But is Twitter Useful?

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One of the people that Gorgeous and I connected with in Chicago this past weekend was Christine Kane. It probably didn’t hurt that the three of us were all seated in close proximity to a very wild and obnoxious three year old on the same flight into Chicago. That got diverted to Columbus for more fuel after holding too long for bad weather.

But that’s a story for another time.

I also had the pleasure of sitting at the same table as Christine at the conference. As speakers like Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, and Terry Starbucker were talking about the people in the room who were using Twitter to communicate with one another (and with folks half a world away) during the conference, Christine would ask the rest of us questions on the side.

They ranged from the basic to the technical, for example…

• What’s the point? to interact with others
• Why would you bother? because I like people
• Can everyone see what I tweet @ someone? Oh, yeah
• How does the direct message thing work? “d your_friends_twittername” and they’ll get a private message

Read more

Brand New Design

If you are a feed subscriber you might not know. But we’ve just launched the redesigned SuccessCREEations, Inc. website. There are still some bugs to work out yet and now I’m in the same boat that my clients often find themselves, a new website just begging to be filled with content.

Upgrading WordPress

The first thing I did was to bring the back end up to date with the latest version of WordPress. SuccessCREEations, Inc. had long been in that classic situation where, “the cobbler’s kids got no shoes.” There was so much work to do for clients and their sites that our own site was, ahem, a few versions back.

I gotta say that the completely redesigned WordPress 2.5 dashboard is very nice to work with. It is different, for sure, and takes a bit of getting used to.

But it took far less time to adjust than I expected, especially considering that I’ve been using WordPress for going on three years now. In fact, after spending less than a day with the new version I went back to the old version and was already forgetting where things were in the old menus.

The new dashboard design is that much better.

Screen Shots

The most obvious change is of course the new look. For you feed readers, here’s a screen shot of the new design.
I had developed the new SuccessCREEations, Inc. logo a while back with the idea of using it as a starting point for a new look to the site. I pulled the gold in the compass rose points and the blue/purple from the logo and used those colors as the starting point. Read more

Yahoo Working on a New Kind of Search

Chris Brogan shared that Yahoo is considering a new approach to serving up search results. He describes it as The Sound of Content Ripping Free From Its Page. I’m not sure it will be as dramatic as all that for a couple reasons.

What’s at the heart of Chris’ concern is this short post over at Business Week about what they labeled Yahoo’s Linkless Search. Here’s the part Chris finds concerning

Yahoo’s goal is to build a vast universe of related information, so that we get the info we’re looking for, without having to click on links. Search engines are already moving toward this. More and more, the information pops up on the result pages. But what Raghavan is describing sounds very much like an effort to push relevant Web pages down, or even out of the equation. “We’re not giving you pages, we’re giving you information synthesized from other pages.”

I’ve emphasized the parts that I think probably give Chris pause.

Search Without Links

At first brush the concept sounds a little hair brained to me.

From a publisher perspective it sounds goofy because with this approach to search Yahoo is choosing what parts of my content their user really “needs” to see rather than showing them my site and letting them choose the relevant content in context with the entire page.

From a user stand point I generally prefer to have the option to click through to the raw data. The idea of a synopsis makes sense. But I’d still want to see a link where I can click through to the source material. However I wonder if the average internet user feels the same way.

From Yahoo’s perspective it might make sense. IF they are looking at search as a way to corral people onto their site rather than as a gateway to other sites. If Yahoo’s intent is to build cull-de-sacs where “all roads lead to Yahoo” then this is probably one way to accomplish that goal.

Solving a Non-existent Problem

Here’s the thing. It seems to me that Yahoo is attempting to solve a “problem” that doesn’t exist. Here is an example of the “problem” as Yahoo sees it:

In the current mode, when we’re looking for, say, a restaurant in Hoboken, we query, read a web page, query again for reviews, and then again for directions.

Sounds like a huge burden, right? Yahoo claims that if someone is looking to check out a restaurant then they have to do 3 separate searches to find the information they need to make an informed decision. Why not simplify that to 1 search?

The thing is you already can get all that info from one search. Let me demonstrate.

Take one of my favorite local restaurants, the New South Cafe right here in Savannah. When I enter in “New South Cafe, Savannah, GA” into Google I get links to the following info on the first page:

• Restaurant Website
• Directions
• Several Reviews
• Some Community Involvement Info about the Restaurant

And that’s with one search, not three. Looks like Google’s already accomplishing what Yahoo is “researching” and is still ushering people to the content creators’ web sites. Everybody wins.

And here’s something interesting. Search for the same thing in Yahoo, “New South Cafe, Savannah, GA” and you get similar info. I see the restaurant’s web site, directions, and reviews all on the front page.

