I came across this article on Wired.com which I really could not stop reading once I started... About a geek who saved the internet. ;)
Very sensational and spectacular article (I know, it was already posted months ago on other websites, but for all people who had not yet seen it, here's the link)
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_kaminsky?currentPage=all
Boris Veldhuijzen-Van Zanten wrote a great blogpost in which he requested his readers to come up with the best SEO-tips. He collected all remarks and created a list with them, which he then converted into a nice WordPress plugin. For all readers who do not use WordPress, I thought it would come in handy to publish the complete list just online. Here it is:
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Google Base is a great place to submit all kinds of information that link back to you.
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A few quality links can weigh much more than a lot of non related low quality ones.
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About the URL's, consider using dashes between the words. not '%20' or '_'
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Always set up 301 redirects for renamed or deleted pages.
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Always use "alt" and "title" tags for images, flash objects and links.
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Avoid people copying your content by checking regularly with
Copyscape
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Break larger pages into two or more smaller ones.
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Browsers allow for bad html code, SE spiders are a different beast.
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Build everything you want indexed so that it also works without javascript, flash, java, activex and css.
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Build sites to pass an honest-to-goodness human inspection, and not just an algorithmic inspection.
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Buying backlinks is always a bad idea.
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Check regularly for
Dead Links or old links that are redirecting to something else.
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Check that what you think you have done = what you have actually done.
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Check that your site looks OK in all browsers before taking the time to promote it at
browsercam.com
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Choose menu labels that are intuitive for visitors and also make keyword sense (without stuffing).
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Define a clear and measurable SEO goal.
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Despite progress in indexing dynamic sites, static-looking still URLs do better, and are easier to remember.
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Do not forget to offer other payment options giving details ( bank account number etc. )
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Don't buy links from any company that offers to sell them to you - you'll be banned from Google for sure
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Don't have keywords in small font or the same colour as the background of your site - it's classed as spam
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Don't link back to "/index.html" but to the / root of your domain.
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Don't neglect your sitemaps, don't leave broken links in them.
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Don't think that being found for your company name is good - more people DON'T know your name than DO
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Don't try and optimise a page for more than a couple of search phrases - it just won't work.
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Don't use automated tools to submit to Google - it's against their terms and conditions and could get you banned
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Don't use meta redirect, Google dislikes them.
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Eliminate or make less prominent all links to fluff pages (like member profiles).
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Ensure keywords used in titles and meta descriptions actually appear on the page and in significant numbers.
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Ensure that secondary keywords appear towards the top of the page and are consistent with the primary topic.
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Ensure what the Search bot sees = what the user sees.
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Find out what keywords your target market is searching for at
wordtracker.com
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Find out where you competitors are advertising - that's where you should be too
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Focus each page on one topic and make sure the page title and description tags are consistent.
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Forget about 'cloaking' and other Black Hat techniques - you'll be found out eventually and banned!
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Formulate a strategic (viral marketing) plan for more relevant inbound links to your website
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Generate fresh content as often as possible.
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Google and other search engines simply love sites that are regularly updated.
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Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case.
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Have a "verisign" or similar trustworthy certificate.
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If you have a blog, start investing some time in community marketing, use blog friends for Facebook, and submit to Twitter.
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If you offer more than one service, it may be worth investing in producing a few niche ‘mini sites’ to capitalise on niche and ultra targeted traffic.
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Ignore the Meta Keywords tag; it has no value
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Is your site "Client" focused or "We We" focused?
Find out!
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It’s tempting to only choose the phrases with the most searches to optimise for, but the key word is relevancy.....
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Learn about 'anchor text' and use it where you can
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Link out to quality external sites where appropriate.
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Link to your less tasty pages from the site map.
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Make sure that each page has a 'call to action' whether it be to sign up, click here or buy
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Make sure the search phrases you are optimising for are included in the content of your site
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Make sure whatever you're trying to sell/promote/accomplish is user friendly and your call to actions are clear.
