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Google Broadband Very Popular

Google is getting into everything. We had generation X, the baby Boomers, etc. etc. Are we now in the generation Google phase? Will our children and grand children just automatically be connected to Google somehow in the future?

Anyway, found this at CircleID.com and thought I’d sahre it here.

Over 1,100 Communities Request for Google’s High-Speed Broadband Program

Google has received over 1,100 community requests in response to their up coming experimental, “ultra high-speed broadband networks,” according to the company. Google plans to announce their target communities by the end of the year. “Of course, we’re not going to be able to build in every interested community—our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment,” says Google’s Product Manager, James Kelly, in a blog post.

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April 06, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 4
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Google Adds New Way To Verify You Are The Owner Of Your Website

From the Google Webmaster’s Blog

DNS Verification FTW

Posted: 31 Mar 2010 01:28 PM PDT

Webmaster Level: Advanced

A few weeks ago, we introduced a new way of verifying site ownership, making it easy to share verified ownership of a site with another person. This week, we bring you another new way to verify. Verification by DNS record allows you to become a verified owner of an entire domain (and all of the sites within that domain) at once. It also provides an alternative way to verify for folks who struggle with the existing HTML file or meta tag methods.

I like to explain things by walking through an example, so let’s try using the new verification method right now. For the sake of this example, we’ll say I own the domain example.com. I have several websites under example.com, including http://www.example.com/, http://blog.example.com/ and http://beta.example.com/. I could individually verify ownership of each of those sites using the meta tag or HTML file method. But that means I’d need to go through the verification process three times, and if I wanted to add http://customers.example.com/, I’d need to do it a fourth time. DNS record verification gives me a better way!

First I’ll add example.com to my account, either in Webmaster Tools or directly on the Verification Home page.
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April 01, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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Dashes or Underscores? That is the question

I get asked all the time about whether it’s better to use underscores or dashes between keywords in a file name. I’ve always said dashes are better and I still say dashes are better and people still argue the point.

In a domain name, you aren’t allowed to use underscores, but you are allowed to use dashes. That should be your first clue.

But this is from the Google Webmaster Blog, just so you can see why you use dashes instead of underscores.

Underscores vs. Dashes
Webmasters asked about the difference between how Google interprets underscores and dashes in URLs.

In general, we break words on punctuation, so if you use punctuation as separators, you’re providing Google a useful signal for parsing your URLs.

Currently, dashes in URLs are consistently treated as separators while underscores are not.

Keep in mind our technology is constantly improving, so this distinction between underscores and dashes may decrease over time.

Even without punctuation, there’s a good chance we’ll be able to figure out that bigleopard.html is about a “big leopard” and not a “bigle opard.”

While using separators is a good practice, it’s likely unnecessary to place a high priority on changing your existing URLs just to convert underscores to dashes.

I hope that resolves the issue for anyone wondering whether dashes or underscores are better.

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March 15, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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Google TV Search

Soon, Google will probably have a program to help me find my car keys. Now Google and Dish Network are teaming up to let you search television content from the web.

I found this at the Wall Street Journal Website;

Google Tests TV Search Service

BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, the latest development in a fast-moving race to combine Internet content with conventional TV.

The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google’s YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.

With the test, Google moves deeper into a crowded field of companies, large and small, that have been trying …

What’s next Google? Note to Google; can you guys fix Google Chrome before inventing universe search to find planets that we don’t know exist yet?

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March 11, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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Google Chrome Stalls Again

You know, I wasn’t sure what I would blog about today, but Google made my mind up for me. I’m using my IE browser to write this blog post because Google Chrome once again, stalled for no reason.

What do I mean by stalling? I type web addresses into the address bar and hit enter . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . nothing. I can’t even go to Google.

This happens a couple of times per day. I thought it was some kind of cache problem because it usually happens after I’ve had it open all day while working. But this morning it happened on about the third time I tried to use it.

Google says they can handle running DNS for millions of people through their Google DNS initiative. If they can’t serve up their own browser consistently, there is no way ICANN should work with them to run people’s DNS.

What does one have to do with the other? It comes down to server abilities. Google Chrome has no way for you to set your own cache limits. I assume that is because they are preset and the Google Chrome Browser depends on their servers to carry the load.

I may have it totally wrong. If I am, I hope there are some programmers or IT people that can tell me why Google Chrome stalls the way it does.

Ok, a search found this thread. It says to do the following;

 If you run the latest dev build with the command line –new-safe-browsing, the issue should be resolved. To do so, follow these steps:

You can add the command line flag to shortcut used to launch Google Chrome by:
1. Right click the Google Chrome icon on the Windows Quick Launch bar or desktop shortcut
2. Select “Properties”
3. Choose the “Shortcut” tab
4. Add –new-safe-browsing to the “Target” field after chrome.exe
5. Click OK
6. Restart Google Chrome from the shortcut you just modified
7. Make sure that “Enable phishing and malware protection” is checked (wrench menu –> “Options” –> “Under the hood”)
I’m going to try that. By the way, the instructions say Add –new-safe-browsing to the “Target” field after chrome.exe
 
That means like this chrome.exe”  –new-safe-browsing after the quote mark.

 

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March 06, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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Will Google Catch the Chinese Hackers?

I posted about the Chinese hackers who attacked Google here and I’m updating it with something I found at CircleID.com

Closing in on the Google Hackers

By Terry Zink

Joseph Menn has an article on CNN.com wherein the crux of the story is that US experts are closing in on the hackers that broke into Google last month. It is believed by some that the Chinese government sponsored these hackers. China, naturally, denied involvement.

Here is an excerpt from Menn’s article:

U.S. analysts believe they have identified the Chinese author of the critical programming code used in the alleged state-sponsored hacking attacks on Google and other western companies, making it far harder for the Chinese government to deny involvement.