Yahoo’s Faulty Info

The top Yahoo results point to pages of info that are still on Yahoo web sites, though. Interestingly one of the top results gives a bogus address for the restaurant. Notice the phone numbers for the two entries are the same.

But folks following their directions to that location wouldn’t find the restaurant because it isn’t there. You’d have to click through to the restaurant’s main web site anyway to find out which location is the correct one. Or I you could just go over to Google and double check your search I suppose. They seem to have the location right somehow. Of course they aren’t pushing users to another Google page.

If the current Yahoo web sites can’t contain a simple piece of info like the location of a restaurant that’s been the same for at least the 4 years I’ve been in town, how do they expect to amass relevant data on their sites for the millions of searches that internet users conduct every day?

Bottom Line

I don’t think folks should get unduly worried about Yahoo! turning the search engine world on its ear with this new approach to search. It seems more likely to me that Yahoo will be collating masses numbers of pages with dubious content value this way.

If this is really what they are counting on to break the strangle-hold Google has on the search market and fend off a hostile take over from Microsoft then they are probably in worse shape than most folks give them credit for.

Mac Friday - Screenshots

Screenshots.

No, we’re not talking about the big guy on the right here spraying gobs of bullets on the silver screen, as entertaining as that is.

A screenshot is simply a way to capture what you are looking at right now on your computer screen so you can use it later, or share it with someone else.

An Example

Say for example you took a silly little online brain test to see if you were more right brained or more left brained in your thinking.

And then suppose your results were strange enough that you wanted to share them with some folks.

Apparently I’m ever so slightly more right brained than left brained. At least according to that test.

Now my question is this. How did I use more than 100% of my brain that day?

Weird.

And it’s one of those things that is much easier to explain when folks can look at the screen shot.

All I did was capture the screen shot, open the image in Photoshop, and add the circle and text. Then I resized the whole thing uploaded it and now everyone can see that I use more of my brain than I have.

On a Windows computer capturing a screenshot is pretty straight forward. The keyboard has a Print Screen button.

But what about on a Mac?

It can still be done fairly easily with a little know how.

Read more

Updating Our Comment Policy

One year ago this coming Saturday I announced here on SuccessCREEations that we were going to start rewarding quality commenters.

In that post I announced two things. I installed the Show Top Commentors plugin (original version.) I had some challenges with the plugin when I updated the blog and theme. Andy Beard, an SEO/Internet Marketing guy I highly respect, pointed out some significant problems with the plugin. The reality is that wasn’t really a reward so I quietly removed the plugin.

The second thing I did a year ago was remove the “NoFollow” attribute from my comments section. Back in 2005 Google stopped passing link juice on for links tagged with NoFollow to help reduce comment spam. It was a good idea. Trouble is it hasn’t deterred comment spammers at all.

So I used the dofollow plugin (original version) and put up a nice NoMore NoFollow badge from Randa Clay.

No Follow Lists

One side effect of that announcement a year ago (and posting the badge) is that SuccessCREEations made it onto several different lists assembled by internet marketing & SEO types telling their communities about blogs that removed NoFollow.

While it’s nice to be noticed, I started attracting some unscrupulous types that obviously were just commenting to get a little Google juice instead of being interested in participating in conversation here.

Fair enough. I understand human nature well enough to get that.

In the last couple months I’ve started noticing some folks coming here leaving comments with links to Turkish language sites. Even though I don’t speak Turkish (I did have a Turkish coworker until recently) I’m savvy enough to see that the Turkish traffic is coming from some forums that are sharing different known NoFollow sites along with their Google Page Rank.

SuccessCREEations makes these lists because we have a decent Page Rank.

I don’t see it as completely a bad thing. I worked closely with a Turk for several years. And folks who know me know that I have friends from all over the globe.

Even so, it is time to lay out a refined comment policy here. Read more

WordPress Advanced ToolBar

One of the advantages of using WordPress as a publishing platform is that the WordPress folks are constantly adding new and better features. It can be a challenge to keep up sometimes.

This is especially true if we’ve come up with a way to do something that has since been made simpler in more recent versions.

For example I have a friend who has been blogging even longer than I have and never really got into using a widgetized sidebar. That’s certainly not a problem. You can do just fine programming your sidebar by hand. If you are into that sort of thing, that is.

I found I have one of those habits too. One of the first things I usually do when I’m working with a WordPress blog or web site is go in and turn off the visual editor. The WordPress visual editor used to cause formatting challenges for me so I got used to working in raw HTML.

