Google released Friend Connect, which is a neat way to add social networking to your site. Basically, it comes down to embedding some JavaScript into wherever you want the widgets to appear. The main thing however is that this tool allows webmasters to use it as a social promotion tool, having people comment on the content and spread it amongst their friends on the various networks that the Friend Connect communicates with - Facebook, Google Talk, Hi5, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Orkut. Basically users can log in through the widget with an existing Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID account, but it also does data retrieval through APIs from Google, Facebook and MySpace.

Here’s a video presentation of what Friend Connect can do for a website that’s missing the social networking dimension:

Although Friend Connect couldn’t be easier to implement on a web site (simply cut and paste), there are things that can be viewed as limitations or issues - Friend Connect works from an iFrame on the page, so basically the webmaster has no control over the way it looks at all. There is thus far no way to mix the tool with other applications to create a more unique richer experience, basically you’re stuck with what you get … so far anyway. Then there are privacy/security issues - how do users from wherever access information that they may not have permission to access (we’re talking about social network profiles). Users will have to be given the option whether to expose sensitive information to other sites or not.

The goal was to allow sites without a social dimension to use the benefits of social networking, and this is definitely a great start. The ultimate goal is to allow people to connect from wherever they are with everyone else regardless of the social network they are on.

Here are a couple of good posts to see about this, giving an in depth look into Friend Connect:

Google Friend Connect (Google)
Google confirms Friend Connect (TechCrunch)
Google brings Friend Connect to the Masses (news.com)
Google Friend Connect tries to strangle the social (ReadWriteWeb)
How Google Friend Connect will affect SEO (BlogStorm.co.uk)

Share This

StomperNet decided to open up again. Las year it was for 72 hours, this time there is no specific time frame. This video features the cases of several sites (one of which a newbie at the time), and a site that did quite well and raked in plenty of organic traffic from Google, and then was dropped from the Google index, causing its traffic to reduce by about 50%. The site pulled through, but not only that, it increased its revenue and client base as well. This was done through a unique approach to PPC advertising - by doing all the wrong things! Check it out, and BTW it’s about 53 minutes, so grab a coffee and concentrate (trust me, when the ball starts rolling you’ll have to make an effort to keep up):

Interesting stuff in there! For example, the OCI (Online Commercial Intention) tool developed by Microsoft was a great reminder. Also, a few nice pointers when doing PPC campaigns for your site, like the AdWords Triangulation Method (quite interesting).

I’m thinking of making a “Video of the Week” category, in which I’d post a video I thought was an interesting to watch for whatever practical reason (fun included). There have been a few in the past months that are worth mentioning. I don’t know, I’ll see how things go…

Share This

In the spirit of Acid tests for web browsers, now you can test your mobile web browsers for compatibility with web standards. The Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group at the W3C has published a test for mobile browsers consisting of twelve checks. The result is displayed as a twelve-square grid where each square represents a single check. If a square is green the mobile browser has passed that particular part of the test, and if a square is red or white, it hasn’t. Here is the checklist (taken from Ajaxian):

1. CSS2 min-width
2. Transparent PNG
3. GZIP support
4. HTTPS
5. iframe inclusing of XHTML-served-as-XML content
6. Static SVG
7. XMLHTTPRequest
8. CSS Media Queries
9. Dynamic SVG
10. The canvas element
11. contenteditable
12. CSS3 selectors

On the top right is a screen capture of Opera Mini (hifi ardentopium sr v.4.0.10406, 20080228) on my Sony Ericsoon P1i. The grid shows my Opera Mini doesn’t support “iframe inclusing of XHTML-served-as-XML content”, “Static SVG” and “Dynamic SVG” (I am assuming the grid layout is a standard matrix layout).

Here’s a screen shot of how FF 2.0.0.12 renders the test page:

Here’s the QR code (if you have a QR enabled phone):

or simply enter one of these URLs:
http://tinyurl.com/37e33p
http://dev.w3.org/2008/mobile-test/test.html

Share This

For years now, every now and then when checking for a domain name, I tried using Google just to see if it will serve me a direct result pertaining to basic domain registration (registration and expiration date for starters). Somehow it seemed logical that a simple “whois …..” query in Google should do that. If queries like “define: …” return definitions for words, why not do the same for domains. Well, Google now returns basic domain information if you type “whois [domainname]” into the search box. I realized this a couple of days ago.

Today, I saw a post on the domain information query on Google by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, and from the comments it seems other people are seeing this as well, but the feature is still sporadic, as some people are saying they aren’t getting domain info in their results. I’ve tried queries for .com and .co.uk and they worked alright. It doesn’t seem to work for .yu/.co.yu (now .rs/.co.rs), which are Serbia’s domain extensions for example. I wasn’t expecting this to work but thought I’d try anyway. Others are reporting they are still not seeing anything for domains ending with their own country extension. A post on Matt Cutts’ blog showed up a couple of days ago, which points out this new feature as well. It seems Google is using Domain Tools for domain information queries, and since this is still kinda fresh, bugs and limited availability are expected, until the addition is rolled out worldwide.

