The Google Webmaster Central Blog has in recent weeks provided some clarity and best practices on a few of the current mainstream SEO issues that many enterprises are struggling with, including the value of friendly URLs and Sitemaps. While friendly URLs are almost inherent to modern Web applications like WordPress blogs, they can be very difficult to implement in complex enterprise Web applications and especially ones that integrate older apps. Sitemaps pose the same challenge. When is it worth converting to friendly URLs or to develop the functionality to create dynamic Sitemaps? More »

Keeping up with software updates is considered best practice, but it can be a pain. WordPress is no different. All my previous WordPress upgrades have been smooth, but I was reluctant to upgrade from 2.2 to 2.3 because I was using the Jerome’s Keywords plugin (which enables tagging) and feared that it would conflict with the native tagging support in WordPress 2.3. That was before I learnt that WordPress 2.3 has import support for plugins like Jerome’s Keywords, Ultimate Tag Warrior, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag. The nagging knowledge that I should upgrade finally won me over this week, but my fears realized and it took me a few hours to get my site back up. Here’s what I have learned. More »

• Vanessa Fox Nude.
  No she’s not really nude, but she is and editor at SearchEngineLand and a this, her blog, offers great insight into SEO matters.
• IE7 is being deployed, ready or not!
  It looks like MS will be pushing IE7 out on Feb 12 as a Windows update. Currently, about half of IE users use IE7, 38% of browsers in total. Expect a big increase!

• 10 things that bloggers tend to forget
  Proofread, backup, approve comments etc. Here’s a useful reminder of 10 common sense things that we tend to forget.
• How to highlight author comments in WordPress
  A hands-on way to highlight your own comments in your WordPress blog’s comments list. Something I have been wanting to do as well.

• 25 ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site
  A list of good ideas for content, including expert Q&A, statistics and how-to guidelines.
  (tags: SEO content)
• Jailbreak for iPhone
  Jailbreak is an app that enables you to install software onto an iPhone or iPod touch. By default you can only install using iTunes

PDFCreator is a handy little application that installs as a printer and creates PDFs from any file that you are trying to print. To convert a document to PDF simply open the document up the usual way, select Print and choose PDFCreator as your printer. PDFCreator then opens up a window that allows you to enter meta data for the file like Document Title and Author and then you hit Save to save it as PDF.

Here’s a tip on how PDFCreator can be used to help with filing expense reports. When you’re making hotel reservations or airline bookings while working remotely and without access to a local printer, you can print your reservation confirmations to PDFCreator and save them as PDFs on your computer. Now you can email the PDF version of the confirmation to someone who can print it for you and you have easy access to your invoices when it’s time to file your expense report.

• “Stay-at-home” servers, the book
  This is pretty funny and a very clever advertising idea for the Windows Home Server. It’s trying to get people comfortable with the idea that servers have a place in homes.

• 10 Easily mispronounced domain names (funny)
  A list of domain names of popular sites with names that can easily be confused with embarrassing meanings : )

Google is known for their free services, open APIs and their “don’t be evil” motto. For most part they aren’t evil, but keeping their search algorithm a secret is just plain evil. Microsoft is known as a closed source software giant with a desktop OS monopoly. What makes Google any different when they have a proprietary search algorithm and they have a Web monopoly? Why don’t they open their search algorithm? The reasons are very similar to why Microsoft has kept their code closed and ironically Google too can become victim of the power of social computing and open source. More »

• Appreciating the skills gap between programmers and MBAs
  An excellent article describing the different perspectives of technologists and business people and basically telling technologists to stop expecting customers to know what they want.
  (tags: programming management design)
• “Black hat SEO” company’s CEO behind bars
  The CEO of Traffic Power is behind bars because he allegedly ran a housing foreclosure scam, but it seems he should be behind bars for SEO malpractice alone. Even Matt Cutts effectively decapitated Traffic Power a few months ago. Lesson: Don’t screw with
  (tags: “black hat seo”)

• Post links from del.icio.us to your blog
  I did this for a while, but stopped for some reason I forget. This article inspired me to start doing it again. Quite often I’d stumble upon a site or article that I think could be a useful resource and this enables you to post it to your blog
  (tags: del.icio.us wordpress plugin)
• Social bookmark sites that DoFollow
  Most social bookmark sites add a NoFollow tag to outgoing links in an effort to avoid diluting their link juice. Here’s a list of sites that don’t add the NoFollow tag.
  (tags: DoFollow bookmarking social)
• Google OpenSocial (official site)
  OpenSocial is a set of common APIs that allows you to build social apps for multiple Web sites. Something to consider in addition to building Facebook apps.
  (tags: OpenSocial)

I bet that you have tried to copy a DVD before, but didn’t succeed because it was either copy protected or it failed without clear reason. In a previous post I have described how to copy a DVD to an iPod, but here’s a way to simply backup your DVDs to DVDs. There are two main problems with copying DVDs, one is copy protection and two is that commercial DVDs have larger storage capacity than regular DVDs that you can burn at home. The media industry uses DVD copy protection technology that makes it *very* difficult to copy DVDs, yet most copyright laws allow owners to make backups or their property. There are a lot of wrong reasons for copying or backing up DVDs, but there are also many good reasons. If you have young children then you would know the value of backing up your DVDs and so here’s how to do it using DVD43 and DVD Shrink. For free!. More »

PuTTY is a popular free, open source Telnet and SSH client. Being open source there are many PuTTY variations, one of the more popular being portaPuTTY which I have recommended as an essential portable app before. I found a new favorite called PuTTY Tray: It is another variation of PuTTY, but offers some interesting features including:

You know how Ask.com uses Google AdWords network for ads and how AltaVista uses Yahoo! search results for its search? The relationship between search engines and directories are at best described as chaos in my mind. Search-This has an excellent visual representation of this relationship called the Search Engine Decoder. The site also has a PageRank Decoder which demonstrates how PageRank is passed. Besides these very cool SEO tools, the blog has great content and is worth following.

If your system is suffering with performance issues or is simply cluttered with old applications then Revo Uninstaller could save you time vs. a full Windows reinstall. Revo Uninstaller shows you all applications and components installed on your PC and allows you to remove unwanted apps. It does a scan before and after the uninstall to find files, folders and registry keys that may have been missed during the uninstall process. In Hunter Mode, you can uninstall programs with one click or by simply dragging application shortcuts on your desktop or quick launch bar to the Revo Uninstaller system tray icon. A portable app version is now available so you can now run it from a USB drive without installing it.

In addition, Revo Uninstaller also comes bundled with other useful utilities like the Autorun Manager which let’s you enable or disable programs that autostart at Windows startup and the Junk Files Cleaner which scans and deletes temporary files that should have been deleted.

Revo Uninstaller is portable, free and with no spyware or tricks - a great productivity tool just the way we like it.

Revo Uninstaller (Look for the Portable version download link)