Google SideWiki

Its one more 'provide-your-comments' application from Google. Sounds interesting but as pointed out by many, it may be another way of adding stuff about stuff on web.

Webmasters do NOT have an option to enable / disable this feature for their website, as of now. So, people can misuse to generate spam or write nonsense about a website and give a wrong impression. This becomes more dangerous because if you have a SideWiki enabled browser, comments are available right-away (if any, ofcourse) when you visit a webpage. One consolation is claiming a website on Google Webmasters Tools and projecting comments on SideWiki as Owner. This way, owners' comments will always appear at the top of others' comments on SideWiki.

As of now, it does not provide feeds which can be trapped and fed. But its possible to publish on Blogger and also to Share (after commenting) on Twitter, Facebook, etc. People are using round-about-way to create its feeds by publishing on a new invisible blog and taking feeds from that blog.

A con for its usage is, every webpage takes longer time to show up. The browser (I was using FF3.5.5 GTB6. GTB stands for Google Toolbar) hangs for good 3-5 secs. I disabled SideWiki, and it works fine.

SEO Tips & Techniques

I remember long back reading something about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and brushing it aside as something BIG. But as I see it now, after spending considerable amount of time on it, its all common sense.

Trouble with it was, when I searched about it, there was no one location to give all the information regarding it. And I landed up making a consolidated list for myself. So, below is the compilation of same.

• Title: Title of the page must be unique, indicative of page's content. This appears as the main link in Google Search
• Meta tags: Keywords - no use, can be ignored. Description - must exist briefly describing page's content. Googlebot - if you are biased towards Google :P
• Forward slash: While specifying homepage, do not explicitly state home.htm or default.htm or index.htm. Instead leave a trailing forward slash. Eg. http://domain.com/ instead of http://domain.com/index.htm
  
• WWW: site with www and without www are perceived as different sites. WWW is used when there are more than one services provided by a particular domain. Else, not preferred. Eg. http://www.domain.com/, http://service1.domain.com/, http://service2.domain.com/
• Canonical URLs: Clearly specify which is your home page so that there is a consistent single homepage url. Since, http://www.domain.com/, http://domain.com/, http://domain.com/index.htm, http://www.domain.com/index.htm - all point to same page. If clearly specified, search engine will take care of showing one single reference giving consolidated pagerank.
  
• URL Structures: It is very important that there is a structure to the way pages are stored and rendered. It makes site management easier and makes sense to the end-user while using it.
• Page name: If a page name has more than one word then
• separate them with a hyphen (best choice). Eg. http://domain.com/word1-word2-word3.htm
• separate them with a underscore (next best choice only if above is not possible). Eg. http://domain.com/word1_word2_word3.htm
• no space (worst choice) since searching with any of the individual words will never yield this page
• Alt tags: Alt tags must be given for images for only this text helps search engines know what a particular image is all about. When searched, these tags come into picture.
• Sitemap.xml: One must have a sitemap.xml in root directory. This sitemap can be submitted to search engines like Google (know more) or Yahoo (know more). (How to create one in Dreamweaver). This helps search engine know the complete structure of a website even if their automated crawlers fail to function and index accurately.
  
• Robots.txt: This is another kind of a file which must be present in root directory. This file talks to crawlers / bots which come for indexing our site. So, any specific instruction to the bots like 'do not index http://domain.htm/private.htm' can be given. A standard search engine listens to the instructions provided in this file. One can create this file using Google Webmasters Tools.
  
• .httaccess (for apache web server): This is next important file in root directory. It does not have any name, but the extension .htaccess. This is required for all 301 permanent redirects, 302 temporary redirects, Custom page for 404 not found, etc. and can be set up here. For IIS, these options exist in 'Right click ->  Properties'. .htaccess is a very powerful tool in apache. Unfortunately, its cumbersome to manage the same in IIS.
• Proper HTML tags: When its a header, give h1 tag so that search engine, while indexing, knows it is the header. If custom heading style is required, one can create h1 css and apply. Another example can be code tag for programming codes
• RSS feeds: RSS feeds, when provided, must be full. Partial feeds are not that appreciated.
• Favicon: Its nice to have it. (Also read Site Identity Button)
• Google's tips on SEO starter guide (pdf)

Tools to analyse, monitor and enhance:

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmasters tools
• Google Translate
• Google Custom Search (because search can be analyzed too!)
• Google Maps
• Page Speed 
  

I went through lots and lots of websites for this "short note on SEO". My references are all available on the public shared page of Google Reader ofcourse interspersed with many other reads of mine. Otherwise, my sources are ... rather my source is Internet :-). So, thanks to it!
My SEO subscriptions for further reading, if any useful.

