Everything Else

I am no fan of Globalization. I just do not see how exporting jobs to the Third World helps the people of the USA other than by lowering the price of my socks by a couple of bucks. The truth is we have been trained to always go for the lowest price retailer, which just plays into the whole cheap goods, Big Box Store mentality.

How About a Shopping Search for where goods are made?

I got to looking at shopping search engines like NexTag, Yahoo Shopping and Ask Shopping and most of these are set up to find the lowest price retailers. Why can't I search for, let's say, "socks" and restrict it to socks "Made in USA"? I just might buy American made socks.

I think I might like to try using such a search engine. If one exists please let me know.

This is a test. Okay testing some more. Okay no more testing before I break something.

I have a number of interests that I would like to create websites on. None of these are money making ventures just personal hobbies. I need to make a list of topics I want to cover and then decide the following:

1.) Does the subject need a blog, static site or a combination?

2.) If a blog, does the topic really need a stand alone blog or will a Category here at Everything Else do, or will a completely separate blog here on the Talmir.info domain work better? No sense in starting a separate blog if I am not able to think of something to post about regularly.

3.) Free host or paid hosting? As an example I can now point a domain at a Blogspot blog and I think I can point a domain at a Bravehost free account, since none of these are going to make money I really do not want to spend any more on hosting - with all my current paid hosting accounts it is starting to get expensive. One thing is I will have them all on domains that I own.

I figure if I start building these in my spare time they might be ready in a year or two. How do you decide on what you want to build websites about?

Off to make that list of topics.

UPDATE:

The List (beta) -

1. State and Regional (multi-county area) Politics Planning - there are things going on which require my commentary and guidance! heh. This could probably just be a category on Everything Else.

2. Living in a New Urbanist Community and New Urbanism - could also be a category on EE blog, or I might create a new folder on Talmir.info and publish a completely seperate blog so I don't have SEO stuff and New Urbanism stuff all sloshing around together. I can't see buying a new domain and hosting account for this.

3. Local Visitors Guide/Local Reviews/local commentary - I might start this one off on a free hosting account but on it's own domain. The idea being that if it builds a following I can move it to paid hosting. In the old days I would have started with a directory script but there already is a local yellow pages type directory and I don't see any reason to compete with that, but I might just run with a blog and some static pages and aim it at reviews and pointing out tourist destinations. That is gear it mainly at commentary/discussion etc. As I write this it sounds like a lot of work and maybe I'll think about this one further before jumping in.

4. Something on US Automibile Trails and Numbered Federal Hwys - could be two sites about historic preservation. These will probably be on free hosts with their own domains for the static pages. I might use a remotely hosted blog (Blogspot or Wordpress.com) so I can post on the road if I take an automobile tour along these routes.

I confess thaty I have not been paying attention to the blog search engines for the last couple of years, because I never use them. But recently I have been playing with them more and more. The ones I am looking at so far:

Technorati

IceRocket

Clusty Blog Search

Google Blog Search

Ask.com Blog Search

(I'm disappointed Yahoo discontinued their blog search, because I remember liking it at the time it launched.)

Are there any other blog searches I should be looking at? What do you use and why do you like it? Do you use several blog search engines and , if so, which ones?

I'm worried this could be me and I don't even know it. :rolleyes:

I just upgraded to StumbleUpon ver. 2.89 (seems to run well on my Flock browser). When I upgraded, StumbleUpon gave me the option of turning on a search engine enhancement feature which is supposed to work with both Google and Yahoo. I figured I'd try it, but after turning it on I could not see any difference on the toolbar or anywhere else, so I just sort of shrugged it off.

Today I did a search in Yahoo and noticed little stars next to some of the listings and when I moused over them they were a link. Clicking on this took me to the StumbleUpon page for that site showing who voted for it plus any reviews or comments about the site. This is very cool.

Unfortunately I'm not seeing anything from StumbleUpon when searching with Google. I don't know why. I am not even sure how they add the stars to the listings in the Yahoo SERP's, perhaps Greasemonkey? Anyway it is another reason for me to use Yahoo search.


Other conversations about StumbleUpon:
Cre8asiteforums
HighRankings Forums
Webmasterworld
Other Blogs

As you will see on the sidebar, I have joined MyBlogLog, which is a social networking platform. Thanks to NickW for pointing out the post which explains why MyBlogLog will work.

MyBlogLog allows me to “embed” their social network on my blog. That’s the cool part. Doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but it was the wow thing that tipped a point.

