Technology & Internet Blog Posts

I have a little problem. For some strange reason, Google Chrome isn’t connecting to the internet on my computer.

This started happening right after I got rid of that spyware that installed itself on said computer. You can read about that in my Spybot-S&D vs. Malwarebytes post. Ever since, I have had to use Firefox or Internet Explorer. You know my feeling on that…IE should not even be offered anymore and Firefox uses too much RAM. This is making work on the computer very sloooow because I usually have about eight tabs open at a time. Not good with a laptop that’s about three years old.

I did a Google search for “Google Chrome Not Connecting To Internet” and found a few pages. They talked about clearing the cache, history and all that. I did that and it did nothing. Then, some other pages said things about the Symantec Norton Anti-virus firewall causing the problem. I opened Norton and couldn’t even find the firewall settings. On my other computer, I have them, but not on this one.

I think I am just going to uninstall Norton Antivirus and install Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s free, fast and is a heck of a lot less complicated than Symantec. Man, when I look at Symantec, I get dizzy from all that junk on the screen. All those settings are confusing. I like Security Essentials much better.

So, has anyone else had this problem? Will uninstalling Norton work? I’ll let you know what I find.

UPDATE:

I fixed this issue and wanted to tell you what I did.

The error message that I was receiving in Google Chrome was:

Error 102 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED): Unknown error.

I found a few websites and people seemed pretty confident that the “Proxy Settings” were the cause. How the “Use Proxy Server” box got checked off, I don’t know. Probably because of that spyware I was telling you about.

Okay, so how did I turn off the proxy settings is Google Chrome? Here’s a pictorial.

First, I clicked the little wrench in the upper right corner and clicked “Options.”

Then, in the Google Chrome Options box, I clicked the “Change Proxy Settings” button.

In the Internet Properties box, I clicked on the “LAN Settings” button.

Lastly, I unchecked the “Use A Proxy Server” checkoff box in the LAN settings box.

After I did this and hit “Ok” everything worked fine and Google Chrome loaded web pages as it should. I hope this helps if you have the same problem and I did.

When I get bored, I like to browse around online and watch videos of the latest and greatest technology offerings. The past few years have been exciting, to say the least. With the onset of cloud computing, real smartphones, tablets and touchscreens, I can’t seem to keep up. Just yesterday, I decided to actually start processing what I’ve been reading and watching.

True story: On my way back from Jiu-Jitsu class yesterday morning, I received a call informing me that one of my sites was down. I also received an email telling me the same thing. Since I was already on the road on my way back to the house, I decided to maintain some sort of self-control and let things ride until I was able to handle them correctly. By the time I got back, the server administrators had already taken care of the issue and all I had to do was some minor maintenance. Even though the situation didn’t warrant red-alert, it did make me wonder what I could have done if things were more serious.

I’ve recently been looking at three primary players in the mobile world; the smartphone, the tablet and the laptop. I’m trying to figure out a way to combine the best features of each into one unit. Needless to say, I’ve yet to find a way to do this. Here’s the thing:

– My smartphone is awesome. I’ve got the Droid RAZR MAXX and have nothing but good experiences with it.

Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX Ice Cream Sandwich Walkthrough

– I’ve been wanting to get into reading more books via a tablet. I’ve already added some of the free classics from Amazon to my account. I can see them on my phone, but I’m truly not the type of person to be reading books on my phone. I need to keep a semblance of dignity here. Yeah, until I started seeing videos of the Samsung Galaxy Note II.

Samsung Galaxy Note II Review

The Samsung has got a relatively huge screen when compared to other smart phones. People are calling them “Phablets” because they are a combination of the smartphone and the tablet. It makes me wonder if I could read a book on this thing.

Now, back to the issue I encountered yesterday when the website was unavailable. How would I have dealt with that? Could a full size tablet have handled it? Or perhaps if I had my laptop with me? The laptop is what I work on everyday anyway, so yes, I could have used my phone as a hotspot, gotten connection to the internet and used my FTP program to juggle some stuff around. But what about a tablet? I wouldn’t have had my FTP program, so I wouldn’t have been able to connect to the server.

