Kent Dodds Productions

Kent Dodds is not a Google Employee

2007-12-16T13:10:00.001-07:00

After receiving several e-mails over the past year or so with questions about Google and having many people confuse me with a Google Employee. I thought I'd write on this blog for the first time in over a year to let everyone know that I am not a Googler (employee of Google). So please use the public notepad I made a year ago to contact Google. I don't update anything anymore so please don't get angry with me if it's not updated.
Contact Google:
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/03648125113782892215/BDRihIgoQ0Yuy7b8h

Bruin Broadcasting

2006-11-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

I am a member of my high school broadcasting class Bruin Broadcasting. There are two sections to this class, the radio section and the video section. I'm a member of the video section (if you know anything about "KD Productions" you would consider this obvious). I love this class. It's really great. It's a new class at my high school and we are just getting started. You can watch our first production (and in the future all of the productions) at the website: TFHSBruins.com. The video program lasts for about 7 minutes and the radio program is just under a half an hour. Please give it a little look.

I'm Proud to Be an American, I'll Show It.

2006-11-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

Today is voting day! Be sure to vote for the candidate that best supports your views. Become educated in what they support. Don't vote for a specific party just because that is what you call yourself. Be an individual, not a robot that is programmed to vote for a single party. Some candidates from each party are better than others. Research, be an educated voter. Your vote does count. A small example of that is that a single vote (from a person like you or me) decided whether we would speak English or French in the United States. If you enjoy speaking English, you should vote. If you don't enjoy speaking English, I don't care, you should vote anyway. Think about it.

Play Again

2006-11-06T18:21:00.001-07:00

Just a simple addition to the end of the video. Not only does it have "Send a link to a friend" and "Post to Blog/MySpace" but now it has "Play again" I don't know how valuable this feature is, but there you go anyway.

Compare Search Engines

2006-11-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

Jux2.com is an amazing combination of the three (in my opinion) most popular search engines out there: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It's very enlightening. You can combine the engines, or see what each engine is missing compared to the other two. Very useful tool I think. Will you switch your homepage for this? Why or why not?

Create your own Google Logo

2006-11-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

I have searched all over for a good Google Logo Generator, but have always been displeased with the results. I guess if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. This tutorial page teaches you step-by-step instructions on how to create your very own Google Styled logo. I find it pretty sweet. Create your own logo, upload it to the public domain and give a link on the comments, I may put a post with all of your logos you've made.

Google vs Yahoo on Halloween

2006-11-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

On the Digital Micro-Markets blog there was a competition to compare the Yahoo Logo verses the Google Logo. Google won 74% to 26% out of 812 votes. I liked the Google Logo better, but I think that lots of the votes were for Google because this blog talks a lot more about Google than Yahoo so Google users are the ones who look at it. And then I think that people just generally like Google more than Yahoo too :D Which did you think was better?

Google Maps Update

2006-11-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that Google Maps has a maximize button where you can see search results for the location that you just entered. This feature is not imperative, but it is altogether helpful. Has anybody else noticed this and I'm just out of the loop in Maps? Anyway, thanks Google!

How to Get Your Site Indexed

2006-11-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

SqU1d from the Free Hosting Community forum has posted about Google Sitemaps:

How to Get Your Site Indexed With Google Sitemaps

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps
[Difficult, Hard, And Easy]

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster
can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing
by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your
site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated
file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and
data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days,
you have probably seen the orange XML icon on many web sites and its
often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to
syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original
acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML
is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your
content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating
Sitemaps Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of
the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing
the Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites
growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge,
even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can
now take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON'T improve
your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other
sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make
sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps
- mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags.
To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap
file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

<>
<>You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login< / loc>
<>1.0< /priority>
<>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00< /lastmod>
<>daily< /changefreq>
< /url>

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code,
and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file!
File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place on that page
in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least,
1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is ONLY relative to
your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important?
You have certain pages on your site that are more important than
others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high
priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows
crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change that
particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you
frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly
updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list
all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly
updating your site in Google's massive index or database.
Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting
a simple text file with all your URLs.