Well the visual editor has come a long way since I first started using WordPress. With version 2.3 they’ve added a whole slew of new toolbar functionality so the visual editor can do things that formerly had to be coded in HTML by hand. Read more

Bloglines Beta vs Google Reader

As a guy who who helps businesses with blogging and the whole social media scene I’m often asked to make recomendations on feed readers.

For many folks a web based reader makes sense. The ability to keep up with feeds from any computer with an internet connection, the ease of start up (and the fact that they’re free) mean that I usually recommend folks new to RSS start with one of these.

A little over a year ago I wrote a comparison post on some free web based feed readers. In it I talked about 4 different feed readers, Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes and NewsGator. I went poking around Netvibes and NewsGator today for the first time in a long time. On that quick overview today I didn’t see any huge changes from when I wrote that post in 2006.

Bloglines Beta

Bloglines has come out with a whole new platform since that post that they are calling Bloglines Beta. This morning Whitney Hess posted an excellent head to head comparison of the new Bloglines Beta vs Google Reader. I highly recommend Whitney’s post for anyone interested in the differences between the two. She spent a lot of time going through both readers from a usability viewpoint and came up with the one she thinks is best.

I’ve got her post bookmarked in Del.icio.us and will be passing on that link whenever someone asks me for a recommendation.

And if you’re wondering whether her evaluation of the two stands up, check out Matthew Oliphant’s response post comparing the two. He comes up with the same winner.

Google Reader

More than a year ago Google Reader was my workhorse feed reader. I’m still using it.

I was tempted to head back to Bloglines after they came out with Bloglines Beta. But just in the nick of time Google added
the ability to search your feeds and kept me aboard. I still don’t understand why a search engine company took so long to add search to their feed reader. I mean we’re talking Google here. Sheesh!

Anyway, since adding the search feature Google’s also added lots of capability to share both specific feed items and even whole folders of feeds with others. There’s some interesting things more advanced users can do with these sharing functions.

By making their tags public Google Reader users now have the ability to publish new “feeds of feeds” which can be repurposed into a blogroll or list of headlines from a group of blogs for your site.

Google Reader is still my feed reader of choice. But the good news is that all the competition is forcing all of the readers to keep raising the bar on their products.

All of us users end up winning as a result.

1 Simple Tip to Improve Readability and SEO at the Same Time

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “Are you an SEO Expert?”

When I talk with the asker a bit, usually what they want to know is, “Can you help my site get ranked higher in the search engines?”

You bet I can do that.

Did you know there is something you can do that will not only help with your search engine rankings but also help make your posts more readable for people at the same time?

There is a catch, though. To do this you have to learn a tiny amount about HTML coding. The good news is that it is pretty easy. So don’t panic. You can learn how quickly. Let’s dive in. Read more

Errors Upgrading WordPress - Troubleshooting Tips

Not everyone follows instructions. When upgrading your WordPress site not following the upgrade instructions can cause some really unpleasant things to happen and give some scary error messages.

Maybe you messed things up through ignorance. Or if you’re like me you might just try doing it wrong just to see what happens.

If you’re in a panic and feeling like the guy to the left here because your upgrade seems to be messing things up, don’t fear. Most problems can be overcome.

And the good new is hopefully you won’t even loose much of your data!

Provided we do things right, that is.

Putting it Off

I have an old much neglected personal blog that I’ve been hesitating to upgrade. There have been several new versions of WordPress out since I’d last upgraded it. I knew the theme I was using was not compatible with the latest version along with an unknown number of the way too many plugins I was running on the site.

Top that off with the fact that I was using the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and was unsure how the conversion would work out now that WordPress has native tagging built in and I’d been really procrastinating.

Yesterday I had at it. Finally. Read more

When Hosting Goes Bad

Web hosting is not a 100% thing. I tell people that while most reputable hosts legitimately claim 99% up time things do break. It doesn’t matter whether they are mechanical or electronic. Bad things happen from time to time.

That 99% figure is an average. What that means is that during any given month your web host’s server could be down for 7 hours or more and still qualify. Or, say they only had one outage during the whole year. That same 99% up time claim could be true if the server went down for 3 days straight.

Crazy. But true.

A Recent Case Study

Between Christmas and New Years I noticed a friend’s web site was down. Because April is a close friend of the Cree house I shot her an email, asked what’s up and if there was anything I could do to help.

April said she’d initially panicked when she saw the error message but had already contacted her web host and they were performing a server update. They assured her all would be back to normal shortly.

On April’s web site she’s got two different blogs, My Beautiful Chaos and Making Life Work for You. When the server update was done everything looked like it was OK with her second blog.

But there was some lingering Chaos on My Beautiful Chaos. Read more

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