Just this morning, I looked to see if there were online FTP programs that could have helped me. Yes, there are, but once I saw that they asked for my server address, login and password, I said, “Yeah right.” I did expect something like that though.

So, the FTP program, photo editing, movie editing and real typing are the reasons I’ve already found that I can’t use a tablet for daily use. I would like to, but it’s going to be a few years. Perhaps when they start encrypting Google Drive and making tablet processors more powerful, I’ll take another look, but until then, I’ll consider the tablet for mere reading and web browsing.

Now, the smartphone vs. the tablet thing is totally different. I will tell you that I would give up my smartphone today for a tablet that’s capable of making phone calls. Add a Bluetooth headset to that and we’ve got a winner. I’m pretty sure that this will become widely available soon because the competition is so hot in this area, but again, until it’s mainstream, I’ll wait.

The question remains though; do I really need three devices? Really? When I’m trying to simplify my life?

I found a pretty good video that deals with this issue, but I’d love to have some back and forth in the comment area below. What do you currently have? What’s your favorite? If you had to give one of them up, which one would it be?

I’ve been simplifying my office area rather aggressively lately. When I say simplifying, I mean simplifying. What was once an entire room furnished wall to wall with tables, a desk, file cabinets, printers and copiers to monitors, is now one table, half way covered alone in a corner. The room even echoes when I talk in it. I’ve gone as far as trying to minimize the wired devices I use, such as my computer mouse and internet connection. It’s working out pretty well too. I can now pack up everything I use for business in about 10 minutes in one box, as opposed to an all day endeavor that requires a truck and trailer. Reminds me of my glory days.

As I go through the technological side of what I own, I’m impressed by how little it really takes to operate things these days. I rely on my smart phone more than ever and am even moving some files into the “cloud.” As long as it’s not on my desk. I also recently went “paperless,” but that’s a story for another time.

What I want to introduce today (for those who may not have seen it yet) is the new Google Chromebook Pixel. This is definitely a next generation Chromebook that promises to push the market into areas not seen before. The reason I’m interested in something like this is because the Chromebook doesn’t have a hard drive. That’s even more minimal than minimal. It goes hand in hand with tablets, smart phones and laptops.

Although I’m not ready to take the plunge into a completely internet driven computer, I am going to keep my eye on where things are going. I’m also going to watch how much I actually use my own hard drive in the upcoming year. If I can find a place to safely store all my sensitive data as well as replacement, online applications for areas such as web design and photo editing, I may be in a better position to make a decision. But until then, I’ll merely sit back and watch the industry.

The Chromebook Pixel: Explained!

Okay, I am getting a little tired of getting calls from debt collectors. Seriously, I have been getting these calls for years and they have always been made in error. They are never for me. I guess we just get lousy old phone numbers from deadbeats.

The latest round of calls have been coming from 281-385-8206 out of Baytown, TX. That’s what the caller ID says anyway. These companies are so corrupt that I really don’t believe it.

Basically, when I pick up the phone, I just get a recording from some guy who says that I should call back 281-385-8206 and that the call is to collect a debt. Okay, I know…the only reason I actually ever pick up the phone is because I want to tell these people that they have the wrong number. Oh no, I can’t even do that because it’s not a human on the other end who is making the call.

So, what to do? Well, if you are using Comast as your phone service, you can use the “Call Block” feature. I did a little search for this and found out how to use it. Here is the info I found from this website:

How do you block an incoming number on Comcast?

Thank you for the question. I am also a Comcast user in your area. I have received the following information from Comcast which will help you with the problem you are having. Please let me know if you have any additional questions and I will be happy to assist further. Thanks again!

You can block certain callers from calling you by using either Call Screening or Anonymous Call Rejection.

Call Screening allows you to create a list of up to 12 numbers that will receive an announcement indicating you are not presently accepting calls.

To use Call Screening:

1. Lift the receiver and listen for the dial tone.
2. Press *60.
3. A menu of options will guide you in managing this feature. The prompts will enable you to activate and deactivate the feature as well as add, delete, or review the numbers on your list.