Now there is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different
ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing
as you read this. For your convenience, three ways to generate your XML
Sitemaps file are listed below:

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your
hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out of you,
you're probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a
generator which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough
up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.
Google XML Generator

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed
on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're
doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps but it's encouraged
because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic
information. If you already have another Google Account gmail,
Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions
from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request
to the following URL:

You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This
generator will spider your site, and produce your XML sitemap file. Download
the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get
your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.
PHP Generator

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP
files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps a list of
these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here:
Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login
www.xm-sitemaps.com
, and you can
index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will
give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site.

It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an
XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non-
compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority,
changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory
of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google
Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site
you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file.
This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages
to your site - then you will need something like the PHP or Python
generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your
pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google
Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably
the wisest route to take.

How to Play the AdSense game smart

2006-11-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

SqU1d from the Free Hosting Community forum has posted about Google AdSense. It may or may not be review for you, but it makes a good point: Google Likes Content more than Visitors! So spend less time inviting people to your site, and spend more time being "Google-like" in the sense that you bring users information or products that they need to use/see, want to use/see or enjoy to use/see. Here is his post:

The Sensible Way To Earn Money With Google AdSense!
« on: July 01, 2006, 01:22:40 PM »

Google AdSense has rapidly gained a status of an
independent online business model. Many average
people with a little knowledge of HTML are earning
a fortune with AdSense.

The AdSense comes under the category of "pay per click
affiliate" programs. This means you get paid when
someone click on the ad which resides on your website.

There are many reason for the success of the AdSense
program. The very first reason is it is launched
by Google, the leaders of Search Engines. After
establishing themselves in the crowd of Search Engines
they had a crown of credibility with them.

The second reason for the popularity lies in the fact that
Google is not concerned about the amount of traffic you
are getting to your website.

They are more concerned about content. If the content
is really good your site will generate visitors over a
period of time. This is unlike many other pay per click
affiliate programs, which have a condition on the number
of visitors you are getting per day, before your application
gets approved.

This creates an interesting situation for online
entrepreneurs. The more the traffic they generate to
their site, the more is the possibility to get the
AdSense ad clicked and they get paid.

Now Google also benefits from this. Since AdSense ads are
nothing but the same ads from the Google AdWords account
holders, Google charges the AdWords account holder of
that particular ad which is being clicked and pays
a small portion to the webmaster on whose website the
AdSense ad resides.

The amount which Google charges the AdWords account
holder and pays the AdSense account holder is determined
entirely by the online popularity of the given "keyword"
for which the ad was written by the AdWords account holder.

This is where the real opportunity has come up for online
newcomers. Most people put a lot of energy in finding
"high paying" keywords or simply purchase a database
of "high paying keywords", create a small website around
the keyword, put AdSense code in it and start generating
traffic which might click on the ad and expect to get paid
high.

But here is the real kicker! The amount which you get
paid is dependent of 5 different factors. Some of the
factors are out of the control of the webmaster (you).

For example if a keyword phrase pays something around
$14 to $15 per click. Most people think that even if they
get a 1% click through rate, that is 1 person clicks out of 100 visiting their website, Google will put $14 in my account.
Yes it's true, but not always!

The amount which you get paid, depends on which ad gets shown
on your website. The ad which gets shown on your website
is dependent upon the relevancy and lot more other
factors.

The true success with AdSense lies not on targeting only
"high paying" keywords, but with focusing on creating
highly informative content and getting repeat visitors.
Google loves content. If you provide it on your website
you will automatically get more visitors and increase
the possibility of high click through rate which leads
to more income to you and Google.

So, learn to build traffic first and then fine tune your
website with AdSense script to start earning immediately.
The true success with AdSense is with generating content
rich pages and attracting traffic. "High paying keywords"
is a secondary factor with AdSense

Did you already know this? It was a little bit of review for me. Is this something new to anyone?

Interview with Googlers

2006-11-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

Robert Scoble interviewed two Googlers about Google Reader. This video also contains a little bit about the Google "Master Plan" (pictured on the right), and a bit about the Google Live Queries Globe (also pictured at the right). This is a pretty interesting video. Worth the watch.

