Despite Boycott, GoDaddy Still Supports SOPA

by on December 27, 2011 in Industry News, Vendors

Despite Boycott, GoDaddy Still Supports SOPA: “

As if there weren’t enough reasons to not do business with GoDaddy, they recently made it clear that they not only support SOPA, but that they were involved in the authoring of the bill.

Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA.

Even with that lesser-publicized fact aside, GoDaddy’s support of SOPA has spurred a large boycott, which they have met with a cavalier attitude (“we have not seen any impact to our business”) and some fuzzy PR-speak leading people to believe that they no longer support the bill, while they still do.

If you are looking to leave GoDaddy, or someone you know is, there are plenty of alternatives.

Domains: Name.com, Moniker, Gandi.net, Hover (Tucows), 1and1


<<Godaddy is not to be trusted. They are part of the pernicious 1% that believe in profit at all costs, the hell with YOUR liberty as long as GoDaddy maximizes return. Also as long as THEY get excepted from the law.

Read these book published by Harvard Business School for some alternative thinking on business orientation.>>

Betterness: Economics for Humans

 

(Via Webmaster-Source.)

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Google Hangs Out With the Muppets

by on December 23, 2011 in Uses of Video

Finally a good reason to use Google+

I recently saw a photography podcast that used Google+ ‘s HANGOUT feature. It was very cool with experts from different counties adding their perpectives on the topic at hand, this night it was about the merits and demerits of a new camera category by Nikon. Hangout With Trey Ratcliff really showcased how neat a video hang out can be. Got me inspired to resuscitate by photo blog at digital photo mastery.

That said this video by Google featuring Hangout put me over the top. If it is cool enough for Kermit and the gang to sing Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, its cool enough for me. Saw Bowie live in his Ziggy Stardust days, so lets just say I am still a fan.

David Bowie

David Bowie (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

 

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When Apps go BAD

by on December 21, 2011 in How to Twitter

Twitter Launches “New New Twitter” and Ruins iOS App: “

Starting Thursday, Twitter began rolling out their latest redesign, dubbed “New New Twitter” by users. The new design looks okay, albeit a bit heavy on the boxes, but some of the changes it brings aren’t so welcome. It seems to me as if Twitter is slowly strangling the brilliant simplicity that made it unique and successful, and making the service more and more like Facebook.

The first change that irks me is the new Connect screen, which replaces the Mentions tab. Instead of getting a listing of replies or tweets mentioning your username, you get something closer to a Facebook feed. The stream is cluttered with messages along the lines of “Mr. Follower and 6 others are now following you. Isn’t that great?” Oh, and anytime someone retweets one of your updates, it goes in there too. You can still get to the Mentions timeline, but it requires a second click. I imagine it’s even more “useful” if you have a half million followers.

I’m still not sure where they buried the Direct Messages page. I know it must be around here somewhere…

Next on the list is “Brand Pages.” Now the Twitter profiles for large brands get a few extra features that, while I’m sure they find useful, kind of detract from the Twitter experience and remind me of Myspace. (Remember them?)

Brand pages get to have a graphical banner on their profile, right above the timeline. They also get to make a featured tweet “sticky” and pin it to the top of their timeline. Oh, and did I mention any linked photos or videos in those sticky tweets get auto-expanded?

Now for the icing on the cake. Remember Loren Brichter’s excellent iOS app? Formerly known as Tweetie, it won an Apple design award before Twitter bought it and made it the official app. Well, Twitter has completely scrapped that codebase and replaced it with something that reminds me of Facebook’s kludgy app. It’s missing many of the great features of the old app, and feels very watered down in comparison. But it looks and acts more or less the same on Android, which is…good for Android users, I guess.

Gruber nailed it in his review.

…today’s new Twitter, is something else. It’s an attempt at a best way to do Twitter that is as consistent as possible across multiple platforms, ranging from the iPhone to Android to the mobile and desktop web. I don’t want an iPhone app that’s constrained by the restrictions of a mobile web app. The whole reason I prefer native apps is that I like experiences that far exceed what can be done in a web app. This is a native app that looks and feels like it was designed and polished according to the norms of web apps, not other native iPhone apps.

<<TweetDeck is drinking from the same well as Twitter on this. Web app ≠ native app and never will. Its one thing to offer an option but to force existing app users to suffer with a app/web bastard is guaranteed to tick your users off. I guess Wall Street thinking has taken over at both places.  Well that just confirms I am sticking with HootSuite. Both the iPhone app and web version(running in Safari) are stellar.>>

(Via Webmaster-Source.)

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On-Page Optimization Not Dead

by on December 20, 2011 in On Page SEO, SEO Tips

On-page optimization for long-tail keywords can result in ranking more than a page higher in search results, compared to half a page optimizing with head terms, according to a study by New York-based SEO & SaaS company Conductor. They also found that long-tail keywords converted 2.5 times better than head terms.

You may remember the uproar from last fall, when SEOMoz purported there was a higher correlation between LDA scores and high rankings than any other factor. Some took this to mean that on-page optimization didn’t matter. It’s a topic that still pops up now and again; my on-page optimization isn’t working, I don’t know if it’s worth it… on-page optimization must be dead.

Not so, says Conductor. In their research study The Long Tail of Search, Conductor examined the effects of on-page auditing and optimization for long-tail keywords, versus optimizing for head terms or failing to optimize on-page at all. Not surprisingly, they saw a downward movement of more than two positions for keywords with no on-page optimization.

More at SearchEngineWatch.

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WordPress 3.3 is out

by on December 15, 2011 in WordPress Features

Another WordPress upgrade cycle

Of course I will be waiting a month or so to install. There are always patches later. And of course all the plugins I used need to updated or at least verified to work with this version.

WPCandy has a good summary of new features

Lot of UI tweaks in the Administrator area,  NO major new functionality that I can tell for the produced site.

Now, as of 3.3, there is no performance hit for using the post name permalink structure. It’s so solid, in fact, that post name permalinks are now one of the recommended structures in the permalink settings screen.

That’s good because I always set up url as post name only. That is what Google will extract info from, not the date. This makes it a bit easier and if is faster to display page thats a win.

Widgets get a bit brighter in 3.3. Now switching from a theme doesn’t mean your widget layout is lost forever. If you decide to switch back to that theme your widgets will return to their old position, saving you the time of reconstructing your old setup.

Every major release of WordPress is named after a jazz musician. It’s one of those things that keeps the project fun and human, I think. This release the titular artist is Sonny Stitt, an American saxophonist who passed away in 1982. If you’d like to get to know Sonny better, here is  a Spotify playlist by WPCandy with lots of his music on it.

Edward “Sonny” Stitt (February 2, 1924, Boston, Massachusetts[1] – July 22, 1982, Washington, D.C.)[2] was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime. He was nicknamed the “Lone Wolf” by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern in tribute to his relentless touring and his devotion to jazz. He is considered the greatest disciple of Charlie Parker.[3] Although his playing was at first heavily inspired by Charlie Parker and Lester Young, Stitt eventually developed his own style, one which influenced John Coltrane. Stitt was especially effective with blues and with ballad pieces such as “Skylark“.  in 1972, he produced another classic, Tune Up, which was and still is regarded by many jazz critics, such as Scott Yanow, as his definitive record.

This is the best Spotify playlist. Go check it out if you like jazz.

 

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