folders much more seamlessly between OS X and Windows running under Parallels Desktop. In fact, you can set them up to mirror each other. Your Documents folder on the Mac is your Documents on the PC. It can be enabled for the Desktop, too! Before you ask-no, there are not two copies of the files being mirrored! Both the Mac and PC will be accessing the same file!

If you’re ready to buy the public release of the 3.0 version (or download the free trial version) as opposed to this beta version, visit the Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 page on their web site. For more details on this Beta 2 build, read the entire post on the Official Parallels Desktop Virtualization blog. There is also a link to download the beta in that article.

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These Flugtag pictures are a few of a larger Flick’r set of Flugtag Texas 2007 pictures.

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• Kiosks running the Flugtag Game
• PlayMotion’s cool first-person flight simulator
• An interactive craft builder
• A forces of flight exhibit
• and, the cool photo murals

If you’re local in Austin, be sure to stop by!  Did I mention the event is at night?  That’s a first (in North America at least)!  There’s more information at the Red Bull Flugtag USA web site.

Update: Many of the pictures I shot at Flugtag Texas 2007 are now posted online.

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At any rate, the creativity that The Martin Agency put toward the commercials has formally made it online: Check out the Caveman’s Crib.

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PageRank ExplainedPageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Sounds like PageRank is the juice—I’ve gotta have it to drive relevant traffic to my blog, right? From everything I’ve read (including claims that PageRank is actually almost completely irrelevant) I’d say, yes, PageRank is still absolutely important, maybe it is just harder to determine what my PageRank is at this exact moment.Let’s back up. How does one arrive at knowing what PageRank is assigned to any given page on a web site? Like many online marketers out there, I use the Goolge Toolbar (or a Firefox or IE extension) which pings Google HQ and reports back the PageRank of the page that is currently being viewed in the browser. This is where I’m getting the abysmal PageRanks for this blog. It’s straight from Google. I’m screwed, right? Maybe not. The quote below is allegedly straight from a Google Rep.

“The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is forentertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers toaccess this data, Google updates the PageRank data very infrequentlybecause is it not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in theGoogle Toolbar is several months old. If the toolbar is showing a PR ofzero, this is because the user is visiting a new URL that hasn’t beenupdated in the last update. The PR that is displayed by the GoogleToolbar is not the same PR that is used to rank the webpage results sothere is no need to be concerned if your PR is displayed as zero. If asite is showing up in the search results, it doesn’t not have a real PRof zero, the Toolbar is just out of date”

Too broadly paraphrase the Google Rep: don’t necessarily trust the PageRank indicator in your browser. Which, in my scenario, does feel right. Google has likely raised its eyebrows at me for moving the blog from a hosted Blogger to a hosted Wordpress blog—not because I went away from a Google product (although it did cross my mind), but because I made slight changes site-wide (including utilizing a completely different presentation template, changing the permalink structure, and moving pages—301′d or not… and I get a B- in that department, but that’s another story).For now, I’m going to move my PageRank concerns off the critical list. It would seem the PageRank tools are likely reporting well out-of-date data, so how much credence can I give it in the short-term anyway?The good news: Google reports that I’m indexed well. I am coming up in the search results. So, I’ll take that as a nod that things are OK for now. If things go south insofar as incoming traffic from Google, I’ll definitely reignite my concerns. There are, however, other things that come into play that can help my blog get more respect from Google. I’ll continue to blog about about this subject under the “Operation Gain Google Respect” heading and tag.

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<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">	_uacct = “##-#######-#”;urchinTracker();</script>

Here is a modified JavaScript snippit which logs the request as to a 404 page:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">	_uacct = “##-#######-#”;urchinTracker(”/404?page=” + _udl.pathname + _udl.search);</script>

So, if we can just determine when a 404 request is made, we can have WordPress insert the right javascript code. Luckily, WordPress makes that easy to do. Here’s the final code, which I’ve inserted into my footer.php file, just above the tag:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">_uacct = "UA-1449530-1";<?php if ( is_404() ) { // custom 404 code for Google Analytics ?>urchinTracker("/404?page=" + _udl.pathname + _udl.search);<?php } else { // Google Analytics for all other pages ?>urchinTracker();<?php } ?></script>

Now all requests which 404 will be logged as a request to ‘404′ and will also indicate what specifically was requested. For example, in the earlier scenario (the request for a non-existent page at ‘http://smcandrew.com/some-nonexistent-page’), my Google Analytics would report the following in my Content > Top Content report:/404?page=/some-nonexistent-pageHope this is of help to other WordPress users out there!

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All of the rentals were for Windows-based laptops—no Apple hardware rentals, even though the computer shown on the kiosk is a Mac.Beyond the laptop computer rental service, the PowerPort also provided travelers with facilities to charge cellphones, notebooks, and virtually anything that takes 120 volts. Connectivity? If memory serves right, there is free Public WiFi in the terminal.