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Make sure you use accurate titles in pages, and avoid redundant phrases
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Make sure you use valid html code.
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Meta tag that describes the page accurately in more detail, and motivates the searcher to click.
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More pages of content mean more potential incoming links for your site = more traffic.
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Never, ever, delete a 301 redirect.
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No 301 or 302 redirects unless the URL has actually been changed
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Participate in busy online communities that will give you valuable links to your website
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Plan the site architecture using a rational naming hierarchy so that the folders make sense.
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Plan the site so it can easily change when new web technology comes along. Be modular.
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Redirect non-www to www or vice versa (domain name canonicalisation).
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Register with Google Webmaster Tools to find out what Google really thinks of your site
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Remember to delete the obsolete page from the server.
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Run Zenu or similar for links out on page internal navigation
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Schedule a "Search Engine Position Audit" in your schedule to make your results measurable.
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Search Engine Genie’s
Sandbox Checker will help you to see if you\'re in The Google Sandbox or not
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Site optimalisation is more effective than simply a having keyword rich domain
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Spiders don't look at a fancy CSS. Build with bot in mind, make sure the content is available and put the important stuff first.
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Start a blog, search engines like fresh content. Actually, they LOVE it.
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Stop bots from indexing pages which you don\'t want in the index, especially dynamic sections which have no relevance to the SERPs.
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STOP optimising for single words and start thinking in terms of key PHRASES not keywords.
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Stop using the 'reindex' META tag - no bot actually listens to it, especially not Google
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Submit your website to reliable directories, and stay away from blackheads.
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Think seriously about your META description tag - it’s what people are going to read in most cases when you show up in a search.
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Title tag that accurately describes the subject of the page, contains the most important keyword (or two, or three if required).
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To quote W3C, "Cool URIs don't change."
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Treat search engines the same as visitors.
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Try and eliminate the phrase "click here" from your site, and use your keyphrases instead
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Unless you're a 301 redirect master, don't rename your pages.
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Use a plugin like
AddThis so users can easily submit your site to other social media.
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Use consistent and correct server response codes
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Use H1 tag once on the page, H2 for a few of the sub headers, and H3 for less important titles.
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Use meta keywords tags, but with a few well-chosen keywords.
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Use solid semantic structures. It makes a spider's job a whole lot easier.
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Use the META tag content="noarchive" to keep search engines from showing the cached version of your site
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Use the w3c validator on ALL of your pages, link to css and javascript docs, not inline.
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user-friendly-url's (with dashes between words, not underscores)
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When getting others to link to your website make sure they link to a relevant internal page, not just your front page
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Use a script that will generate meta-tags out of the first 250 characters of the page itself.
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Publish a WordPress Plugin to get people to link to your pages.
I tried installing MOSS2007 onto my freshly installed Windows Server 2008 machine but unfortunately I received an incompatibility exception, not allowing me to continue installation. This will probably be fixed soon, maybe with a Sharepoint update of some kind, but for now if you want to perform such an installation you'll have to slipstream the Windows Sharepoint Services Service Pack 3 and Office Sharepoint Server Service Pack 1 into the MOSS2007 setup-folder before starting the actual installation. I never had to perform such a slipstream-operation, but using the following screencast it was done within a few minutes. It's all about unpacking the service packs into the (already existing) updates-folder within the setup-folder of MOSS2007. Doing that will cause the installation to continue where it failed before. Easy as that!
I used the screencast just because it is very easy to follow and it only takes 8 minutes or so, but if you know how to extract an installer into a specific folder then you're actually done already.
Yeterday I installed Windows Server 2008 Standard onto my "web/file/print/email/media server" at home. Installation went super smooth, configuration was quite intuitive. After I installed all components and the basic configurations were done I tried to setup some of my websites. The problems I experienced doing so:
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By default, ASP.Net sites can not be visited "Anonymously". You'll have to define users for each .Net enabled website before they are shown to your anonymous visitors. Error pages are improved BTW, looks a lot nicer if you ask me.