Share This

Just read this on Webmaster Central Blog - Google is testing the latest approach to content discovery by crawling HTML forms on a selected group of sites deemed to be particularly useful. Googlebot will, upon coming onto an HTMl form, determine whether form method is GET or POST. It will actually proceed only if it’s a GET form, since they want to avoid crawling forms that may require user information input (such as usernames and passwords), which all use POST. The bot will actually “fill in” text fields with words (found on the site), choose options on radio buttons and select menus, and try to crawl resulting content, and index it if it determines it’s useful and hasn’t previously been indexed.

Anyway, the experiment is an effort to try and crawl/index, what has been called “invisible content” or “the invisible internet” for years, which is a previously untapped rich source of information which over the years has stayed hidden behind processes requiring human interaction.

Share This

This is a great example of how JavaScript can be used to render graphics and games in browsers, at only 14 Kb of code (compressed). The demo is playable, using arrow keys, although it features only one (incomplete) level. No external images or files are used. Sprites are made using canvas or div-making tactics (for IE), and sound is embedded as base64 encoded data (URIs). All sprites have only 4 colors, which helps keep things small (40-60 bytes per sprite).

As the guys at Nihilogic said, this was a proof-of-concept exercise, but it’s impressive how much was achieved with a single 14 Kb javascript file.

Share This

Google Earth and The New York Times have collaborated to produce a new layer in Google Earth that enables users to actually see news location origin, as they happen. According to Google LatLong, all you have to do is get the latest version of Google Earth, and make sure the “Geographic Web” folder is turned on. You then click on the New York Times place mark to see the lates news and features about that region. The news are updated every 15 minutes.

Mapped news are not that new a concept. Here’s an example (dating back from 2005), which is basically a mash-up of Associated Press news feed, Yahoo Geocoding API, Google Maps and GxMarker.

Share This

Opera has been a good student, studied a lot lately, and passed the Acid 3 test! The Acid 3 test proved to be a mouthfull for every major browser release until now.

This is a screenshot of WinGogi (Windows version of reference builds used for the internal testing of Opera’s platform independent Core) after having successfully rendered the Acid 3 test page. According to Opera Desktop team blog, the Opera development team have reached the 100% pass grade for the first time, after having worked hard on fixing bugs. There are still some things to fix, but they will be sorted out soon. A technical preview version will be released on labs.opera.com soon.

Now, if they could only get Opera Mini on my P1i to do the same, that would be great

Share This

This is interesting. I came across this post by Cabel (Cabel.name), according to which advertising search seems to be the new direction in advertising, at least in Japan. But wait, not the search advertising you’re probably thinking of…

How about that? Cabel says it makes sense since all the good domain names are gone, and almost no one will go past the first slash after .com or .net anyway. So, why not advertise the search query that will lead the user towards the brand, product or service?

Most people turn to the search engines in order to find something anyway, even if they know the direct URL to a site (it’s still entered in the search engine query field). But there are a few problems with advertising your brand using a search query. Google owns almost two thirds of searches on a daily basis, so your advertising initiative will most likely have the user go to Google. In that case you better own the first result page, which is plausible for brand searches, or searches that are very specific to a product or service directly related to your business, but pretty unstable if you’re advertising generic or unbranded terms. If you rank 1st for a generic term and you are stable on that position, than the risk is worth it. If Google really does record click-through rate for organic search results, than an offline campaign like this could increase the number of searches for a particular term you rank well for and attract even more clicks, maybe thus cementing your number 1 spot even more. Hm, I only wish it was that simple…

Then again, the interface shown on the advertisements may be well known to belong to a local search property used by the local community, in which case it’s easier to make sure you really appear as the main result for the advertised search query. Definitely worth experimenting with. If integrated well with an online campaign, this could actually work well, for example in the UK market. Get a priority listing on a local search engine, make sure you appear on top for that particular query, and then advertise your search query locally. It shouldn’t cost too much, and the experiment result, whatever it may be, will be worth it.

Share This

If you’ve registered an .rs domain (Serbia’s new TLD), you may be having trouble getting Google Webmaster Tools to verify your domain. There is a thread on Google Groups about this, and it seems the last development is that the Google team is to look into this issue in more detail, and hopefully resolve it soon. Found this on Search Engine Roundtable, so kudos to rustybrick for picking this up.

The .rs domain has been announced last October, and the official activation of the new TLD was on March 10, 2008. The former .yu TLD has automatically been replaced by .rs for those already in ownership of .yu and .co.yu domains. The automatic transition has yielded a somewhat unexpected effect. This doesn’t mean .rs sites are not getting indexed, on the contrary, the issue involves only Google Webmaster Tools.

More information about the .rs domain can be found on the official RNIDS site (Registry of National Internet Domain of Serbia). In case you are interested in a .rs domain, foreign nationals are allowed to register an .rs domain, as long as the administrative contact is from Serbia. Here’s a list of accredited registrars for .rs .

Share This