Tag: search

optimizing urls for google

certainly of interest to open source cms (some of which have horrible urls) is this article by Brice Dunwoodie

More specifically, Google will parse and underscore literally and will parse a dash as a “token”, that represents white space. So if you construct a URL that contains “enterprise_content_management” in it, Google literally sees the word “enterprise_content_management”, which is really not a word at all.

google number

As 1 consultant finished listing some of his Fortune 100 clients, I said, That’s nice, but what’s your Google number? Puzzled looks soon overcame everyone in the room. Google number? What’s that? I quickly explained that it was a rough-order measure of your reputation and influence as a thought-leader – it is how much buzz, or word-of-mouth, you have as an expert.

If your Google Number is around …

  • 100 or less – keep your day job and start publishing
  • 400 – do a nice web site and publish more
  • 800 – it is probably safe to hang out your shingle
  • 1000 – you are getting some real attention
  • 2000 – you are well known in your field
  • 5000 – you are an often quoted expert in your field – a thought-leader
  • 10000 – Dave Ulrich
  • 23500 – Gregor J. Rothfuss
  • 50000 – Tom Peters
  • 100000 – Peter Drucker

too much fun, via seb

intrablogs more efficient?

The idea is to free some of our content, expose it via easily searchable XML and HTML via HTTP, and reduce the amount of information hunt and peck that currently goes on, thus increasing productivity and improving the quality of our work.

i experience the hunt and peck with several mailing lists i’m on. they are about as inefficient for finding information as it gets. need to get my coworkers into blogs.

The memex is coming

Within 5 years, terabyte hard drives will be common and inexpensive (<$300). Thus, purchasing an additional terabyte of personal storage every year will be feasible for the average computer user. It turns out that filling 1 terabyte is not easy. It is hard to take/view enough pictures, read enough documents, or listen to enough audio in 1 year to fill 1 terabyte. Only video is up to the task of readily filling 1 terabyte in a year. Therefore, we must prepare for the era of profligate users that Vannevar Bush predicted. Users will eventually be able to keep every document they read, every picture they view, all the audio they hear, and a good portion of what they see.

gordon bell is preparing for that day with his MyLifeBits project at MS research, as is the MIT haystack project which drew lots of applause at the W3C conference this year.

We have begun using MyLifeBits, and initial experience is a success. Gordon Bell, our alpha user, has digitized nearly everything possible from his entire life, and will have eliminated all paper (except those legally required) by the time this paper is published.

one question that bloggers get asked a lot; why are you replicating your life online, can be asked of this effort too. the answer, it appears, is rooted in human psychology, and the wish to endure.

Supposing one did keep virtually everything would there be any value to it? Well, there is an existence proof of value. The following exist in abundance: shoe boxes full of photos, photo albums & framed photos, home movies/videos, old bundles of letters, bookshelves and filing cabinets. While many items may be accessed only infrequently (perhaps just a handful of times in a lifetime) they are treasured; given only one thing that could be saved as their house burns down, many people would grab their photo albums or such memorabilia.