Ilkley Web Design - newsletter Mar 2009

March 2009 newsletter - The Interesting Internet

OUR LATEST CLIENT WEB SITE GOES LIVE
Tracey and John in Otley wanted to start up a business renting out classic VW campervans to holidaymakers. They have had their own funky campervan for years and found it such fun they wanted to make the experience available to others. (You can easily hire a VW camper in Cornwall, but not in Yorkshire - until now.)
They wanted to give the site a 1970's, flower power feel. So we obliged, and we had fun with this one! If you want to hire Dylan, Dougal or Wilma go to http://www.libertycampers.co.uk/ourbuses1.html

PUTTING YOUR BUSINESS ON THE MAP
In Google's Lat Long Blog, Laura Melahn reminds business owners that - courtesy of Google Maps and some details grabbed from a Yellow Pages listing - information about their company that they're unaware of may be appearing in Google search results. It makes sense to 'claim' the information to make sure it's correct and take the opportunity to expand or improve it. Any unlisted business can use the same process to add a brand new listing to Google's local database.
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/02/calling-all-business-owners.html
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin

MUSIC TALK
Sing or hum a tune, or just talk about it; use your voice to find the album track or music video you're looking for with this almost hands-free search engine.
http://www.midomi.com

BE £300 BETTER OFF NEXT WEEKEND
Find out how you could earn serious cash in just one weekend, mostly without leaving home, including a visit to the online car boot sale.
http://www.lovemoney.com/news/manage-your-finances/get-301-richer-this-weekend-2446.aspx
http://www.ibootsale.co.uk/main/index.php

GOOGLE LATITUDE
Since its launch last month, there has been a flood of negative reporting from critics who regard the new location-aware Latitude service on Google Maps (which allows users to track other people via smartphones) as a threat to privacy. The words "stalking” and "Big Brother” have turned up in a range of mainstream news articles and even Google's own pitch for Latitude has been "see where your friends are in real time". Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said "As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends". Google says the system has easy-to-use privacy controls and points out that it's an entirely opt-in service. People who use Google Maps on their smartphones can choose to restrict their level of exposure, or simply not be involved with Latitude at all. More recently, the Gmail Blog announced that you can also activate a new Labs feature that will append your current location to your e-mail signature, when you use Gmail.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=99847
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-add-your-location-to-your.html

DICTIONARIES COMPENDIUM
As well as a collection of online dictionaries and translation resources in English and other languages, Dicts.info is a new comprehensive reference site with a home page quick translation tool that provides the foreign language equivalent of English words in over 50 alphabetically listed native tongues from Afrikaans to Welsh.
http://www.dicts.info

WEB ADDRESS SHORTAGE
A claim that the world could run out of IP addresses before the end of the year has prompted European Commission moves to push for more IP addresses to be made available and support the freeing up of domain name formats to expand the diminishing supply of top-level domains.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/609926/government-warned-to-act-before-ip-addresses-run-out

NAME BRAIN
DomainTyper is an easy domain name finder that checks availability instantly as you begin typing and then uses international domain extensions to suggest alternatives when the-name-you-want.com is taken. Because names like search.com, carhire.com and dentist.com, for example, were snapped up long ago, DomainTyper lets you know that http://sear.ch, http://carhi.re and http://denti.st are available. If the idea of a domain based in Switzerland (.ch), Saint Helena (.sh), Reunion Island (.re) or São Tomé e Príncipe (.st) does not appeal, and you're are still stuck for ideas, try clicking the "Generate" button (lower left on the DomainTyper home page) a few times to see if the utility's random list of diminishing still-available .com names has anything for you. At time of writing, suggested 'fit almost anything' names included the likes of podfoundry.com, edgeposts.com, boodlemill.com, kaycable.com, yocore.com, tencircuit.com and tinyside.com.
http://domaintyper.com

ONE URL FITS ALL
Duplicate content has long been an issue for search engines and Web site promoters. Search engines want to avoid cluttering results with copies of the same text, while marketers and site owners often produce several copies of the same content with different URLs for usability or other purposes. Even a home page can have three or more URLs that deliver exactly the same thing, such as: http://example.com, http://www.example.com and http://www.example.com/default.aspx. Now, the big three search engine operators - Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft - have agreed a solution that offers Web site owners the opportunity of designating which URL should represent particular content and which URLs with duplicate content should be ignored. Last month, they announced a new tag to specify the URL of any page on a site. The new tag allows Webmasters to choose which URL search engines should use for the content, regardless of what session id, link parameter, sort parameter, parameter order or other variable has been appended to the end of the URL in a link. The new tag goes in the <head> section of a page and looks like this: <link rel="canonical" ref="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=shinywidget" /> Google says "we strongly recommend pointing to a single page to ensure optimal results".
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/12/fighting-duplication-adding-more-arrows-to-your-quiver/
http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx

MICRO BRANDING
Favicon.ico is a special type of icon that browsers display alongside a Web site's address (URL) when visitors arrive at a Web page. It's a little extra branding for Web sites (graphics don't get much smaller) that also carries over when a page is added to "Favourites". The Favicon can help to make your pages stand out in the lists that social book marking sites let you populate and Google has experimented with adding site favicons next to search results. If you would you like to see your own icon in the browser address bar when visitors view one of your Web pages, you might find a suitable ready-made file to download at VeryIcon.com and you can learn more at Favicon.com.
http://www.veryicon.com
http://www.quickfavicon.com

LISTEN WHILE YOU TWITTER
Twisten.fm is a new service to listen to music on Twitter. Pronounced "twissen", the service crawls Twitter for tweets about music, then adds a play button so that you can listen to the song being talked about. Visit the site, sign in, and search for an artist or favourite song. You will see all the tweets from people who recently heard the same music.
http://www.twisten.fm

WRITING COMPETITION
Aided by Google, Dummies.com is promoting its new Web site by looking for budding writers with inside knowledge or expertise to share for some new online guides and offering a £650 prize to encourage first-time authors. The competition site provides some ideas. "You can browse other submissions" (subjects ranging from pancake making to backpacking), "or take a look at any of the excellent content on Dummies.com. And there's a "How-to" template to get you started.
http://www.google.com/landing/knolfordummies/
http://www.dummies.com/Section/id-352004.html?cid=db_promo1

MOBILE ANSWERS
If you like pub quizzes, or need definitive answers to settle the occasional factual argument between friends, Wapedia.com could be just what you're looking for. Once stored in your phone, this site from the people at Wikipedia is one of those Web addresses that could become indispensable.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/

FIT FOR MOBILES
Most Web sites are not optimised for mobile phone viewing. Mobile Leap is a bridging filter that strips sites down to basics and reformats them so that you are sure to be able to view their pages on your handheld device. Click on Settings at the bare-bones interface when you first launch Mobile Leap to set the dimensions of your screen and include as much or as little detail as you think your mobile can handle. You can choose to run text-only, or with graphics re-sized to mobile-friendly dimensions. Options to strip out advertising and excess page code provide extra help to cut down loading times for slow connections.
http://mlvb.net/

PAD ORGANISER
Yahoo! is hoping to make up ground on Google with the launch of its Search Pad service, which helps organise items found on the Web. The launch comes after Google announced it was dropping its similar Notebook tool in a bid to cut expenditure on "non essential" projects. Search Pad lets you copy and edit clippings from Web sites, organise them so that they're relevant to a particular topic, and then print them out or e-mail them to friends or colleagues. You can also save notes and access them later. Yahoo! says its research shows that people often use text files, word-processing documents, sticky notes, e-mails, bookmarks, or a combination of things, to store and organise information they find on the Web. "These methods can be quite cumbersome and require extra steps which are time-consuming and distracting," said Tom Chi, senior director of product management, on the Yahoo! Search blog. "Search Pad tackles this problem by intelligently detecting users' research intent, automatically collecting visited sites, and providing simple tools for users to organise and add notes - all in one place". Search Pad is still being tested, but a limited number of users will be able to try it. In the meantime, the company has released a short video demo to show how it works.
http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/04/search-pad-making-online-research-easier-2/

SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH
Worio is a new meta search engine that uses recommender technologies to improve search results. It transfers the "people who bought this also bought that” idea from online shopping to Web search. To gain the knowledge, Worio doubles as a social bookmarking site to learn more about sites and their users. Also, by identifying common keywords in results, Worio turns them into tags and stores them as groups. When you use its search, the bulk of the page shows results from your choice of major search engine, but the right hand side displays themed sub-searches that Worio has performed using its tag themes.
http://www.worio.com

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Some content previously published in the free monthly e-mail newsletter circulated by Zen Internet, our excellent ISP and web hosting provider. http://www.zen.co.uk

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From: Michael Jarosz

Ilkley Web Design
Web site design, search engine optimisation
and internet marketing for small businesses

Tel. 01943 817 099
Fax 01943 430 590
email: Contact@IlkleyWebDesign.com
Web: http://www.IlkleyWebDesign.com
Post: 25 Lister Street, Ilkley, West Yorkshire, LS29 9ET
View our client portfolio at http://www.ilkleywebdesign.com/portfolio/clients.html

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March 2009 newsletter - The Interesting Internet