NBA Leaves Google Video

2006-11-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

As noted in Micro Persuasion, you will find that if you go to the NBA Playoffs Page, you will find a list of games and links to buy them on Google Video, click on any of them and you will find that they have been removed. Unfortunately, this indicates a lack of money made by the NBA through Google Video, and if the NBA wont stick with them, who's to say that anyone else will. Personally, I think that this is just a bump in the road, Google will rebound. What do you think this means, do you have any thoughts, comments, or concerns?

Google Video - Sort by Rating

2006-11-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

Google Video has just added a new feature. Sort by Rating. We have the regular sort by relevance, date, and title, but now we can sort them by how other viewers, like us, think of how good they are. Nice feature Google!

What Google Lacks compared to Others

2006-11-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

One thing that Google is lacking verses most other search engines is a "related searches" section or a "Also try:" These can be helpful at times when you're not sure how to phrase what you're trying to search for. Also something to note, as I stated in a previous post, Google doesn't advertise for itself, therefore, you will notice that there are no sponsored links when you search "Google" in Google. Should Google add these Related links to their results page? Or would that make it look more cluttered? You tell me.

Google Accounts for YouTube?

2006-11-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

By now everyone knows that Google bought YouTube. Most of the discussion I've seen has focused around copyright and how Google will now have to deal with lawsuits related to 'illegal' videos on the site. The main reason that I've heard stated for why Google bough YouTube is to incorporate it's video ads into the site. So, fixing the legalities of the site and introducing video ads are the only real changes that have been revealed so far. But with such a hot property, how can Google stop there?

The most valuable part of what Google purchased is the user base. With over 100 million hits per day, that's lots of users on the site. Now just because Google has said that "YouTube will operate independently" doesn't mean that it can't or won't introduce more than just ad technology into the YouTube site. I would bet that Google will start by allowing Google Accounts to work on YouTube. After that, perhaps YouTube accounts will somehow be merged into Google Accounts. This would mean that all those YouTube users could now get access to the other Google services. Perhaps instant messaging is introduced to the site, with GoogleTalk as the underlying technology of course. What about YouTube e-mail? Powered via Gmail for Domains of course.

Done slowly and with the right unobtrusiveness, Google could absorb this new user base into the rest of it's services, greatly expand their ad viewing opportunities, and help to start paying back that $1.65 billion they spent…

What are your thoughts on this? Please comment.
[Thanks a bunch So Joe...]

Facts about Google you may or may not have known.

2006-11-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Some interesting facts about Google:

1.Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

2.The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.

3.Google is a mathematical term 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.

4.Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 ears prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.

5. It consisted of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.

6.The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day.

7.Google's index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of eight billions(2005) of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

8.Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes - such as Google MentalPlex, which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. Some thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fool's Day was a joke.

9.Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

10.Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth's orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.

11.Google has a world-class staff of 9,378 full-time employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex located at Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway.

12.Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices.

13."I feel lucky" is nearly never used. It was a comfort button which actually takes to the first web page returned by the search results.

14.Google use the unique 20%/5% rules. That is ,if at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the 'Advanced Preferences'.

15.Employees in Google are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. That's why we have GMail,Google News and Orkut now.

16.Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world's largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

17.The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it's called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

18.Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company's chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.

19. Google’s Orkut is very popular in Brazil and India. It was the brainchild of a Google engineer who was given free reign to run with it.

20.In a 2006 report of the world's richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was #26 with a net worth of $12.9 billion, and Larry Page was #27 with a net worth of $12.8 billion

[Thanks a bunch Exbay]

News Archive Results

2006-10-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

When you search certain terms (in this case yahoo google) you may notice this little deal at the bottom of the screen. This is mostly interesting because normally something like this would be listed at top of the search results. Though this isn't a huge development, it's something I've never seen before.

News on Google Blog List

2006-10-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a list (in no particular order) of Blogs about Google and their feed links that I find very useful. Google Reader is really helpful when it comes to getting news on Google.