Source: Rexblog (read the whole post, it's worth it)


I don't understand online social networks very well as I have said before, but I see more benefit from this one because it is a good way to find new web sites and what pages are hot at the momment. This reminds me more of Stumbleupon, only embedded in your website rather than your browser.

What I like about MyBlogLog (and StumbleUpon and blogs in general) is that they are new wrinkles on old fashion web surfing, sorta like webrings for the 21st Century. So I joined because one of the things I started this blog for was to see how traffic develops without the search engines, which is one of the reasons I like blogs and RSS so much and I will see just how this develops as a traffic source. One thing I know from the old days: you need to place yourself at a "Web Crossroads" in order to get non-search engine traffic so understanding social networks like MyBlogLog is important.

I have been using Omniweb browser for over a year now. Recently I upgraded, and for at least 24 hours everything seemed okay, then Omniweb started crashing whenever my default start page: Netvibes would load. I do not know why Omniweb started doing this but since a browser is central to what I do every day I cannot be without a reliable one. I liked Omniweb, while it was not nearly as fast as many other browsers it had all the luxury features one might expect in a Caddilac. In particular the killer app for me since I post so much on the web was the built in support for Mac OS X spell checking as you type: if I misspell a word a it is underlined in red as I type - loved that.

So I needed a new browser.

I have been using Flock browser, only on my laptops, for the last month or so, and while it is not perfect I think I will give it a try on my main desktop machine now. What I do not like about Flock is the way it handles bookmarks so I'm going to give the del.icio.us bookmarking feature a try and see if I like that better.

Flock's spell check is not OS X native but it is good enough.

Flock uses the same rendering engine as Firefox.

Flock has a very nice search box feature. Yahoo is the default, but you can add others and change the default search engine if you like.

Flock has extensions like Firefox (although not as many). I added the Ask Power Tools, which adds Ask search menu to the right click menu after you highlight something.

I have tried various other browsers for Mac OS X and have found them all wanting in some crucial aspect, so I guess Flock is it for now.

Did you ever notice Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan & Co's newish search engine news blog has no site search? Seems rather ironic to me. Still the coverage is excellent, but finding old stories is a bit of a pain. SEL needs a site search so I can find old stories easily and link to them and not have to rely on one of the commercial engines to index them. I know SEL will someday get so big that most site searches will be overwhelmed but it is not that big yet, however it is big enough to need a site search. Pssst! Danny, FDSE is still free.

New Search Engine for Aging Boomers. It appears that web search confuses and frustrates people over 50. So somebody has invented the aptly named: Cranky a search engine for aging boomers. Cranky is a part of a larger portal and social network for people 50+ called Eons.

The interesting part is that the core of Cranky is a directory of 5000 sites the Cranky editors have identified as being useful and of interest to age 50+ people. I'm not sure who is providing backfill results for when there is nothing in the directory to match a query but somebody has to, I cannot imagine a search engine being considered relevant for very long with only 5000 or even 500,000 sites indexed in this day and age. I can see giving pages from those 5,000 core sites preference in the SERP's.

To eliminate confusion, Cranky only gives 4 results on the first page of the SERP's. Personally I find this annoying, but this allegedly is to minimize overwhelming aging boomers with too much info.

From a business angle Cranky is a good idea: aiming a search site at a marketing demographic rather than a subject or geographic area since it will be easier to sell advertising to Madison Avenue traditional ad agencies that way.

The two parts that particularly interest me is 1.) the targeting of a marketing demographic (ie. aging baby boomers), with what is really a directory (here I was just saying directories are dead (silly me)) which I find exciting and a good idea for niche directories, and 2.) finding out which search engine is providing search backfill (un-human edited or ranked results) if any, for the Cranky search engine.

Source: Search Engine Land

So Apple announced the iPhone available in June '07 and I definitely want one because it would eliminate my carrying around both a PDA and a cellphone and be Mac compatible.

But that got me thinking about what I use my PDA for:

1. Addresses and Telephone Numbers - Well the iPhone should handle that and it should sync with Address Book which I use.

2. Appointments/Schedule - again I use iCal and it should handle that.

3. To Do list - part of iCal, I would think they would incorporate this.

4. Note pad - like a sticky note you jot on with a stylus. I use this all the time. I used it today to jot down the dimensions on some furniture in a store so I could measure the space for it once I got home. I also jot down telephone numbers and all sorts of notes. Since the iPhone does not have a stylus I suspect it does not have a note pad application. I suppose I can live without it but it will be missed.

5. Memo pad - this is for typed notes. I keep lists of authors and book titles on it for reference at used book stores, plus other semi permanent notes. Looks like they have something for this.

