How to get your site/blog referenced by Google (and other search engine)

Posted on June 1st, 2008 in Blog, Getting Referenced, Plugins Blogger, SEO, Tips And Tricks by tsabrack || No Comment

I’ve seen a log of people asking themselves, why their blog/site is not yet referenced by a search engine. So here’s a little little of the things you can do.

Basically what you need to do is to tell the search engine that you exist, because Internet is HUGE, and there’s site popping everywhere every seconds, and they have no way to actually know that you exist (and want to be found).

First if you’re using a blog, and specifically your Blogger blog, there’s a few settings you need to tweak.

  • Go to your Dashboard and then Settings > Basic.
  • Make sure your setting look like mine, especially for “Add your blog to our listings?” as well as “Let search engines find your blog?”

Blogger Settings

Now, the following instruction are true for ANY kind of website, not just a blog.

Getting referenced by Google :

  • Go here and fill the form.
  • It’s done… nothing more to do.

Now that we’ve done Google, which we can say is probably the most used search engine theses days, it doesn’t hurt to get also referenced by other search engine.

Getting referenced by Yahoo

  • First thing you can do is check if they already know about your site : Yahoo SiteExplorer
  • Go here, and fill the form just like for Google.
  • Tada… it’s done

Getting Referenced by LiveSearch

Now with those three, you’ve got the most commonly used search engine. Well this is partially true. I should say you have covered the most commonly used search engine in the Western world. If you want to toss some more change to have you site visited by Chinese citizen, use the following :

While you’re at it you can get your site referenced by Indian search engine :

Now this time I think we are in good shape, and got most of the world covered. That being said, although those search engine are the most used ones, they are still general purpose search engine. If your site/blog is targeting a very specific audience, then you might want to get referenced in specialized search engine.

Also there’s something you need to keep in mind, is that there’s no better search engine than ‘Word to Mouth’ … so try to have people talk/link to your site.

Finally if your site is a commercial one, or you REALLY want to get some traffic, then you might want to invest into Paid search advertising. There’s a good article here about it. Most of the search engine above offer such kind of services.

Alex

Iphone in Hong Kong

Posted on May 29th, 2008 in Hutchinson, News, Technology, iPhone by tsabrack || No Comment

After news from all the neighboring country (like India or Singapore) it seems that Hong Kong will “finally” get an official Iphone distribution according to Bloomberg.

Apparently Apple has made a deal with Hutchinson to sell the Iphone in Hong Kong, which mean that the phone is likely to be distributed by Three. Although this is really nice, there’s no time frame mentioned nor precision concerning the exclusivity (or not) of that contract.

More news about the details of that distibution will certainly come as we get closer to the release date of the Iphone. Wait and See…

Alex

World’s 1st Eye Tattoo

Posted on May 29th, 2008 in Fun, Tattoos by tsabrack || No Comment

People have been using tattoo for a long time, and for a lot of purposes. It could be for religious, decorative, identification, or even medical purposes. Depending on time and culture, tattoo have been more of less popular. Some tattoo are pretty famous like for the famous Yakuza.

But despite the long history of tattoos, there’s always been a few regions of the body that could not be tattooed. Well as you can see here, the limit has been pushed back as Pauly Unstoppable from Canada got the world’s first Eye Tattoo.


So what’s left now ? …

Alex.

First video of Windows 7 unleashed

Posted on May 28th, 2008 in HCI, Multi touch, Technology, Windows 7 by tsabrack || No Comment

Today at All Things D conference, Steve Balmer and Bill Gates unveiled the first sneak peek at Windows 7 new interface. The successor of Windows Vista is still far away from its release, as Steve Balmer hammered a 3 years time frame during the conference. Here’s a small video of it :

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Although there’s not much details, it seems that multi touch interface are quickly becoming a must in future interfaces, Surface was only the premise of a technology. Microsoft teams have decided to bring the still rather expensive technology as a standard part of the future OS.

We can bet that multitouch interface will probably become as common as our good old Mouse in the near Future.

Alex

What will be the Future Human Computer Interfaces (HCI)

Posted on May 25th, 2008 in Computer Interface, HCI, Technology by tsabrack || No Comment

We’ve had some quiet years in term of Computer Interface, with a few new mouses, or new ergonomics keyboard from time to time, but nothing really new or existing. But latetly is seems the market is buzzing with innovations (or old technology finally because broadly used). Let’s make a brief tour from past to present and have a look at what we can expect in the comming year(month).

Trackball

A track ball, which appeared in the 90s, is a device similar to the mouse except instead of having the ball under the device (like in the mouse) the ball is actually on top of it. The user roll the ball with his thumb or hand. Although the device was quite innovative, it always remained quite confidential and restricted to certain use.

