| | Sat Sep 13, 2008 12:19 pm |
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After using the Asus Eee 900 netbook for a while there are a few things that stand out. As most are aware of, the keyboard is very small, that in itself is not a big problem, but if there is any part of the computer that feels under-engineered it is the keyboard.  Sometimes the keys are unresponsive and there is little feel between the keys, which can cause you to hit the wrong key, or after you hit the key nothing happens. If you are selling a computer that has a very small keyboard, the company should make sure that it is the best keyboard it can be. Except for the keyboard the feel of the machine is very solid. It is designed with a lot of thought, the placement of the usb ports (3), SD slot and the speakers are all well done. The Eee 900 does not come with a CD/DVD, PCMCIA slot or a Modem and the simple design removes anything that is not necessary. Our version came with Linux and a 16 Gig Solid State Hard Drive. The Linux version the computer comes with is excellent. Even a beginner would find no problem using this Linux version. The great thing is that everything works with Linux, so you don't have to worry that the built-in video camera or wireless will have any problems being recognized by Linux. If you have ever installed Linux on a laptop you will understand how annoying it can be to get everything to work with Linux. Even though the Basic Desktop that comes standard with the system is fine for normal users we decided that we wanted the Advanced Desktop mode. This was a very easy upgrade. Enabling Advanced Desktop Mode If you hit Ctl-Alt-T in the normal "Easy Mode" you can call up the Terminal Window. To enable the Advanced Desktop Mode do the following at the terminal prompt. # pico /etc/apt/sources.list add the following lines:
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701 p701 main
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main
To save the file press ctrl O and to exit press ctrl x # apt-get update
# apt-get install kicker
# apt-get install ksmserver Once the files are added you can exit out of the terminal and left-click the red icon located on the bottom right of the screen. You should see the new desktop option. Software If you are looking for a real full computer then you should enable the Advanced Desktop mode to make it easier to install software and customize the computer for your needs. We installed PHP, Apache, MySql and a few other programs to see how this netbook would perform as a server. Even though the processor is not the latest or the fastest it performed very well. We also installed GIMP, but there are some image editing software programs that come pre-installed. GIMP works well but don't count on doing any difficult processing. Keep in mind this computer comes with a relatively small hard drive so the Linux installation is pretty small. Open Office and a few other business programs are included but not very much is preloaded, such as if you were performing an install from scratch using Debian or Ubuntu. The drive size is fine for most applications. If you need 100 gigs or the ability to process images for detailed renderings then you might want to pass on the computer. Screen Size & Quality The screen on the computer is very bright and the 1024 width is perfect for most applications. Keep in mind the screen is quite small, text comes up tiny in many situations. But you can always increase text size with ctrl-+ when you are viewing web pages. Overall the screen is very nice. But at 8.9 inches you really might not want to play games or read long documents. I prefer to use external mice so I never got a chance to try out the touch pad too much. I hate them so it is easier to use a real mouse. Additional Features Asus added a nice feature in case you need to bring your system back to its factory settings. You will lose any programs or documents you created but you can fully restore your system by hitting F9 at boot up, this gives you the option of completely restoring your system to the way it was out of the box. This is a great feature considering there is no CD/DVD drive and as long as you back up the files you created you can't really screw up your system. We picked up our system for $350 from Amazon. I can't imagine a better deal, the Kindle is $400 and so is the iphone, and they are not even real computers. The Eee 901 is also out on the market and considering the changes seem processor related it sounds like that would also be a great deal. The Eee 1000 (SD an Hard Drive versions) come with 10 inch screens and I assume slightly larger keyboards, but the Eee 900 has been a great computer to use. Many people could probably use this as their primary computer. Even though battery life is not as long as you would hope (~ 2 hours with screen bright and wireless on) it is a very well made, very portable computer. It might take a while to get used to but you can take this computer along with you anywhere and it can do anything a desktop could do (within reason).
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| | Thu Jun 26, 2008 9:17 pm |
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If we look at how one would create a Search Engine we might find out how they must operate, or even how they could be improved. As much as it might appear that Search Engine results are mysterious, they can be broken down to their component parts and understood. Once you add simple on top of simple you tend to get complex, and the whole system in operation can appear to be daunting. If we break it down to its components, processing power, storage capacity and specialty algorithms these all just become parts of a larger understandable system.
