Binary Prefixes

We know of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, etc.
In SI units, kilo represents 1000 (=10 power 3), whereas in computer world, it represents 1024, mega represents 1000000 (= 10 power 6) whereas in computer world it represents 1048567. This created ambiguity in their usage and practices. To get rid of this ambiguity, Binary prefixes, were created.

kilobinary = kibi
megabinary = mebi
gigabinary = gibi
terabinary = tebi and so on.

So, with this adoption these units were rewritten as kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes, tebibytes, etc. Similarly, the new representation exists for bits viz., kibibits, mebibits, gibibits, tebibits, etc.
This way, kilobytes, megabytes are supposed to be used as their SI counterparts representing 1000 bytes and 1000000 bytes.

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.