Haptic Interfaces (force feedback devices)

Haptic Interface is a big word to describes devices that give the user a feedback. There’s two subtype of haptic devices which are Force Feedback and Tactile Feedback. The most common haptic device you can find are :

But It is likely that we will see more and more of those device, and industry is certainly going to develop more and more haptic devices:

WiiMote

This device, introduced when the Wii hit the market, really changed the way people are playing. Instead of simply sitting on the couch, they are actually really moving in order to interact with the game. This certainly bring a much higher level of immersion in the games.


Touchscreen

Impossible to talk about computer interface without speaking of touchscreen. Touch screens are litterally everywhere, from Hardware with the IPhone and all the other recent phones, or projects like Wall or Surface, to the future OS themselves (Cocoa touch in OsX and the future Windows 7).

Now those two are sure impressive, now check this one, if the video look cool to you, check out the Nui Group to see how they create it … and you’ll be even more amazed :

CamTrax

If you liked the wiimote, trust me, it is going to look bleak to you after you’ve seen that.Engadget titles it “coolest thing since ice”. The only thing you’ll need is a webcam and anything that can fall under your hand :

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0srY37kkMw&hl=en]

With all those fancy technologies the coming month/years are certainly going to be very interesting, don’t you think ?

Social Bookmarking Widget for Blogger

Posted on May 25th, 2008 in Blog, Plugins Blogger, Social Bookmark, Tips And Tricks by tsabrack || No Comment

Social networks and more particularly social bookmarks are everywhere nowadays. Any blog or site you see around is likely to be linked through that kind of network. There’s a flurry of sites, among them we can mention Del.icio.us, or Digg, but there’s many many other. Each of your reader can have his favorite network so there’s no need to really try to force him to use one or another. Furthermore, there’s so many that it can be cumbersome to list add links to all of them.

So to me the easiest is just to provide that choice to your reader. Thanks to nifty script available here and there on the net it is very easy to give the choice to your reader

So far i’ve selected two that are (there’s plenty of other but you have to make a choice):

Those two seem to me the most famous/used one, and they are quite easy to install.

As for Blogger this one is the easiest to install. First you can go to MadKast site. Be sure that you’re already identified to on your blog site. There you will be ask to provide you email. After that you can click that magic ‘Get widget’ button that will take you back to your blog administration page :

You don’t really have to give it a name, just click on it and Voila! the new widget is added to your site. Now you have a nice button on your posts.

The other one AddThis is a bit more tricky, but i find it much lighter than madcast. You can go the the site page and automatically add it as widget to your site, but it’ll be added as a plugin in the side bar, but note at the end of each post.

Now if you want to have it display at the end of each post (or anywhere else you want) it’s a little more complicated. You will need to edit you template. Here’s simple steps to do this :

  1. First go here, and grab the script code for addthis. Select the look and feel of the button you like, then select next to "Where do want to put the button" select "On Blog" and finally "Blogger" for the plateform (other plateform are also available)
  2. Press on "Get Your Free Button" the code should look like this :

    <div><script type='text/javascript'>addthis_url='<data:post.url/>'; addthis_title='<data:post.title/>'; addthis_pub='YourUserName';</script><script src='http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12' type='text/javascript'></script></div>
  3. Then back to your blog, go to you Dashboard > Layout > Edit HTML.
  4. At the top of the page you should see a link called "Download Full Template". Click on it in order to save it somewhere on your disk.

editTemplate

  1. Now is the tricky part. Click in the text zone labelled (3) and search for Go to where you save the template and open it with you favorite Text editor, and search for some code like : 
    <div class='post-body entry-content'>    <p><data:post.body/></p>    <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats --></div>

  2. Paste the code you got previously just after the "–>". Now Click on "Save Template"

Now you should have a nice button at the end of your blog post.

Alex.

Where it begins … the Alpha.

Posted on May 24th, 2008 in Uncategorized by tsabrack || No Comment

 

Where did it all begun ? Well at the beginning of all things there was a little spark then a huge explosion :

 

Wait … I’m sure we can go a little further in history and  get straight to the point.. Why this blog ?

 

Well the answer is quite simple. I’ve been reading other’s blogs for a long time, following various information, some could say I’m feeding on information. Well that is true. I like to know what is happening. I’m particularly interested in all the technological and geeky stuff flying around. If you read this blog you’re likely to see quite a lot on posts on that subject.

I also happen to be fond of all the little things, scripts and tips that can simplify your life. There should be quite a few post on that too tossed as the time goes.

Finally I’ll probably throw in tidbit’s of science, thoughts and anything I deem interesting.

That being said, Happy reading.

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