To cancel Call Screening:

1. Lift the receiver and listen for the dial tone.
2. Press *80.
3. When prompted, press 3 to turn the feature off.

Note: When creating your list, enter the area code plus the 7 digit number for both local and domestic long-distance numbers.

Anonymous Call Rejection announces to callers who block the display of their name and number that you are not accepting blocked calls and instructs them to unblock their information and dial you again.

To use Anonymous Call Rejection:

1. Lift the receiver and listen for the dial tone.
2. Press *77 and listen for a confirmation tone that the feature has been activated.

To cancel Anonymous Call Rejection:

1. Lift the receiver and listen for the dial tone.
2. Press *87 and listen for a confirmation tone that the feature has been canceled.

Well, there you go. I hope this helps anyone who needs to block an incoming call while using the Comcast phone service.

Alright, the Otterbox Commuter Case For My Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX came in today. I’ve been waiting for this for about a year. Well, I don’t think I’ve had this phone for that long, but still, I have yet to get a cover. Of course, a week before I got this thing I had a bad dream that I dropped the phone on the floor.

I gotta tell you, this is a sweet case. It cost around $25, but it has a soft interior shell, a hard outer candy shell and a screen protector. I’m not sure many people even use the screen protector after the introduction of Gorilla Glass, but I threw it on for giggles. Just FYI, the screen protector seems to desensitize the touch screen slightly. Not much, but I did notice a difference.

The cover makes the slim and slippery Droid RAZR MAXX much more legitimate in my hand. It’s not so fragile feeling now. Also, when I used to put this phone in my pocket, I worried that it was going to fall out. The way the phone is made is somewhat “too” sleek. With the case, however, the additional bulk makes me reminiscent of my old Droid X days. I had a cover for that phone as well and it felt good.

Overall, this case is very well built. I really like the rubberized layer in between the phone and the hard shell, but could honestly do without the screen protector. If they wanted to skip that part and lower the price by $5, I think that would be nice. One thing to be aware of though is the tendency of the rubber portion to attract lint and dust. If you’re a neat freak, this might not be the cover for you.

Oh yeah, let me ask you a question – has anyone ever put on a smartphone screen protector without the bubbles around the edges? Maybe bubbles is the wrong word – I would say more like, parts of the edges never really attach to the screen correctly. Anyway, here’s a video for you.

This is an interesting post. If you’re into advanced SEO, you’re really going to get a kick out of this. At the very least, it’ll get your mind working.

On the internet these days, there is a big push to make each and every page of your website unique. The push comes from those who have managed to become respected through the years in the area of search engine optimization. I’ve long had a theory that many of these folks are either reading the same thing as you and me, or they are deliberately spouting out false information. If they are reading the same content as us, they are merely parrots repeating the repetition, which is many times worse than playing the telephone game. Information in the internet today can be categorized as horrible.

What I want to talk about today is a specific area of ecommerce websites that has to do with the canonicalization of web pages. If you aren’t already familiar with the term canonicalization, it simply means that when a search engine crawls two pages that are similar enough to be combined as one, it does so. This helps all parties involved in many ways. For the search engines, it reduces storage space. Sections of pages like this can combined and kept in a different format than other more unique types of pages. For the website owner, the similar pages are combined and one may rank well. If they were treated as two unique pages (separate), neither may rank at all. Both may rank, but they would have to have some authority to do so. In my experience, two similar pages that have been combined have a much better chance at ranking.

Now, it puzzles me that this push to keep every page of every website unique is coming from who we refer to as professionals, because I have found something that is quite the opposite to be much more beneficial. And I have the stats to back it up.

I’m going to give you a short example first and then a bit of theory. Let’s say you have a classifieds website that has many members and many advertisements. Let’s say that for each member who registers at your site and places an ad, a few different web pages are created. First, the ad page pops up out of nowhere. After that, a new member profile page that holds all ads placed by that member is created as well as tag pages for any tags the member applied to their ad. The ad is also listed on the appropriate category and subcategory pages as well as search results.

Boy, those sure are a lot of areas affected by just one ad.