Their discovery came after another team of investigators tracked the launch of the spyware to computers inside two educational institutions in China, one of them with close ties to the military.

A freelance security consultant in his 30s wrote the part of the program that used a previously unknown security hole in the Internet Explorer web browser to break into computers and insert the spyware, a researcher working for the U.S. government told the Financial Times. Chinese officials had special access to the work of the author, who posted pieces of the program to a hacking forum and described it as something he was “working on”.

A separate team of U.S. contractors has traced the launch of the spyware to computers at Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School, according to two people familiar with that inquiry.

Many people who are infected wouldn’t necessarily know it or recognize it. The fact is we don’t really know enough to determine if this was a conspiracy or not. What it sounds like is that some guy wrote some software that exploits a security flaw and this was used by someone with malicious intent. Was it the Chinese government? Was it private enterprise? Or was it some students using it to see if they could do it? I don’t know enough about the details of the case, but neither would surprise me.

My concern is if they can use exploits in Internet Explorer and steal from Google, what else might they be stealing?

What are your thoughts? Are you worried about Cyber-Warfare? Do you think this is serious or are we over-reacting?

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March 05, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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Why I Don’t Buy FaceBook Ads

I’ve read a lot about advertising on FaceBook recently. I haven’t been a big fan of FaceBook as a serious business social media tool. I like to call it MyFace. However, you can’t ignore the fact that they are #2 in Alexa and growing daily.

Maybe it just goes to the fact I don’t like crowds either. Either way, I’ve only recently decided to create a FaceBook Profile. I also decided to take a good look at their PPC ads.

I do like the demographic choices it gives you, but it’s missing one of the biggest features I like about Google Adwords. I can tell Google the hours and days I want to run my ad. I don’t get to do that at FaceBook.

At FaceBook, you can choose the start day and hour of your PPC campaign and the end date and hour. But it will run 24 hours per day by default from the start to the finish.

Then FaceBook suggests to pay by impression. So I have to pay for the impressions I don’t want? That makes no sense to me. If I don’t think my audience is online at 3am, why would I want to be paying for impressions then?

My clients are webmasters, SEO companies, corporate marketing executives, business owners, etc. so I also don’t think my ads running 24/7 are going to reach my audience all that well.

I do well with Google Adwords and until convinced otherwise, I’ll stick with that. However, I do have clients who might benefit from FaceBook Advertising. Their target audience is much more general.

So I will recommend it to some clients, but not all and I won’t be using it for my business.

What has your response been with FaceBook Ads and for what target audience?

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March 03, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 1
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Can Google Handle Google DNS?

From Google;

Why does DNS matter?

The DNS protocol is an important part of the web’s infrastructure, serving as the Internet’s phone book: every time you visit a website, your computer performs a DNS lookup. Complex pages often require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading, so your computer may be performing hundreds of lookups a day.

Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.

Why should you try Google Public DNS?

By using Google Public DNS you can:

My issue is this. I’ve been testing Google Chrome as my browser. After long use during the day, it freezes. The software isn’t really totally frozen. I can still type a web address in the address bar. It just won’t take me there when I hit enter.

If I close Google Chrome and wait a few minutes, then restart it, it works fine. That tells me there is a caching issue after using it for a long time. It could also be a server issue as if I’ve used the alloted cache for the day or something.

If Google can’t keep Google Chrome running, then how can it keep serving DNS for thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

You may say one has nothing to do with the other and you may be technically correct. I’m not sure. But given the enormity of running DNS services for that many people and Google’s inability to make Google Chrome work properly, it seems to me that they are not ready to run DNS.

DNS is complicated and resource intensive. I’d like to hear comments from anyone who has used Google DNS to see what their experience has been.

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March 03, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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Google vs Facebook is a Dumb Comparison

I keep seeing posts titled; “Google vs Facebook, which is better?” or “Is Facebook better than Google?”. Why do people insist on making these comparisons?

Why would anyone need or want to choose one or the other? I want traffic from many different sources. I want Bing traffic, Google traffic, Yahoo traffic, traffic from social media websites, traffic from other people’s websites and blogs and I want traffic from anywhere my target audience might be.

So the answer to the question, “Which is better?” is YES.

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February 21, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 6
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Google NASA and Mountain View California

There are a lot of people who dislike Wal-Mart because of the way they come into an area and drive small businesses out of business and the way that cities cater to large corporations when it comes to getting them to relocate to their city. Corporate welfare isn’t a popular thing.

The effect that large corporations have on the local economy is huge. They create jobs and increase the tax base, so cities want them there. However, citizens who live in these cities don’t always like the influence large corporations have on their town.

Now, the citizens of Mountain View, California are seeing the impact of Google on their city. Add to that, the partnerships between Google and NASA and you have a huge social experiment.

This is from the NYTimes;

For Google, Mountain View is part home, part developable land and part beta test for the company. For the city, Google is part economic engine, part benefactor and a soon-to-be real-estate developer with an opportunistic eye for underused assets — like, say the landing strip at Moffett Field, a former Navy air station, where jets of Google executives now come and go.

Perhaps uniquely, Google is also casting itself as a partner with NASA, now the proprietor of Moffett Field. This partnership is making Mountain View a stop along the virtual route to Mars and the real route to the Moon.

Google now employs 20,000 people worldwide, about half in the Bay Area, and the city’s tax base has grown in tandem with the company.

Do you think that large corporations have a positive impact when they are the dominate industry in a town?

If you didn’t work for Google and your job is not influenced by Google, would you want them in your town?

How about Wal-Mart?

Do you think cities should expand their borders, give free sewer and water or electricity to corporations to entice them to move to their city?

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February 21, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0
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