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Connecting to my sites using Visual Studio Team Suite 2005 from my regular workstation does not work. On Server 2003 I simply enabled Frontpage Server Extensions 2002 (FPSE) for each website, which was enough to connect to it from Visual Studio directly. Now in Server 2008 that's different. I did not do much with IIS 7 in Vista, so I am not used to the new IIS yet. I tried searching for FPSE there but without success. Then I found some answers using Google: FPSE is no longer supported! So how can I then connect to my sites directly from another location using Visual Studio!? There seems to be
a strange unsupported fix for it, which I did not yet manage to get working on my server. I did get the Administration pages visible after installation, which state FPSE are indeed extended, but I did not yet manage to connect from Visual Studio. I will try some more later this week and will add any updates on this blog-post
2008/02/16 21:54 - As promised, here is an update regarding connecting to my Windows Server 2008 webserver, running IIS 7.0 and FPSE 2002 (as linked above). I just installed Active Directory Domain Services and DNS Server (because I will also be hosting MS Exchange on that machine), rebooted and voila! Connecting from my workstation (VS 2005) to my websites on Server 2008 magically works again! So either adding DNS or AD fixed my problem!
I am experiencing difficulties with converting one specific test-project from VS2005 to VS2008. I am hoping that one of the Bloggingabout.net bloggers / readers can help me with this.
I try to open an existing solutionfile (target 2.0, currently being used in Visual Studio 2005) in Visual Studio 2008 (Team System Developer Edition) but one of the projects won't load (this is a Visual Studio Test Project). Perhaps someone already experienced something similar? I tried several different solutionfiles, each of them containing one or multiple unit-test-projects and there's just one solution that does not load the test-project properly.
Here are some screenshots and other additional info that perhaps might give more insight in this issue.
The unit-test-framework assembly that's referenced in that project is versioned 8.0.0. I also found a version 9.0.0 but changing the reference does not change a thing regarding the actual conversion. Removing the reference from the project is not helping either.
The above image comes from VS2005 ofcourse, all following images are coming from VS2008. Opening the solution or the separate project in Visual Studio 2008 starts the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard.
When done converting the projects, the following messagebox pops up, indicating something went wrong:
The project in the Solution Explorer is then marked as "Unavailable" and unfortunately reloading the project is not going to change anything about it:
Looking at the UpgradeLog.XML, I noticed that the conversion resulted in ErrorLevel 3. Can anyone tell me what that stands for? Comparing it to other conversions this seems like "just a message, not an error" but maybe I just misinterpreted that ...
So, to cut a long story short: does anyone have a clue on how to get the MsTest-project available in VS2008? Or maybe you have some hints on where to start digging? Thanks in advance.
Everytime I go over to friends or family to fix some kind of "computer problem" that they experience, I start telling the same tips 'n tricks over and over again about how to avoid spyware, how to keep your PC as tidy as possible, how to clean up your internet history, etc. Ofcourse many of them appreciate those tips but as soon as I'm gone, they forgot at least half of it.
This morning I ran into this article on wired.com in which a list of security tips, tricks and apps are mentioned. Let me give a short summary of some nice items in that list here.