To keep things simple, let’s talk about just the member profile page and a tag page. Remember, each member only has one profile page (it may paginate if there are enough ads) that all their ads are listed on, but each and every tag gets its own page with all listings that have the same tag applied to it. If one ad has five tags that are unique to that ad, five tag pages are created.

The content of the pages may look something like this:

All other things being equal, those are the content areas of the pages I mentioned earlier.

Now, I want you to pay particular attention to the words in the green bar in each image. If a website has ten million members, there will be at least ten million profile pages and if there are ten million listing tags, there will be at least ten million tag pages. The green bar is a fancy CSS styled H1 tag. Here’s where things get interesting.

And just to let you know, the two pages above came from one of my own websites.

Back a few years ago, the developers of the software I use were fairly simple people. They offered software with basic templates and no heading tags. The only heading tags I used on the sites I operate were the ones I placed there myself. Those were primarily used on the category pages. About two years ago, after they probably had heard enough whining from their customer base, the developers decided to release a new template set. Elements of this new template set were incorporated into the base code as well. Unbeknownst to me, there were H1 and H2 tags stuffed in around every corner. You want to know something? Ever since then, things haven’t been the same.

I have played around with templates and page titles since 2004 and massive traffic fluctuations have followed each change. Before the heading tags were used in the templates, it seemed as though the changes would create more dramatic swings than after. It always seemed that when I would change a page title to separate and make unique an area of the website, traffic would drop, but then when I would make a generic title to cover all pages, traffic would increase. I’ll give an example below.

Let’s talk about member profile pages. Back in the day, when I had all member profile pages titled, “Seller Ads,” traffic seemed to do well, but when I would change the titles to something unique, such as, “Member A Ads” and “Member B Ads,” traffic would tank. I never knew why. And after years of reading terrible advice online about how each and every page is supposed to be unique, I made things worse. The same thing happened with different sections of the site.

In the case I just mentioned above, here’s what I think was happening – When the search engines would crawl the individual pages the duplicate titles, I think they consolidated all the pages into similar clusters, or canonicalized them. When I made the titles unique, I broke the relationships and each page was treated as a weaker individual. I’ll show you some stats below.

The big upswing you see in July of 2009 is right after I merged many areas of the website at hand under one generic page and title. No pages were noindexed and all had the same exact title. After altering the titles and templates, traffic dropped.

I mentioned above that the swings were less severe after the templates were updated by the developers. This is even after I would change the titles the same way as I had earlier. I always wondered why, until today.

It’s my hunch, based one my experience, that H1 and H2, or any heading tags for that matter, affect page canonicalization similarly to that of page titles. This would explain why the traffic increases and drops were less dramatic after the heading tags were added. Things were getting worse and worse because of the breaking of relationships. I’ll give you another example below.

Let’s talk about the tag pages now. If I had ten million tag pages, all unique because of the page title and H1 tag (in the green bar you can see above), and many fairly thin because of the small number of ads with the same tag, wouldn’t many of them rank poorly because of the duplicate and poor content on each page? Especially after the Google Panda update? Wouldn’t in behoove me to remove the H1 tag and duplicate the tag page title across all tag pages so Google and the other search engines can merge the duplicate and thin pages that need to be merged?

Perhaps this will help things make sense.

Look at the two pieces of page content I posted above. The first is from the member’s profile page and the other is from the one and only tag this person used in their ad. Both pieces of content are almost identical. Shouldn’t those two pages be canonicalized into one more powerful page? Perhaps Google would even merge each of these pages into a category page. They were back a few years ago, but ever since I changed the titles around and the developers added the H1 tags to each page, they are treated as separate, weaker pages. Actually, neither ranks for anything. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and I’d say there is a problem.

Conventional wisdom tells me to keep these pages unique, regarding page title and heading tag, but experience tells me that I should change things back to a more generic setup like I had earlier. Have one generic page title for all of these similar areas of the website and let the search engines merge pages where they see fit. I’m fairly certain the search engines are more familiar with what they want than I am.

Thoughts on this? I’m curious to read some feedback, especially from those who have already dealt with page title, heading tag and canonicalization issues.

