01/28/10
What was once just a faint, pondering thought that usually ended with “naaahhhhhh” has grown into much more of an actual possibility.
Will Apple kill Adobe Flash?
Sound crazy? It may have a couple of years ago. But now with the iPhone & iPod Touch with their gazillion users (sorry, too lazy to look up actual numbers, but I think that’s close) and with the recent introduction of the Apple iPad…what trend do you notice? Right…no flash support on any of those devices. Hmmmm. Conspiracy? Reality? Let’s go deeper.
01/22/09
I’m sure you’ve seen shortened URLs posted in various places across the internet as it is insanely popular in social media such as twitter where posting a long link is a tweet suicide. Perhaps there has been a time where you weren’t sure about clicking a link because you had no idea where you would end up. Perhaps you work in a corporate environment where not knowing what site you’ll visit could cost you your job. It happens.
I happen to work in a corporation where I don’t want to land on oddball sites that are going to get me canned and since I work in interactive marketing, I am often staying in the loop with news, blogs, social media, etc. I often see links that I’m not sure about clicking and often don’t unless the person describes what it is and where it leads to. Here are just a few that popped up tonight:
- http://bit.ly/HDrh
- http://tinyurl.com/7umr6s
- http://bit.ly/13OS2
- http://is.gd/gMwH
Obviously, without some clues from the people who posted these links I’d have no idea where they go. I don’t know about you…but I like to know this stuff! I searched for a tool where I could slap a url like the ones above in a form and it would them show me the final url that I would end up at. To make a long story short, I couldn’t find one that did what I wanted. Most had way too many bells and whistles. All I wanted was to preview where a shortened url links to. That’s it.
So what did I do? I whipped one together. I call it “url snoop”. It’s simple to use and could possibly save your butt job one day. So check it out, bookmark it, and let me know what you think!
url snoop – preview shortened urls before you click through
10/4/08
I just got back from the 2008 Webmaster Jam Session in Atlanta, GA. Good times and brain overload. I took lots of notes and thought I’d share the most important tidbits with others…if you were there you’ll get this…if you didn’t attend, well, make sure you attend next year so you’ll know what all of the following means!!!
Here we go…my top notes from the 2008 WJS.
- J. Cornelius likes to wear black…and pimp his software…maybe the black helps him pimp.
J. Cornelius’ Website - John Moore doesn’t care what men think that women think…he says size matters.
John Moore’s Website - Jason Beaird: If Bob Villa, Mike Holmes, and Bob the Builder had a sleepover, they’d watch Jason build an entire house…with nothing but a reciprocating saw.
Jason Beaird’s Website - Nathan Smith likes to say “dude”. As a matter of fact, he’ll probably name his upcoming baby boy “Dude”. Either that or when the baby pops out, Nathan’s only reaction will be…”dude!”
Nathan Smith’s Website - Christian Heilmann likes puppies
Christian Heilmann’s Website - Jina Bolton loves airplanes and thinks sleep is overrated
Jina Bolton’s Website - James Craig likes to hear computers talk to him.
James Craig’s Website - Ethan Marcotte loooooves slide animations. Especially ones with fire.
Ethan Marcotte’s Website - Todd Dominey is taller than he looks in his twitter pic…
Todd Dominey’s Website - Ben Chesnut likes monkeys
Ben Chesnut’s Website - Jason Ford smiles….A LOT
Jason Ford’s Website - Jeff Croft is an “a-hole”. Ok, not really, but he likes for people to think he is…so just go with it…ok?
Jeff Croft’s Website - Christina Warren doesn’t think Jeff Croft is an “a-hole”…I think she only said that cause she was sitting beside him.
Christina Warren’s Website - Garrett Dimon disagrees with Christina Warren
Garrett Dimon’s Website - Dan Rubin hides his “online side” from his mom
Dan Rubin’s Website - Rob Weychart has an entire chess set stashed in his beard. Srsly.
Rob Weychart
And finally…
I know I left out some, so jump in the comments and share what you learned at the 2008 Webmaster Jam Session!
09/8/08
One of the most common mistakes I see many web developers make is trying to hide webpages from search engines while making it incredibly easy for people to discover those pages. Your eyes may start to glaze while reading this, but stay with me…this will save your booty at some point. The first and most common mistake is the use of a robots.txt file. Basically what this file does is tells spiders (search engines) what files and directories to scan. You can usually see if a website has one by simply adding a /robots.txt after their domain name. For example, you could see Google’s by going to http://www.google.com/robots.txt, which reveals numerous directories they don’t want search engines to scan…interesting stuff if you’re into that sort of thing.
So…how can this be a bad thing? Well, take a look at Google’s robots.txt again and notice how they disallow directories, which is the proper way of doing it. The mistake that some websites make is to disallow actual pages. It could say something like:
Shane Eubanks