- Get a Firewall, Learn How to Use It
- Install anti-spyware software
- Turn on automatic updates in Windows XP
- Secure your Wireless AP
- Remove as many programs as possible
- Tweak your PC's security, then back up the disk image
Just to name a few... I think this list can be very helpful, even for somewhat more experienced PC-users. Click this link to get the full list and read about the underlying thoughts and howto's. I have bookmarked it and will print it out as soon as I have another "PC-fix-appointment"... :)
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I just came across this nice little gadget that Microsoft offers to be used on your Vista desktop. It counts down the number of days until the "2008 Global Launch Wave" which will start on wednesday February 27th 2008. Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will then all be launched. Considering the fact that they came up with this gadget themselves, they must be pretty sure about this date. :)
You can download this gadget here. Note that the actual gadget will indeed refresh the counter, as the image in this blogpost will not. |
One of those things that can get really annoying after a few times, is clicking one of the searchresults in your favorite search-engine, which will navigate you to a site that then shows you that you need to signup. It happens to me everytime with Experts-Exhange.com. They manage to get their pages indexed by the Google crawler, so searching for some technical keywords will often result in links to Experts-Exchange. Most of the time I don't even look at the domain that a result comes from, I just look at the title and the compact piece of information in which my keywords were found. When I then happen to click a link of Experts-Exchange.com, I can read the problem-statement without problems, but then after scrolling a bit down to the answers of other forum-members, I see that all of that content has been scrambled to avoid me from reading that without paying a fee for the site... The first time that happened I was just impressed and laughed about it a little bit... but then when I keeps happening over-and-over again it gets quite annoying. Keeping the Dutch spirit alive (ons ben zunig) I refuse to signup for an account.
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When hovering over the individual answers, you get a signup-alert:
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I thought at first that signing up was for free, but clicking the link shows the following prices:
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Well.. it's easy to save money on this... I happened to try what happens when (in Google) I clicked the "In Cache" link and I must say I was kind-of surprised! It took me to the unscrambled version of the page!
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Clicking that showed me exactly the same page as before with 1 difference: it's not scrambled anymore! Here's a screendump of the accepted answer (does not happen to contain the technical solution, but you can see the text is readable... so are all other posts).
Click for larger image
My explanation for this "feature" :-) is that the Experts-Exchange page will not get scrambled when it detects the Googlebot crawler, as they want ALL TEXT to get indexed, so their posts will show up as search-results. That way, Google can easily index all content without any scrambling. When you as a regular visitor will go to that same page, scrambling gets enabled as you have a useragent that sounds like MSIE or Mozilla. This will probably work with many newspaper-sites as well who open up their articles for members only.
Anyway, I know now that whenever I click an Experts-Exchange link from the Google-results, I will go back and use the In Cache option to avoid the malformed contents on the next page. Maybe this happened to you as well, in that case you could take your advantage with this.
UPDATE June 28th 2007 @ 22:26 GMT+1
Sander had a great comment to this post which is worth while mentioning here. You could also add the Experts-exchange domain (with optional subdomain wildcard) to the list of restricted sites (assuming you're using Internet Explorer). This will cause the scramble script to be disabled, showing you all comments without any problems. Thanks Sander for the tip.
UPDATE July 24th 2007 @ 12:26 GMT+1
Unfortunately Sander's tip does not work any more. When you now visit Expert-Exchange, also all words in the comments are mixed up. So even when you look at the unscrambled text, you will still see meaningless words. So, using the Google Cache option now seems like the only way to read the comments successfully.
UPDATE June 3rd 2008 @ 12:37 GMT+1
For several weeks now Expert's Exchange is "publicly" viewable. Indeed when you just scroll down the answers are there, readable just fine. In both MSIE7 and FF. So it seems this post became obsolete.
Day 1 of DevDays 2007 in Amsterdam RAI was a great success if you'd ask me. I have visited DevDays 2004 as well, and I remembered that I then found it very much like a big Microsoft commercial back then. This year however I really enjoyed the sessions by Scott Guthrie and Dino Esposito. I attended a lot of ASP.Net related sessions which really inspired me to add more Silverlight and AJAX components to my site(s). Also some information on when-and-how to apply LINQ was very interesting.
