Internet
Internet Explorer 7
So I’ve been holding off installing IE7 mainly because with my work, I still need to do a lot of compatibility testing in IE6 and there really wasn’t any elegant solutions for running IE6 and IE7 side by side, at least not until recently. Microsoft made their Virtual PC 2004 software free which allows you to run other operating systems simultaneously. They also released a free image of Windows XP SP2 with IE6 that will last until April 2007. This allows web developers to run both IE6 and IE7 simultaneously and since I’ve slowly started receiving client requests for IE7 compatibility, I thought might as well take the plunge.
Google Documents Not Too Shabby
I’ve been working with a client in Australia and the way we’ve been communicating is through a shared document on Google Docs. I’ve checked it out before but never really used it. Well now that we’ve been communicating ideas and project tasks extensively through the document I’ve found it a very useful app for collaborative efforts.
Google PageRank Updates
So it seems Google recently pushed out a PageRank update and this site is now a PR5. A lot of sub-pages and older posts are also PR4. The site used to be PR4/3 so basically it’s a plus 1 increase - not too shabby since I don’t do any SEO for this site. It’s most likely due to the size of the site (posts) and the age of the site because I have very few inbound links. My business site stayed a PR3 but a lot of content pages picked up PR2 so that’s good. Bad news is my Stuffbox site dropped it’s PR altogether!
Firefox Rules Them All
Firefox is the best browser on Windows PC’s. I say PC’s because I’ve never used a Mac (and don’t plan on doing so in the future either) so I can’t comment on Safari. But Firefox is the best standards-based browser out there. The one flaw it has is the memory leaks, which they’ve been working on. If you’ve been using Firefox during a long session and opening a lot of tabs/windows, the memory usage starts going up and doesn’t come down unless you restart Firefox. But I have plenty of memory so it doesn’t matter.
Net Neutrality
Net Neutrality is a very important concept for anyone using the Internet or web-based services like VoIP phone service. Net Neutrality basically refers to the principle of letting users have equal access to any website or web service they want. Right now, companies like Verizon and AT&T, which own significant portions of the Internet network infrastructure, have been heavily lobbying Congress not to put Net Neutrality into law.
Search Engine Optimization
Well, I’ve put a lot of effort into search engine optimization of the website for my business. For those familiar with SEO, you may know of something called the sandbox effect where new websites are effectively “ignored” for a certain period of time ranging from 6-9 months, sometimes less, sometimes more. While bigger search engines like Google and Yahoo tend to have longer sandbox terms, MSN seems to have a less strict sandbox.
I was just doing routine checks on certain keywords and my business website is listed on the first page of results on MSN for major keywords related to my market! Needless to say I was quite happy with that, given the fact that the website has only been up for 2 months and it’s now on the first page of the MSN search engine result pages (SERPs) for keywords I’ve targeted.
Finally Accepted Into Google Adsense
Okay, so I finally got accepted into the Google Adsense program recently. I’ve mainly been trying to get my Stuffbox site and this site into the program but got rejected twice. The Stuffbox site got rejected primarily because before there was a membership structure and most of the site was member-only restricted. And I guess with the proliferation of content-rich blogs these days, they are more open to them. Click here to read more
VoIP Engines Are Revving
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is about to take off. This is one of the first times I had a business prediction that was right on the mark. Three years ago, few people knew what VoIP was. Those Kazaa guys were working on something called Skype and no one really took it seriously. At the time, I thought to myself - man, VoIP is going to be big - it’s going to be disruptive and it’s going to seriously threaten traditional land line telecommunications. For my business planning class a year and a half ago, my idea was to create VoIP phone equipment and strategically partner with services like Skype. The idea was not received well because VoIP was just considered too new. Instead we did our project on mass customization of women’s handbags which turned out well (won an award and some money). Mass customization of retail products is an emerging trend too but I digress.
Website Coming Along
The website for my web services business is really coming along. This is by far the most professional looking site I’ve ever developed. I’ve also made it Firefox and IE cross-browser compatible (the site looks identical in both browsers).
So things are rolling. I even developed a little “wizard” that will ask a prospective customer a few questions and determine which web hosting plan is best for them. This alone took me about 2 days because I had to map out an entire decision tree based on people’s possible answers and then put it into PHP code.