Kent Dodds Productions (This Blog)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/kentdoddsproductions

Google Blogoscoped
http://blog.outer-court.com/rss.xml

Google Operating System
http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleOperatingSystem

Google Press Releases
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Google Talkabout
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Google Video Highlights
http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleVideosHighlights

Googlified
http://googlified.com/feed/

Googling Google
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?feed=rss2

Inside Google Desktop
http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Official Google Blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Official Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog
http://google-d-s.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Official Google Reader Blog
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Official Google Research Blog
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Official Google Video Blog
http://googlevideo.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Microsoft vs. Google vs. Yahoo - Trends

2006-10-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

Just out of pure interest, I decided to see how many people searched for Google (red) verses Microsoft (blue) verses Yahoo (orangeish-yellow), and was surprised to find that more people search on Google for the word Yahoo than any Microsoft or Google, and Microsoft isn't even in consideration in this running (and it's getting no better, while the others are increasing still). More interesting still is where these terms are being searched:
Top regions
1. Singapore
2. India
3. New Zealand
4. United States
5. Australia
6. United Kingdom
7. Canada
8. Portugal
9. Netherlands
10. Denmark

And yet, the Top Cities are mostly from the USA, and none are from the number 1 region, Singapore:
1. Seattle, WA, USA
2. Dallas, TX, USA
3. Houston, TX, USA
4. Atlanta, GA, USA
5. San Francisco, CA, USA
6. Chicago, IL, USA
7. Vancouver, Canada
8. Sydney, Australia
9. Melbourne, Australia
10. Washington, DC, USA

Rather interesting, if you'd like to see the actual results, click here.

Why Google Doesn't Advertise Itself.

2006-10-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

This can be answered very easily. Why would you need to advertise yourself if whenever you say something, every news company and blog in the world talks about it? Google is solely "Word of mouth" advertising. A very interesting news story has more.

Google Music Trends

2006-10-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

As I was just browsing around the Google Music Trends, I found something not shocking, but interesting. Enya is the most popular Music by New Age listeners. Not surprising or all that interesting, what is interesting is that not only is she the most popular, but she's the only popular New Age Singer:

Rank	Title	Artist	Change
1	Only Time	Enya	--
2	Orinoco Flow	Enya	--
3	A Day Without Rain	Enya	+1
4	Shepherd Moons	Enya	+3
5	Anywhere Is	Enya	-2
6	Book of Days	Enya	-1
7	Storms in Africa	Enya	-1
8	Wild Child	Enya	+2
9	Boadicea	Enya	+2
10	The Memory of Trees	Enya	-1
11	Ebudae	Enya	-3
12	Lazy Days	Enya	+2
13	Watermark	Enya	+2
14	China Roses	Enya	+3
15	Marble Halls	Enya	+3
16	The Celts	Enya	--
17	Caribbean Blue	Enya	-4
18	On My Way Home	Enya	-6
19	Tempus Vernum	Enya	--
20	Fallen Embers	Enya	New!

This was just an interesting thing to note. I wonder if there even are other people in the New Age category ;) Just kidding, I, personally, love to play the piano and one of my favorite genres to play is New Age. Check it out with my video I've posted here.

It's all about the pentiums

2006-10-28T18:43:00.000-06:00

This Weird Al Yankovic Music Video is absolutely hilarious. As stated in Wikipedia, this video is a parody of a song by Puff Daddy "It's All about the Benjamins." This nice little parody video is hilarious especially if you know anything about computers (and even if you don't in some cases). Very enjoyable.

Google Video on Mobile Phones

2006-10-27T18:40:00.000-06:00

As stated in Googlified, there's a nice new tool called Srobbin. Basically you can download almost any video (so long as it's shorter than 4 minutes) and put it on your cell phone. Rather interesting, give it a look.

Google Turbo Search?

2006-10-22T06:53:00.000-06:00

I thought that it was interesting that I recived this in an e-mail so I tried it and it took me to This results page (don't worry it's safe). Then I was really interested. I clicked on the link in the upper right hand corner and was able to add yet another site to my notebook for Google Feedback and then I sent them feedback.

Update: The link leads to a forbidden page now, apparently when I told Google about it, they banned this guy :P