From the point of view of a Search Engine one of the easiest ways to evaluate a general array of web related documents for various factors would be to use a baseline to measure all others against.
For instance if we take keyword density. Look at some well known documents in literature, or newspaper articles, or magazine pieces. Wouldn't that standard, perhaps something written before the web era illustrate a natural level of keyword density for all other documents?
Using this technique you could easily eliminate as spam many documents that would fall outside the range of these general documents. Another possibility would be to take an article written without Optimization. A sample Wikipedia article could provide such a baseline.
The Wikipedia article about “Tennis” provides some indication of a keyword density for an encyclopedic entry on the web.
This document is 9141 words long. This includes all links and anything else on the page, not just the main article, since in evaluating a web document the source includes everything being displayed. | Term | Keyword Density | Times Occurring
| | Tennis | 1.8% | 165 | | Court | 0.6%
| 54
| U.S. Open
| < 0.1%
| 9
| Racquet
| < 0.1% | 5
| Racket
| < 0.1% | 2
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In looking at the Wikipedia "Tennis" article we determined the keywords from the title and general topics covered. Over all such an article is very broad, covering the whole subject in a lot of text. The second "article" we looked at was Henry David Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", or also called "Resistance to Civil Government". This essay is 9408 words long, and because it is pre-web writing (1849) there is no navigation or links included in the word count. | Term | Keyword Density | Times Occurring
| | State | 0.6% | 61
| | Government | 0.62%
| 58
| Slavery
| 0.12%
| 11 | American
| < 0.1% | 8
| Civil
| < 0.1% | 6 | | Constitution | < 0.1% | 6
| Revolution
| < 0.1% | 6
| | Disobedience | < 0.1% | 3
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When you evaluate an older piece, like something from Thoreau you begin to realize the way modern documents are organized to reveal much smaller specific pieces of information. Essays like Civil Disobedience are relatively long and were not designed for web usage and these essays were frequently read aloud as persuasion pieces. Essays, like speeches in this sense are not search friendly, they have many ideas, but very few facts. This type of writing does not answer questions, it incites discussion. Even blogs which are generally not search friendly are very specific in nature.
The next piece we decided to look at in the pre-web era was something more akin to modern writing formats. This is the book review, written by Lance Morrow in 1976 for Time magazine analyzing two new books about the Soviet Union. At 1217 words it is more in line with a modern web piece than something from Thoreau. The Inscrutable Soviets | Term | Keyword Density | Times Occurring
| | Russia | 1.4% | 17
| | Soviet | 1%
| 13
| America
| 0.2%
| 6
| | Moscow | 0.4% | 3 |
It is easy to see the keywords, as derived from the title or the article, as well as the titles of the books reviewed are used very infrequently relative to modern web specific promotion and short web pages.
Conclusion: The web has forced a world in which documents must become smaller, more highly defined in order to be found by Search Engines and in turn by web users. Most people perform searches that require a specific answer. - The score of the latest game.
- A date in history that refers to a specific event.
- Product information about a small range of specific desires.
Basically, highly specific pages need to exist for a Search Engine to be able to properly answer the above queries. Keyword Density is a possible factor but as we can see from the above array of articles and web pages this is only one factor. And to determine how much of a factor depends on the situation, but over all it would be a very small one and by definition would not define, or help to define longer more conceptual documents such as Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government". A Search Engine could certainly use Keyword Density as a factor, even a large factor if they wish but you might see that whatever density level you set for keyword phases they are rather arbitrary. Unless you could successfully segment content into Articles or Newspapers, Historic Literature or Product Literature you would not want to utilize the concept of Keyword Density, or it may be to the detriment of other types of information.
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| | Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:20 pm |
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This is the third in a series of articles attempting to look at how programs are built and how one would begin to think about building their own search engine. This article is about how information on the web is laid out and how the major search engines must look at the context the creator provides. At its core a search engine needs to find information locked up in documents, databases or web pages. After finding the information in those documents a search engine needs to deliver the information to someone based on a question. Hopefully the question itself can provide some context to help in delivering the proper result.