6. Calculator - I see there is a widget for this. Good.

7. Internet - iPhone will do this better than my Palm TX.

8. Ebook reader - This might be a problem - perhaps a major one. I get a lot of ebooks at Manybooks. They have a format for iPods using the Notes feature. If that works on the iPhone in iPod mode I might be satisfied. I want to be able to carry around ebooks for reading while in waiting rooms, etc. Being able to read free public domain ebooks on the iPhone is very important to me, much much more important than reading books that are for sale by the publishers. For sale books would be nice too but I definitely want to be able to choose my sources for free content. I currently do most of my reading on my PDA and I do not want to carry both around.

In addition there are some features I really want:

Yahoo - I definitely must have Yahoo local search, web search, email and maps. I've tried all the Google stuff and I prefer Yahoo for local search and maps, plus I already use Yahoo email daily and I don't intend to change. I would also like to be able to add other search engines like Ask, but I can be satisfied with Yahoo and Google.

Now the other hurdle is to see how much per month the service plan is for the iPhone. If I can be fairly well satisfied on the above and the price is not too high I might buy one in early Autumn after people have had a chance to really test the iPhone in the wild and review it.

The exciting part for me is having web and email access with me practically everywhere I go. That is what the iPhone can give me if the price is not too high for service.

Okay directories maybe not completely dead but on life support. See I got a referral from ODP/Dmoz the other day and the event was so unusual I thought I would write about it. Way back when, I remember getting 30 hits a day directly from Dmoz the day after my listing in Dmoz went live. Good times.
I think across all my sites the only general directories that send traffic are the occasional Dmoz hit and the occasional JoeAnt hit. Even the remaining directories devoted to my niche, that are still hanging on, hardly send traffic to me anymore and they all used to be good reliable sources. I know the directories I run still get traffic and still send traffic but I wonder for how long that will continue.

We all get comment, forum and mail form spam. On some of my sites I have switched to using freebie remotely hosted scripts and it seems to scare off many spammers. For instance I use Bravenet email forms on one site and it has eliminated robot spam and almost eliminated human spam while legit users still can contact me.

On another site I use a Bravenet forum board to allow visitors to discuss some of my content and make suggestions. Again no robot spam and no human spam.

I use Haloscan for blog comments. I think comment spambots get foiled by the JavaScript linking or discouraged by lack of PR juice.

None of the Bravenet scripts are pretty but they seem to keep my work load lower on my content sites.

Some of you might have noticed that there is a small directory of web development and SEO resources located here on Talmir.info and have wondered what it is about. The short answer is that it is my web guide of permanent bookmarks to SEO and web dev resources which I thought I would share with everyone rather than keeping them private. Although I could use a social bookmarking service, I really prefer to build content for myself. I also wanted an easy way to look up and post lists of links to resources for beginners in my forums posts and the directory categories provide a quick shorthand way of doing that.

Goals:

1. Deep link to high quality forum threads and blog posts on either SEO or web development forming a useful web guide on those topics.

2. Link to resources, approved by me, such as software, blogs and forums for further reference. The point is not to link to everything but to link to things I consider useful.

3. Encourage and educate beginners on web building and basic, standard optimization practices.

4. Keep the directory/guide commercial free and relatively neutral so that myself and other forum posters can link to it on forums to help beginners.

5. Spend no time or money promoting the directory by submitting. Generally I have let people find me by my forum profile, my blog and when I have linked to a guide category in a forum post. (Comment: My goal for the domain Talmir.info has been to see how people find the site naturally, how inbound links develop and how deeply visitors explore. See "Results" below.)

6. Eliminate spam found in so many web dev and SEO directories. My goal is to list quality or trusted sites not every site.

Biases:

1. Since most of the links are submitted by me, the bias tends to be for posts from the forums I read and post at and the blogs I read.

2. The guide is geared to beginners to early intermediates.

3. Links to discussions and post that do not quickly become dated are preferred.

Results:

1. Out of hundreds of submissions, I have approved about four listings. I think all the directory submission lists have found the directory and linked to it but not not the target audience. Passive promotion has not worked well. Sigh.

2. I have not attracted many natural inbound links other than those detailed above. This is my fault. 2006 pretty much has been a lost year for me due to family considerations so I have not been deep linking and building as I should.

Future:

I still think it is a good, useful idea. I would like to see more people submit quality individual blog and forum posts because I know I am missing a lot. If anyone has any suggestions please comment.

Web Geeky has been launched. It is a new search engine, internet marketing, and web design/development news community with a Digg-like interface. I think this is the beginning of the vertical news community type sites in this subject matter.