There are many really basic tips when it comes to search engine optimization, so in order for me to write a post on basic SEO tips, I had to choose just three.

I chose these three because they may help someone who who is just starting out. Many people just plow forward and make some common mistakes – and that should be avoided because you should try to make your first crawl by the search engines a good one. That’s not to say those mistakes can’t be corrected, I’m simply saying that you may be able to save some time and money.

Here goes.

1. Avoid using Flash on your websites. You don’t need to avoid using all Flash, but if you plan on creating a really cool looking Flash-centric site, you better also plan on finding a way to get that site to rank in the engines. Currently (and this may change in the future), search engines have a great deal of difficulty reading the text in a Flash file. Therefore, if the site can’t be read, it won’t rank for anything. I suppose you’ll have a page title and perhaps a footer, but those won’t help you much if there’s no content. If you’re dead-set on having Flash on your pages, just use elements, or pieces and fit the page together through HTML. That way, you’ll be able to incorporate what looks good with reality.

2. Start a blog. Blogs are good for all sorts of reasons. They create content for your ever growing website, they create a relationship between you and your audience and they inject the proper keywords into your entire site profile. You have to remember that no business is too small to start a blog. They build trust and can turn you into an authority in your field. All these areas will increase your website traffic and will hopefully create conversions in the future.

3. Write too much to read. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Google and the other search engines have a voracious appetite for text. The find it, chew it up and convert it into the ever coveted profile you’re looking for. So why not give them what they want? Write, write and then write some more. Just be sure to make it as natural as possible. Write what comes to mind and what you think might help people who are looking for thoughts like yours. The search engines can spot a fake a mile away, so stay away from the temptation of keyword stuffing or copying from others. Trust me, what you have going on in your mind is what people want to read.

I hope these tips helped you begin your SEO journey. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know by leaving a comment below.

This is something I am currently working on. Since I haven’t used this domain in a number of years, it’s kind of invisible to the search engines right now. Google has crawled it and indexed about 60 pages so far, but as far as Google Blog Search goes, nothing.

Having your blog listed as many places as possible is very important. Sure, if it’s listed all over, people can find it and read your wonderful writing, but even more important than that, if you’re easily found by other bloggers, your growth can be exponential.

Remember back when I discussed link building and virtuous circles? In that post, I mentioned that there is a tremendous number of bloggers out there who are looking for compelling content to read and write about. During their writing, they typically have a tendency to include a link to other similar posts. By including links to similar blogs, they are covering three bases:

1. They are earning themselves a trackback.
2. Their linking page will eventually show in Google when someone searches using the “link:” operator.
3. They are showing topical relevance.

So, if you have a blog, it’s not a bad thing to link to other blogs and websites, as long as they are reputable and relevant to the topic of your post.

Google Blog Search plays a big part in blogging. Many bloggers visit this section of Google and perform a search for blogs covered by whatever topic they are interested in writing about. By using Google, bloggers can be sure they the results are actually viewed as relevant by the world’s largest search engine. Also, by finding blogs in Google’s search results, the blogger can also be sure the post they are linking to is viewed as valuable. Otherwise, Google wouldn’t list it.

The nice thing about Google Blog Search is that once a search is performed, you can click the “Search Tools” link up near the top of the page and filter chronologically. This helps when you see the same results day after day and you are looking for something that’s time sensitive.

So now that we know the value of it, I suppose we should actually move to the topic of this post, which is how to get your blog listed in Google blog Search.

I’ve done a bit of research and have come up with a few common threads of information, which I’ll list below. I’ll also link to websites that deal with this issue.

How To Get Your Blog Listed In Google Blog Search

1. Ping Google. It’s that easy. They might not know you’re alive.
2. Use a Ping service, such as Ping-O-Matic to tell the world about your latest post. Fresh installs of WordPress and many other CMS setups already cover this. If you want to learn about pinging, please read this.
3. Adjust the post limit in your RSS feed settings. I haven’t tried this, so be careful.
4. Get links, links, links. Google will eventually find you.