You could look at it as if all this data in the world were flat, it starts off equal and depending on the way someone chooses to organize these bits, the more context they have. If I place something in a pdf document, or an html document, or an image, I have a different set of organizational context surrounding it.
A web page has meta tags that help to make sense of it, hypertext links to and fro that help to define it, and html and css that help to provide emphasis to certain parts, and the actual text information. This is at least the way a human could interpret it. So far search engine bots are not likely to interpret the document in the same way a human would. And that is understandable since two different humans would likely interpret the layout and context of the document differently also.
Pdf's, word documents, and text style documents, may or may not have any formating to provide emphasis, and these tend not to be linked to in the same way as an html document. Although both html documents and pdf's do have url's, so the domain, or site itself may provide some context.
But information is not really flat, since those individuals that create a document inherently provide context. If we consider a web site, there are two different elements, the site as a whole and the individual document. The site as a whole may be made up of thousands of urls and may or may not be related to a single concept. You would expect the homepage, or root directory files to contain the main concept of the whole domain. This does not include subdomains, which can be related to different computers.
The basics of any search engine are how to interpret what someone types in. If someone types in “car”, then what should come up? What if a human were asked that same question, what would they come up with? But it is likely the question would be longer and more specific. To a certain extent people have been trained to speak (type) the way search engines want them to, since not many people in the real world would just say “car”. But on the web people type in “car” and other relatively nonsensical phrases. And since this web language has developed, many search engines and site owners understand this and have tailored their titles and results to reflect this development.
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| | Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:17 pm |
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This is the first in a series of articles attempting to look at how programs are built and how one would begin to think about building their own search engine. If you have the opportunity to build a program, you will notice that there are few resources to help you think about the overall structure. There are plenty of web resources for specific issues, but not too many when you want to think about the overall idea of how things should fit.
For web program ideas there are many open-source programs you can open up and look at – oscommerce, pligg, wordpress...etc but in some cases you are starting from scratch and these open-source programs are rather all over the place. A lot of companies use these open-source programs and end up hiring professionals to do any modifications, even just color changes. Anyway, open-source always has the downside of being a little too understandable to just about anyone with a little knowledge, and that may not be a good thing for some applications. So you could modify any of these open-source programs for your own purpose, but that may just drive you in the wrong direction.
Some projects require SEO, and some programs do not. SEO may also steer you away from some open-source applications, since you might want to be innovative. Some programs are needed because they are for a job which may have strict requirements. But there are some projects that you just do for yourself.
Perhaps, if you are like me you want to make something that you need for yourself, or maybe you are just interested in creating something new and interesting. If you are the type that likes to get into new projects, which may or may not result in a business, then you are generally starting from scratch.
There are many programs that need creating, or improving, whether they are just something small or if they are something large. Many people have been thinking about, or are currently in the midst of creating their own search engine, simply because they do not like the way the current crop of companies deal with information. But when you think about creating your own program you may come with all sorts of opinions, but soon you will face a reality.
When you are thinking about the overall structure of a project you should realize that the thinking part will consume a great deal of time. Why are you doing it? What exactly do you want to accomplish? So the philosophy is a major part, and that can take months, then a little programming, then some more thinking.
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| | Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:15 pm |
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This is the second in a series of articles attempting to look at how programs are built and how one would begin to think about building their own search engine. This article is about understanding the nature of taking shortcuts and how the major search engines need these to perform up to current expectations. The first thing you want to do is determine what you want to accomplish. If I were starting my own search engine then I first want to think about what exists and why. What don't I like about Google or Yahoo! search or MSN search.
In regards to Google and the other major search engines, everyone dislikes bad results. But you have to determine what is a bad result. If you are searching for contemporary information then for the most part the results are easy to find. This is especially true with Google's search engine, since they frequently source news collections sites, such as Digg. And it is a point like this that needs to be highlighted. This is one of many shortcuts that Google takes to have better results. If there were no public relation sites, such as openpr.com or news aggregators, such as digg.com then Google would have a tougher time getting those results to the public. They would have to work much harder at understanding what is todays news and what is yesterday's news. And yesterday's news is just history, locked in documents called web pages.