In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I am a l33t editor at Web Geeky which means I help sweep up and wash out the tea cups before closing.

Gurtie spills the beans as to what Web Geeky is about. Well sorta, I think they don't want to put forward too many pre-conceived notions about what the community will be and just let it evolve.

Here is what I would like to see: 1. More reporting on good marketing/seo forum threads, 2. More reporting on good quality SEO blog posts - not sensationalistic stuff but the good solid posts. 3. Discussion.

It will be interesting to see where the first Web Geeky-it links appear.

I just discovered Fiesta Ware, dinnerware. I really like the bright colors and the heft and feel of this. I think my grandparents had an old set of this that they used to feed all the grandkids on but I was just a tyke so I cannot swear to it.

I'll probably start building a set of Fiesta Ware by asking for it next Christmas, I have too many financial commitments right now so I better make do with my present everyday china. I actually like my current everyday china, it's sort of French cafe looking white china with a cobalt blue rim. But everything in my new house is very neutral in color so I think I need to add some color to the house. Eventually.

I also like the shiny glaze on Fiesta Ware, which should make it wash up easily. One of my dislikes about stoneware dishes is that it can be a pain to wash up. It's made in the USA too - when was the last time you saw something actually made here? Points for that in my book.

I've written about the now defunct web directory and portal NBCi several times before but I do not think any of those posts survive. The news that Wikia may try a community reviewed search engine brings up the whole issue of human review in search results again and I think it is useful to look at what models have been done before and their strengths and weaknesses. I still morn this portal's passing because it sent me a heck of a lot of traffic while it was in operation.

NBCi was a 3 tier web search incorporating 2 directories listing web sites and a spidering search feed listing web pages.

1st Tier: NBCi Directory - NBCi bought a top quality web directory "Snap" which just like the Yahoo directory, employed professional editors. Snap was a pay-for-review directory and you could always drill down through the categories to find sites. When you did a search on NBCi the very first results you saw were from the Snap directory. Search results from the directory were ranked (ordered) by a technology called GlobalBrain (explanation see ther-search-engines/thread::774/" rel="external">second post) which sort of learned your preferences and the people that performed searches similar to yours (via cookies) and would reorder the search results to give you sites similar to those you already preferred. (FYI: I think some of the GlobalBrain technology continues to be used in Eurekster).

The point is that not only were new sites being added to the directory but those SERP's were also shifting around because of Global Brain rankings. The SERP's did not look static to the end user like a search on the Yahoo Directory might.

2nd Tier: Live Directory - Once you exhausted looking through the SERP's from the NBCi directory you could click on a tab for "Live Directory". Live Directory had the same taxonomy as the NBCi directory, but there was no charge to webmasters for listing in the Live Directory. I believe sites submitted got just a quick review for spam and became part of the directory listings quite quickly. Websites listed in the Live directory were allowed to select about 6 keywords, my memory is dim on this but it may be that directory searches only used those keywords and not the title or description. Again, on Live Directory, the search results were enhanced by GlobalBrain.

However, listing was only provisional and sites had to show a certain popularity of click thru's as measured by GlobalBrain in order to stay in the Live Directory. Sites that showed exceptional popularity could also get promoted free of charge to the top level NBCi directory which was worth much more in terms of traffic. On that score NBCi had a nice viral marketing tool - because they told the submitting webmaster to tell their freinds about NBCi and to click on your site - the more different IP's that clicked on a listing the bigger the chance was that your site would get promoted to a free top level directory listing. A lot of content webmasters, myself included, got their friends introduced to NBCi because of this and it was an important way for content sites to gain entry into the top level directory so it did not become full of commercial only listings. I am not sure how well the Live directory would hold up to today's automated spam submissions and automated clickbots, but I still like the idea of a live directory like that and i think you could guard against abuse. One solution would be to use redirects or robots txt to keep listings in the free Live Directory from passing any link popularity.

Third Tier: Inktomi Web search results - The Third tab was for spidered search results from Inktomi. They were not the best in the world but they were fairly fresh and unlike the directories, listed pages rather than sites.

So all this is past history, but I wanted to be able to refer back to NBCi in some upcoming posts so I thought I would describe NBCi for those that do not remember it. But I also think that NBCi had some good ideas and a good model for fusing human reviewed listings with search and I do not see any technological reason why the NBCi 3 tier approach could not be copied and brought back today. If done right I think it could be quite nice, although the top level directory would need to be seeded with quality sites and not just allowed to grow full of spam or commerce only sites. If I had the money or the programming skills I would love to give it a try.

Anyone have any thoughts on or memories about either the old Snap directory or NBCi they would like to add?