Saturday, August 22, 2009

How to Organize your Programs in Windows

Maybe it's because it's a pet peeve of mine but I hate going seeing unorganized programs on a client's machine. Each time I mention it to someone I get the same "I didn't know I could organize my programs."

On XP right-click on the START button and select Open All Users. Select Programs and then create folders and move programs around as desired.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Microsoft versus i4i: Patent Trolling or Patent Infringement

There's a good article in eWeek, Patent Ruling Against Microsoft Hinges on Meaning of Custom XML, reviewing the patent infringement lawsuit between i4i and Microsoft.

Here's the kicker: Reading through the decision, it's almost as if both the jury and judge felt that the XML editor portion of Word was the only place where XML was being used (it's not) and that this is where the alleged metacode data structure was being created (doubtful; if there is one, it would be created elsewhere).

One of the problems I have with this lawsuit is that the process which was "patented" in 1994 had become commonplace five years later - without i4i doing anything to bring it into the market. It seems more and more to me like patent trolling to me.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Meta-Tag Generators, Which is the best?

Readers of this blog know that I've been saying, for a long time, that META tags are not very useful and, for the most part, not worth your time. Do not waste your time and money developing META tag generators. META tags will not help you get your site ranked higher.

The only value of META tags is that accurate META tag information may help in clickthrough. Google and other SEs will sometimes display the META description in their results page.

See Meta Tags and Title Tags

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

AOL, Google & Facebook

At one time AOL was the 800 pound gorilla. They were the social networking site of the 1990s (and I must say that I ridiculed the idea at the time). AOL tried to be the portal by which we all entered the web. They failed. At one time people feared the rise of Microsoft. Now Microsoft has become like AT&T: last years powerhouse and today's ho-hum large corporation.

What will become of Google and Facebook? Combined they will make one hell of a team.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Who uses Meta Tags in Search Ranking

As far as I know Yahoo is the only major search engine that still supports the META keywords tag. The question that must be asked is: how high in their algorithm to they place the META tags in comparision to words in the title, body, anchor text, etc...?

We know that the META keyword tag is still being indexed and used in Yahoo's site description. For that reason and that alone it would make sense to KEEP the field (as well as META description) if, and only if, your CMS already has it built in; and you have default keywords and descriptions so employees do not have to waste time with them.

All in all, while these META tags don't hurt, they don't particularly help either. If they are automatically entered fine. Don't remove them. I don't see a ROI should you need employees to spend any time deciding on values for either of these tags.