So news sites, public relation sites and so on are shortcuts that Google has capitalized on to make sure their results are better, then if they were simply relying on their own algorithms. Another of these shortcuts are separate programs to interpret certain types of search queries. Let's use the example:
“grams in a pound”
The first thing you will notice is that they get the right answer. The next thing you should realize is that they had to write a separate program to deal with that type of language. They provide their traditional results, but also the answer to your question.
But if you try a little different search, say “1 pound is x grams”, they do not translate this into their program. You just receive the traditional results - and this is a matter of differentiating language, something which at this point needs to be very hard-coded.
So lets say that:
1.We want to produce good results
2.We don't want to write separate programs specific to certain topics
But we must understand the nature of shortcuts, and since the web changes (i.e., all sorts of people out there are adding all sorts of new structures all the time), the search engine's role must adapt. I suppose the ideal situation is some all-encompassing artificial intelligence that would adapt on its own, understanding that the web changes and that people are changing it. But for now lets further understand the use of shortcuts and how to make them work better.
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| | Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:46 pm |
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There are many types of web sites out there but for the most part they can be broken down into a few major groups. You might have a blog, an ecommerce web site, or an informational web site, but what these all have in common is that you want visitors to do something. On an ecommerce site you want them to buy, on a blog or informational website you might want them to click ads, but ultimately you want them to act. Main Groups - Ecommerce
- News/Information
- Product & Service Reviews/Promotion
- Encyclopedic Information
Sometimes people utilize advertisements to generate income, or use subscriptions, or directly sell products, or in some cases they opt to provide free information.
But there are those that for some reason mix these various techniques. I recently came across a site that attempted to mix ecommerce with Google's Adsense network across most of their site.
Now I don't know how things are going for them in terms of product sales or ad clicks, but what I can be sure about is that this a flawed technique. Since I was looking for prices and information about their products I was confused whether I wanted to click on the ads that displayed or on their “Buy Now” buttons. This is a classic case of over-reach and an unfocused site design. Are they trying to sell products or get ad clicks?
This situation probably arose from the site ranking well in the SERP's for their main keywords, and they figured they might as well try to get those visitors not buying to click a few ads and make some extra money.
The flaw with this situation might be that they confuse those who actually want to buy from them into clicking much lower value ads. The products this site sold are expensive and can be complicated. The lower end of the product line went for around $10,000. This is also an industry that does not have paper-thin margins so actually making a sale is far more valuable than getting a few ad clicks. Now given that they rank very well for their main keyword they would most likely see good sale conversions. But with the addition of context related ads like Adsense they confuse the focus of their site. They also lose site real estate in further diverting people from their products.
The best situation is to focus your line of income and not confuse your customers. If you want to benefit from another line of income then one way would be to use a subdomain or directory and put up an additional information site supported by context related ads. But even then it is difficult to benefit from competing with yourself, and you might end up cannibalizing your own traffic.
The bottom line is to focus on one form of income and have complementary products, given that ranking well for one basic term and having two distinct lines of income creates a supplementary situation that potentially devalues both. Basically everything you put on a page competes with every other part.
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| | Sun May 25, 2008 8:04 pm |
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Over the past few months we have been experimenting with Kontera link advertisements on a few different style web sites. The results have been disappointing, and the reason may not be anyone's fault.
Kontera is a link advertisement network, similar to Google's Adsense only in the sense that advertisers can purchase ads that display on a publisher's web site. After some time, say a few weeks, Kontera states that the advertisements should be related to the page content.
This advertising system is unlike Google's Adsense in the way the advertisements display. There are no ad blocks. Kontera's code analyses a url and randomly inserts an ad link in your text. This is denoted with a double underline in your text. Many people find these ads annoying because they have a pop up ad if you place your mouse over the double underlined link.
Aside from any visitor annoyance, the publisher is mainly concerned with the results - Does the system result in clicks and money. Our results have been disappointing, the click thru rate was very low (less than 1%), the cpm was a joke, and the actual earnings were even more of a joke. But really we should have realized this ahead of time. Who would click on such ads? Regular readers? Search visitors?
