Keyboard Face

Sugarrae conducted asked a panel of SEO experts their ideas on link building.

None had a chance to see the others answers so they are all truly what each thinks - not just agreement.

Check it out:

http://www.sugarrae.com/11-experts-on-link-development-speak/

I recently wrote about a new smart image resizing method. I was hoping to see it come out in CS4, but it appears it beat it and is available as a Flash application on the web!

http://rsizr.com/

Here’s the video:

This is the smartest image resizing I’ve ever seen. Rumor has it that one of the inventors recently joined Adobe so hopefully we’ll see this in CS4.

A friend of mine is a director and he recently directed 21 PSAs for the moral code, The Way To Happiness. His PSAs are a work of art, and I’m amazed by a few of them. Very nicely put. Here’s the first few:

Click here to view other Public Service Announcements

Click here to view other Public Service Announcements

Click here to view other Public Service Announcements

Going from Classic ASP to ASP.NET using VB.NET you can run into conversion problems. Some of these are:

Abs() - This function requires importing the namespace System.Math.

At the top of your code put this: Imports System.Math

A float is now a double.

Use it like Dim i as Double, etc.

Amazon just recently released a new beta tool for their associates (affiliates). It’s called Amazon AStore.

It allows you to build your own customizable store. This is what a store looks like: http://astore.amazon.com/bristolwebdes-20

The things I like about it are:

• It’s simple and easy to set up. Mine took less than 5 minutes.
• It allows you to feature products on the homepage and add your own descriptions to them.
• You can add your own logo and customize the color scheme.

Unfortunately, one of the first things you’ll notice is where the store is located. It is hosted on Amazon’s servers. To use or promote the store you are stuck with three options.

These descriptions are taken directly from Amazon’s page:

Link to your aStore as a stand-alone site Make your aStore a stand-alone section of your Web site by adding a “Store” link to your main site navigation bar that links directly to your new store. This is the easiest way to integrate your aStore; however, it will appear to your users as if they are leaving your website when visiting your store.
Embed your aStore using an inline frame An inline frame is a great way to embed your aStore into any existing or new page on your Web site. This method of embedding your aStore will appear to your visitors as if the aStore is part of your site and enable them to shop without leaving your site.
Integrate your aStore using a frameset Frame your aStore into your Web site using a frameset by placing your aStore in one frame and your Web site’s navigation in another frame. This method of embeding your store will also be appear to your visitors as if the store is part of your Web site and enable them to shop without leaving your site.

You’ll notice that none of the options are search engine friendly. Search engines treat frames and iframes as links, simply following them rather than thinking of it as part of your site. If it were possible to make it part of your site, it would allow you to rank your Amazon category and product detail pages in the search engines separately.

I’ve recently come up with a solution whereby you can have your AStore hosted on your own domain and fully indexable by the search engines. Here is my first store:

http://www.gift-unique.com

Would you be interested in this solution?

How important is it to be able to customize the headers and footers (outside of the customization allowed by Amazon)?

If enough people are interested, I’ll make it available for download.

Sometimes I wish error messages were more insightful.

Ever since I titled the site, I’ve been looking for a real “Keyboard Face”. This looks like it!

Dotster is having another Happy Hour and is offering $1/Month hosting for a year. The normal package rate is $8.95/Month. The linux package includes several scripts including WordPress.

Here’s the info straight from Dotster:

March 22, from 1pm - 2pm PST, Dotster will offer 1000 coupons for $1 per month hosting. This isn’t just a little hosting package, this is our $8.95 per month package that holds up to 50 domains, with 2GB’s of storage and unlimited databases. That’s a savings of $95!

Windows XP has great native support for zipped files. When you right-click on a zipped file, it gives a number of great options including, Extract All. I recently installed and then uninstalled PowerArchiver and it was kind enough to remove Windows’ native support for zipped files. Grrr..

Here’s the fix for any other likewise affected:

In Windows Explorer go to Tools > Folder Options. Select the File Types tab. Click New. In the dialog type “zip” and click Advanced. Scroll down and select “Compressed (zipped) folder”. You’ll have to do this with each extension you want it to be able to unzip for you (e.g. .rar files, etc.)