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What would make me concerned? Well, first, I do have a reasonable level of SEO knowledge. It’s not my role directly, but it is a service that is highly relative to what I do. So, admittedly, I’m not a practitioner guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I certainly don’t think I’ve done anything remotely harmful. So, back to the question—what would make me concerned?

1. The Google PageRank for my blog’s homepage is 2
   Google PageRank is on a scale of 0 to 10 (there is also a “not yet indexed”). If Google knows you exist, and you aren’t being penalized for any reason, you should have a PageRank of 3.
2. None of my pages beyond my homepage have any PageRank assigned to them whatsoever
3. Google’s Advanced Search indicates I have one inbound link
   The importance of relevant inbound links to Google is undeniable. Luckily, several web sites and blogs have picked up on posts and linked to them. However, Google is only crediting me with one when I use their advanced search and check (when I just search for smcandrew.com I come up with more than 200 in-bound links).

A little more backstory on my blog

I initially hosted a blog, on this domain, using Blogger’s hosted blog solution. My Blogger site did have more pages with PageRank, across the blog I had PageRanks of 4 or 3. I was looking for something that provided more flexibility and switched to a WordPress solution. When moving to WordPress, I did my best to make the transition smooth, and, if anything, improve my search affinity:

• I did 301 redirects for the new locations of all moved content since Blogger and WordPress’ directory and page naming schema are different
• I utilized WordPress plug-ins to populate my Meta tags (I honestly do not know how Blogger was populating them)
• I modified my page titles to focus on content (as opposed to the name of my blog)
• I incorporated a Google Sitemap, and a WordPress plug-in which updates and resubmits it automatically

I want to be in Google’s good graces. My site isn’t heavily trafficked, but of the traffic I do get, more than half is from Google.

So what did happen? Maybe it was the move from Blogger and the slight modifications I made in tags and page titling (though I’d hoped that since everything was 301′d Google would look at the ‘updated’ site and content as a good thing). Maybe it is something about how the HTML is outputted between Blogger and WordPress. I’m not exactly sure. I get SEO feedback and gain knowledge on what has upset the Google Gods, I’ll post it here on this blog.

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What the SuperDrive update doesn’t let me know is how to stop it from opening each time I restart my Mac. So, I hunt and pecked and found the answer. If you’re having the same issue, read on…

Removing SuperDrive Update 2.1 from a Mac’s startup sequence is easy:

1. Go to > System Preferences…
2. Under the System header, click the “Accounts” option
3. Select the “Login Items” tab
4. Select the SuperDrive Update 2.1 Application (so it is highlighted-not the textbox-just click on the name of the application so it is highlighted)
5. Click the ” - ” button to delete the application from your startup sequence
6. Close the Accounts window

That’s it - you should no longer be prompted by the firmware updater at startup.

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After clicking through a few screens to try to resolve the problem, Vista took me to the “Windows Vista Solution Center.” On this page, there are several links to articles.

Here’s the one that blew me away: Number four of nine under “Installing and upgrading > Before installing or upgrading” : Opening the Windows Vista box.” I think the new Vista and Office boxes are a pain to open and simply not user friendly. Akin to wrestling with arcane CD packaging. Apparently, I wasn’t alone. But, to have a specific article about it? I clicked on it to see what the support site had to say about opening the box. Sure enough, an article on how to open the box.

It’s a three step processed, outlined in the article complete with pictures. The funniest part: At the top of the article, under the heading “Opening the Windows Vista box”, there is a helpful tips section that readys “Applies to all editions of Windows Vista.” It also includes a handy link to “Which edition of Windows Vista am I using?” So lets back up a bit, set the stage, and play the part of some sorry person who can’t open the box (regardless of how good or bad the packaging is).

1. A purchaser of Windows Vista cannot open the Windows Vista box (not good). They go to Microsoft’s support center to get help.
2. The page lets them know that the article which they are about to read applies to all editions of Windows Vista.
3. Directly below that declaration, even though the article applies to all versions of Vista, is a link to determine which edition of Windows Vista they are using.
4. Clicking on that link takes the already confused user to the support article “Find which edition of Windows Vista you are using.”
5. This page declares that the article “Applies to : Ultimate” below the title and again includes the link to find out which version of Windows Vista you are running (which, as we’ve mentioned, is the page we’re already on). Let’s ignore that for now, and find out what version of Windows Vista we’re running.
6. The article instructs: Just “Open Welcome Center by clicking on the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System Maintenance, and then clicking Welcome Center. The edition of Windows Vista you are running is displayed with your computer details near the top of the window.”

That all sounds great, but our theoretical troubled user hasn’t even opened the box yet, never mind install the operating system. At least there is a “Was this helpful?” link at the bottom of the article.

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