Many, many years ago, back when I was in college, I somehow found myself becoming quite addicted to a computer game called “Unreal.” I played it for a while, loved it, got through a bunch of boards and then got stuck. I think there were about 35 boards in all. Since I was getting restless and since the game’s intensity was becoming unbearable, I decided to visit GameSpot.com for some cheat codes. I browsed the codes, decided on ghost mode and finished the game. While in ghost mode, I saw things I would have never been able to get through.

Moral of the story? I fell in love with first person shooters. Unreal was one of the best games in that genre back then with an even better soundtrack. Today, things are a bit different. While Unreal’s graphics are up there with the best, they seemed to have switched things over to be more “Tournament” focused. Since I don’t necessarily like to connect with others online while playing video games, this really doesn’t do anything for me. Unreal is out.

A few months ago, I was looking through Youtube for another game I might like…something similar to Unreal. Well, just as luck would have it, I stumbled across a wickedly awesome game called, “Crysis.” You have to check this out. Look at these graphics:

Crysis 3 – CryEngine3 Tech Trailer

Did you see that? Did you set to HD and use full screen? It’s amazing and I want to play Crysis 3. There’s only one problem.

I already purchased Crysis 1 and 2. We installed Crysis 1 on my beefy, beast of a computer that I picked up a few years ago and had less than magical results. There were only 4GB of RAM installed and I am pretty sure the video card was nothing special. The processor was great, but even with that older game, the graphics weren’t spectacular and the video was choppy. It lagged at times. If you are a gamer, you know what I’m talking about. Typical scene.

I was going back and forth in my mind whether or not to purchase a serious gaming computer somewhere down the road. Something that can easily handle Crysis 1 (since Laura isn’t finished with it yet), Crysis 2 and eventually Crysis 3. They are fantastic games and I really want to enjoy them.

Here’s the thing – to get a gaming computer that can handle games like that is going to be really expensive. I hate expensive. I want cheap. And since gaming really isn’t a full time thing for us, it can’t be more than a few hundred bucks.

About two nights ago, Laura said to me, “Hey, what’s wrong with just getting a gaming console?” She’s been trying to get one of those race car games for the longest time. She said, “The rest of the world is apparently happy with XBOX, PlayStation and Wii, so what’s wrong with us?” I didn’t really have an answer for her. Seriously, what is wrong with me?

I explained to her that I just want to make sure the graphics are going to be up to snuff. I want to see, up close, all the nooks and crannies that the developers put into designing Crysis. I really don’t want to miss out on that.

So I did a little searching around online. My goal was to see if the graphics for Crysis 3 would be as good on an XBOX as they would be on a PC. I found this video:

Crysis 3 | First Interactive DEMO Walkthrough on XBOX 360

It looks pretty good. As far as I can tell, as good as the PC version.

So, my questions are, how are the graphics on high-end games built for XBOX? How do gaming consoles compare to PCs? And lastly, what is the best gaming console to get?

Many of my friends either want to create a website, have a new website or want to have their current website rank better in the search engines than it already is. Since they are my friends and since I have a long history of experience in the virtual world, I feel it’s my responsibility to help them out. Okay, it’s not my responsibility, but I want to help them out.

Listen, I work on the internet all day long. What I try to do is make things rank. If you have a website or are interested in creating one, you are going to need it to rank. Otherwise, it’s going to be pretty useless. And with the ranking you can eventually acquire, comes a really good feeling of eventual success.

I’m going to post a few videos below that were created by industry leaders (Maile Ohye and Rand Fishkin) when it comes to SEO and general website management. While you should watch these videos and take what these people have to say to heart, I want you to follow this one piece of advice – because the pros will never lay it out as bluntly as I will: I want you to get involved with your community. In order to rank, you need an online buzz. Gone are the days of simply getting someone to link to you. Gone are the days of using crafty keywords in your titles. You need to be mentioned in “conversations” and to use the social web to your best advantage. With the buzz, comes natural linking and more traffic. You need to get involved.

Okay, I said it. Now, please feel free to watch the following videos and see if you can pick up a nugget of wisdom that you can apply today.

SEO for startups in under 10 minutes

SEO Checklist for New Websites – DIY Search Engine Optimization