After this day I added some new bookmarks and RSS-feeds which may be worth viewing for you as well. Make sure that if you want to know more about Silverlight to view the posts on Scott Guthrie's blog on "Silverlight Airlines". That demo app. was really mind-blowing if you ask me. Now it's up to myself to create such rich user experiences. Somehow it always looks a lot easier when it's demonstrated... when trying to apply those tricks myself in my own applications, it always seems to be more difficult. :) As soon as some new Silverlight/AJAX page are live I will post it here so can give your honest opinion about it. Make sure to check out the following blogs to stay up-to-date about the most recent technologies:
Scott Guthrie's blog (check out his Silverlight postings)
Dino Esposit's blog (partial rendering using ASP.NET AJAX)
A few days ago I downloaded the May-preview of Expression Blend 2. I wanted to have a look at the Silverlight-options it offers. I was surprised to see that this download took not more then 26 Mb. After I installed it I had a first look at the darkgrey, industrial-looking interface. Except for the use of the grey colours it reminded me about Macromedia Flash. I played around a bit with Macromedia Flash several years ago and I guess that for designers who have experience using Flash, Blend will be very easy to use. It's quite intuitive once you get used to the collapsing panels and the lack of rightmouse-context menu's.
After previewing this 30-day trial of Blend 2 I decided to get the full-version of the current Blend version as well to create my first Silverlight application. I should have known that Silverlight is not an available projecttype in "Blend 1", it only offers projecttypes "Standard application (.exe)" and "Control Library". So if you want to create Silverlight animations you should have a look at the trial of Blend 2. I must admit that I did not have any difficulties creating animations using the timeline, but adding interactivity is a hurdle I have to overcome in the next few days. I think it has something to do with limited functionality in the preview: the controls-pane does not show any button-controls, where the "regular" version of Blend has a much more extended assetlibrary (one of those assets is the button control).
Additional information:
My first creation is attached to this post (it's a WMV-file, wrapped in a ZIP-file and it should show you a web-banner animation). I will probably work on some other Blend-projects in the next weeks so I will post those creations (or links to them) if it all works out well. Any hints on creating Silverlight projects are welcome!
Now that I am using Vista for several months, I got used to the sidebar gadgets quite fast. It's nice to have those small applications within reach and visible instantly. I thought it would be nice to play with gadget-development a little bit and found that no real configurable webcam gadgets were available yet so that would be a fun little project to experiment with. I found it is very easy to create these gadgets, as they are just tiny HTML-pages with some Javascript functionality. After developing a first version of my Webcam gadget I uploaded it to the Microsoft Live Gallery and within a week I got an email that it was actually published! It's nice to see that people actually want to view a webcam directly in their Vista sidebar, I know that I'd appreciate the functionality, but I was not sure if other people would like it as well.
If you use Vista and like to view a webcam of your choice in your sidebar, then you could view the Windows Live Gallery (category Miscellaneous) and download my webcam gadget. It is attached to this blog-post as well. In the settings-flyout you can define a live stream that you'd like to view, or an image-feed that gets refreshed at regular intervals. Any comments about the gadget are welcome ofcourse and if you like it, don't forget to rate 5 stars!
There are a lot of sites describing how you could improve your Google Pagerank. They usually don't add any real new information besides "Make sure you are being linked to", "Use proper META-tags", "Make sure all interesting keywords are used in your TITLE-tags and in the BODY of your documents". But here's a site that finally describes the real keytopics in Search Engine Optimization and how these factors are used to determine your PageRank.
Search Engine Ranking Factors V2
BTW: I personally think Windows Live Search crawls and indexes my sites a lot faster and much more complete then Google does but still I've noticed that Google just is used a lot more often. Let's hope that changes soon. :)
Here it is, my first post on bloggingabout.net. I created an account I guess about one and a half year ago. At that time I worked for a company which sells mobile content (e.g. ringtones, wallpapers, ringbacktones, etc.). Who would have known that I would join LogicaCMG and become colleague of the users of bloggingabout.net.
I have no .NET experience yet, though I wanted to work with it for almost two years now. At LogicaCMG (E,U&T) I get the chance to get more experienced with the .NET framework: I am hoping to start my MCAD training this month.
I look forward to being part of this community and will probably meet some of the users soon.
Regards,
Robin Paardekam