Subjects:
Knol Demo - How To Rank Fast
Danny Sullivan has an interesting article on Knol the day after its debut. Looks like there is an "unexplained" ranking boost for pages in Knol, even those not linked from Knol's start page. We can't but accept Google's desire to replace Wikipedia's untold good ranking and ad free pages with something that registers in the till - but does it have to be so obvious?
Predictable Pagerank
Google updated Pagerank values visible through the toolbar over the last few days. And as I've seen several times in the past, there seems to be a definitive bias for link order within a page - those linked first in the HTML source get more juice that those further down the pecking order.
Testing your DNS Server
The authoritative DNS Test for those unsure if their server is vulnerable.
Cuil isn't Cool by a Long Shot
There's yet another kid on the block trying to oust Google. Unfortunately, despite its claim to know three times as many pages as Google, there seem to be some gaping holes in its database. To make these visible just try some two or more word queries - not even phrases - and compare result numbers with those shown by Google. They're very often worlds apart. And maybe they should keep an eye on relevance as well while they're tinkering.
Life Sucks
Sometimes life sucks real bad. Professor Randy Pausch passed away last week. His last lecture - with both him and his audience knowing of his terminal cancer - is a treat.
Work 4 Free
Google at long last opens Knol to the world - hoping to attract those who like to work for free or very little before the big rush of information hungry knol seekers sets in. Some people see this as a competitor to Wikipedia. I believe it's more like those sites - mainly disappeared from sight now - which offered a PR X link for some random article.
Here's what Knol itself has to say about Wikipedia. And here's what Wikipedia knows about Knol.
Finger pointing
It's easy to blame other people in order to hide one's own shortcomings, as happened with O2's MMS leak.
Matt Cutts explains to those, who still don't know, why the suggested explanation making the rounds now has no merit, thus why it's O2 and not Google who's at fault.
In his posting he mentions a hexadecimal string commencing with "F1AB". If you do a search for the complete string you'll also find pages with slightly rephrased copies - and one lifted verbatim - naming different authors. Will they blame Google for that too?
Casual Link Baiting
Linus Torvalds has more than one talent. Here's how he fabricates publicity.
Google plays with Personalisation - again
Techcrunch show a video [for people able to squint] demonstrating some first observed features of Google's experiments with personalising search results.
Btw: what most publishers of instructional [and Youtube quality] videos seem to miss is the fact that the user, or viewer in this case, can't underline words on video. Printed words still rule for lots of people.
Now and Then
Philip Greenspun has an interesting list of Parallels between our current economic times and the Great Depression. Missing is, that now and then politicians weren't necessarily interested in the long term.
Searching Differently
Twing is an interesting search engine for "communities" - virtual ones, these days there are very few real ones, and they do not like to be searched - that could be an alternative for when price comparisons and other noise is not good enough.
If I would have coded this I'd ignore all those posts which just ask a question without having elicited an answer. There's is enough of those already in the mainstream search engines.
Gmail Privacy
Google now offers a way for you to see who can access your Gmail. What can one say...
How important is Ajaxification?
The Register explains it like nobody else can:
AJAX browser vote exceeds 'wild' expectations.
Google Tool for the Security Conscious
Google just open sourced ratproxy, a browser proxy analysing traffic between a user and a site to check for nasties not detected by many people. Not something for the point and click crowd though.
BBQ Risks
Wet summers have their own risks:
What to do if the inside of a grill gets wet.
Related To:
Are these people all related to each other. Or do we have a list of fabricated names as a new for of spam?
How much are your Friends worth?
In a just published patent application Google can be seen to be considering the monetisation - what an ugly word - of your friends. You still can't buy friends. But soon, thanks to Google, you may be able to sell them.
Flash almost Practical
Somehow Adobe and Google, followed by Yahoo, got around to working together on an improved Flash parser. It's now able to extract text and links and index those - as long as the flash file is not referenced by Javascript only. Some people thinks this is cool. That's cool. They still don't get semantics because there aren't any. And their sites will probably be even less usable now that they see no need to provide alternative content.
If one believes The Register, some of the motives are advertising driven.
Poetic Justice
The Independent this fine morning:
Some presidents get carved into Mt Rushmore; others have airports, motorways, and even entire cities named in their honour. But when George Bush leaves office, his most visible memorial may be a mouldering patch of human effluent.
© Copyright 1998 - 2008 Klaus Schallhorn.