The answer is that if your choice is between affiliate systems, Adsense or Kontera style systems, then it depends on your content and how your visitors get to you. Regular readers with content in longer style articles, and no other ad systems on the page may benefit from Kontera. So if your site focus is information then perhaps it might be a good idea to try link ads. But if you are planning to place Adsense style ads with a link advertising system on the same page, then you have to ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to just place as many ads on the page as possible? That is not a great idea. It does not help either system to have them compete.
We actually did do tests with Adsense and Kontera ad on the same page and it did not take away anything from Adsense. But if you think about it, if your Adsense block does well, lets say a 2-4% click thru rate, and Kontera is also on the page, and your page gets 100 visitors, then you are getting 2 – 4 ad clicks on Adsense. Now you have 96 – 98 visitors left to either leave, read your page then leave, click another of your pages or click one of the Kontera ads. But you have to wonder, did the visitors looking for further information already click the Adsense ads? This does not leave anyone left to actually click the Kontera ads.
Overall Kontera has been disappointing, but this does not mean someone else, with different content and presentation could not make it work. But we have found that the Kontera ads do not pay much, so you really need to get a lot of clicks to make a dime out of it. Also, it does not pay to have Adsense and Kontera together, why have your ads competing with one another, especially when Adsense might (does) pay better?
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| | Sat May 10, 2008 10:45 am |
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On the web these days you usually see a few different url structures. Domains, Subdomains, or directories off domains. Ex. - yourdomain.com
- goodkeyword.yourdomain.com
- yourdomain.com/goodkeyword/
These are all different types of urls.
- yourdomain.com – this is the tdl (top level domain)
- goodkeyword.yourdomain.com – here the goodkeyword represents a different domain name, or subdomain
- yourdomain.com/goodkeyword/ – this time goodkeyword is a folder or directory (this may be for display purposes related to rewrite rules and not an actual folder on the server)
When you are thinking about SEO and your web site, it does matter which style you choose. Without getting into the DNS related issues with setting up BIND or zone files, basically these domain structures are treated differently by search engines. First off you might notice that blogspot.com uses subdomains to create new accounts, while myspace.com, squidoo.com and hubpages.com do not for their user accounts. Depending on the size and purpose of the web site you might want to choose one over the other. In terms of SEO relating to keywords in a url, it should make no difference between, yourdomain.com/goodkeyword/ vs. goodkeyword.yourdomain.com But in terms of domain value (backlinks...etc) a subdomain is very different from a domain with a directory. A backlink towards the url: yourdomain.com/goodkeyword/ affects yourdomain.com in a positive way, assuming it is a good backlink. But a quality backlink towards the url: goodkeyword.yourdomain.com does not affect the domain yourdomain.com in a positive or negative way. These url's are treated in a completely different way, as if they were two different domains. In many ways they are two different domains. A subdomain has the ability to be routed to a completely different IP address, and therefore a completely different computer. A domain name with a directory cannot be routed to an IP Address. You might notice that even though myspace.com uses a directory structure for its user accounts, it does use subdomains to manage its various services. (vids.myspace.com,weather.myspace.com) So it depends how someone might want to manage their organization. If you have a large network like myspace then having various teams deal with different subdomains might be an organizational tool. But most publishers, bloggers and web site creators want to know if using subdomains have any sort of benefits that directories do not. If I were creating a program that allowed user accounts, and I thought I could be as large as squidoo.com or hubpages.com I might do what they did and choose a directory structure. What can help a domain, can hurt a domain. So if you have lots of users, and a good number are helpful (meaning they create good content), then choosing a directory structure can be a simplified method to create and manage accounts. If I were a blogger using wordpress, or something similar, and I had full editorial control, and I did not intend on allowing user accounts then I would just use a directory structure. In other words, you control outbound links, content...etc. If I had created a large number of web sites, all for the purpose of blogging and wanted to manage this under one domain, then subdomains may be a better choice. Subdomains allow you to make any number you may need, all without paying for seperate yearly domain fees. - dogs.yourdomain.com
- cats.yourdomain.com
- cars.yourdomain.com
Each of the above subdomains are real domains, can be routed to seperate servers, or different versions of wordpress. And although each of these domains need to be valued according to the content they each may have under them, they may be easier to manage, and all can be traced back to your main company, and main company domain.
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