Data Liberation Front

Google is centralizing (or starting as a concentrated effort) in Importing and Exporting data from Google Products. Their motto

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products.  Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

Site: http://www.dataliberation.org/

They have listed import/export options against each google product on that website and are adding better options like the recent addition the "Convert, Zip and Download" feature in Google Docs

Add GBookmarks, GTranslate, etc. in GReader's Send-to option

Google Reader has got an option to Send to under a feed, in August, 2009. With this, one can share a particular post on any of the popular sites which many of the Sharing buttons give. A good thing is that they have provided an option to add custom Send-to options under Settings.

One can add Google Bookmarks to these sets of options by adding the following code:
Name: Google Bookmarks (or anything of your choice)
URL: http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&output=popup&b
Icon URL: http://www.google.com/favicon.ico

To add Google Translate:
Name: Autotranslate
URL: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=${url}
Icon URL: http://translate.google.com/favicon.ico

To add Add-to-any:
Name: Add to any
URL: http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=${url}&linkname=${title}
Icon URL: http://www.addtoany.com/favicon.ico

It would be fun to get / add as many links to Send-to as needed.

Auto System Log Manager

We all know how our bosses keep on asking us to log our activities for the day. There are days when you are so occupied with activities that logging our activities itself becomes a huge over-head. Plus, we do feel at the back of our mind that our precious time is getting wasted in doing something which is undoubtedly good, but if only we had someone to log our activities!

Well, if not every activity of ours, atleast there should be a way to auto-log the activities which we do on system, right? Atleast some things which are very generic in nature. Fascinated I am to have found one such app on this website. This person is amazing, gets one (new) app a day and they are all simple ones. One of them is this Time Management app. One can download the app and also the Source Code!!! So that way one can customize it to their needs. What it does? From the website,

Time Management allows you to keep track of what you are doing on your PC. I plan on using it to help me fill out my timesheet at the office. The application resides in the systray, and writes to a CSV file each time you switch applications, or the title bar of the current app changes.

File format:
[date],[time],[process name],[window title],[duration used]

Find the total list of Apps Download page here.

I am sure, many of us would like it. Currently, using it on my system. I am damn impressed! :) Thanks Dana.

List of connected users in Oracle

To know the list of connected users to the Oracle Database, run the below sql

select distinct username, osuser, terminal, utl_inaddr.get_host_address(terminal) ip_address, status, logon_time
from v$session
where username is not null
order by username, osuser;

GChat tips

A word in GChat can be emphasized in many ways, most common being Bold, Italics & Underline.
Knew that adding * on either side of the word (eg. *word* = word) would make it bold, but learnt from the 10tip of Gmail NInja tips page that we can even italicize by adding _ on either side of the word (eg. _word_ = word) and with - on either side, it strikes the word (eg. -word- = word).[SOURCE]

Site Identity Button

We observe favicon for a site and with new firefox, even some text next to it. Firefox calls it Site Identity Button. It has three levels each with a different color:

• Grey: No information from site
• Blue: The connection is secure
• Green: Not only the connection is secure but it also comes with the owners information

Creating Sitemap in Dreamweaver

There was a need to create a Sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. Surprisingly, I did not find an option of creating Sitemap in Dreamweaver 8. So, downloaded an extension Google Sitemap Generator and added it to Dreamweaver which created Sitemap very easily.

Update: I did get to see a way to view Sitemap in DMW. Can save it as an image. But, yet to know if Dreamweaver has an option inbuilt, to save it as .xml

META tags for improved search

Came across this webpage on why we need not use META Tags in our Webpages. Truly, no search engine will completely depend on META Tags for their indexing else, by now Search Results would have shown only spammed results.

Never use META tag in html, syntax.

Surprisingly, Google claims to be considering META tags (a bit strongly too!) for a webpage. Google talks about it here.

Update 25th Sept, 2009: Thanks to the comment posted by Vitaly, came to know of the latest blogspot made by Google on their Google Webmaster Central blog on 21st Sept, 2009 where they very clearly mention that Google does not use "keywords"  meta tag for their Web search. Occasionally, when needed, they use "description" meta tag. Their Custom Search Engine does consider meta tags though.