This is an experiment with posting to my WordPress blog via a mobile web interface on my iPhone and the Safari browser.

Not bad for simple text posts. Blogger from Google lets you post via email which has the advantage of allowing photos to be posted which WordPress web interface does not permit.

My first attempt at Linux was back around 2000 when I tried installing Mandrake Linux on my Windows desktop as a dual boot.  It turned out the be a disaster, and after weeks of support messages it turned out my hardware just was not compatible with Mandrake.  Eventually I switched from Windows to Apple computers and I have been very happy with the Mac, but that itch to try Linux has never gone away.

Enter DazzlinDonna who made a wonderful post about her adventures in switching to Ubuntu Linux.   This inspired me to try buying a laptop with Ubuntu already installed.  Nearly everything I do on a laptop is online and web based so there is no great reason to use a Mac.  Ultimately in my search I settled on a laptop from Zareason, and I have no problems with the quality of the hardware, although I do sorta wish I had bought a smaller model.

Anyway, I’m really impressed with Ubuntu.  It connected to my wireless network flawlessly and has been a joy to work with.  I think anyone who can find their way around Windows or OS X can figure out Ubuntu in about 5 minutes.  I won’t say it is as polished as Mac OS X, but it certainly is functional and there is a load of free software with it, which is something you don’t find much in the Mac world.

I like being able to buy a laptop for a couple of hundred dollars less than a Mac.  I like the fact that I’m not going to have to pay each time I want to upgrade my OS.  Like a Mac, the OS is in the background and I’m not having to constantly baby it like I did in the past with Windows.

I’m not giving up Mac computers.  I need at least one (my iMac) to tend my iPhone, iPods, AppleTV and for my web design software.  But I can say that I will probably  be replacing my Apple laptops when they die, with Ubuntu laptops.

Thanks Donna!

More to come …

There is a new search engine optimization and web design forum called: FUDwatch.  FUDwatch was launched by former SearchGuild administrators Eddie, Gurtie and myself to fill the void left by the closure of SearchGuild forums.

I’m hoping that FUDwatch will be able to expand beyond SEO and discuss internet marketing in all it’s aspects on a intermediate to advanced level as well as web design, web security and the mobile web.  The important thing is to build a community with intelligent discussion of SEO and marketing issues. I hope you will check it out and register.

I bought myself a Christmas pressie - a Cybook Gen3 ebook reader by Bookeen. Yeah it’s very expensive but so far I’m liking it. I still use my backlit eBookwise 1150 for reading in bed, but the backlit screen did not work too well last summer for reading on my sunny front porch. So I went with the Cybook which uses eInk technology for the screen.

Three things I really like about the Cybook:

1. It reads the ebook formats natively. This means I don’t have to worry about using some conversion software to load ebooks on the device.

2. It works with my Mac. For Mac and Windows and Linux computers you just plug it into the USB port where it shows up as drives and drag and drop files onto the device.

3. Long battery life.

I don’t read ebooks exclusively, I still have to buy some p-books by my favorite authors because they are not being released in ebook form. Of course I still use the local library too. But reading ebooks dovetails in well with reading Golden Age mystery stories since so many of those are in the public domain and can be had as free ebooks.

I bought a health insurance policy for myself, actually a few months before Christmas, so I guess it does not count as a Christmas present but I do sort of consider it a present.

I’ve been crusing along without any health insurance since early 2001 and I know the law of averages says sooner or later I’ll need medical care beyond the routine. Plus as I’m now getting painfully close to 50 in age it just makes sense to have something in place.

While the policy is not cheap it also was not as expensive as I thought it would be. However the deductible is $5000 so I’ll end up paying for things like broken arms pretty much out of my own pocket.

At least I won’t automatically lose my house and end up on the street eating out of dumpsters if I get hospitalized, so yea me!

SearchGuild was my favorite SEO forum and it died after 5 great years of service. You can read why it died here. I think I became a member of SearchGuild within 2 weeks of it first being started by Chris Ridings. Shortly afterward I was asked to be a moderator and later became an administrator so I traveled a good bit of that 5 year run with SearchGuild and it’s members.

SearchGuild was a great place because it never got too big so that it lost the personal touch or too noisy or became base, vulgar or mean. SearchGuild stuck pretty close to just covering SEO and marketing and did not cover web design much. That might have kept it small, but then again it also made unique. The members and other mods and admins made it great and special and I was happy in that time to go along for the ride.

SG also remained, somehow, quintessentially, British, with a wonderful dry sense of humor, discussions of tea, Cadbury chocolates and Doctor Who - you could almost see the bowlers and umbrellas and Big Ben ringing in the background. Yet everyone was made to feel welcome and at home no matter what nationality. Wonderful.

Now I am a bit at a loss as to where to hand out anymore: SearchGuild and Threadwatch were my two favorite places and both have closed down. There is a lifeboat group at Facebook: SearchGuild Lost and Found, trying to round up SG refuges. (Thanks to BurgerMan (who I don’t have a URL for) for forming that Facebook group.) Maybe we will all decide to migrate to another SEO forum.

Thanks SearchGuild, you will be missed.

PS.: I’ll miss the quirky little SG ‘Bots - Heilbot, Guildbot, Looksmartbot and the others. Rust Rest in Peace guys.

I think the US likes big SUV’s and pick-up trucks because we like the upright seating stance, and a bit more headroom than the current crop of sedans give us.  Once upon a time cars used to have bench seats and were higher off the ground and had lots of headroom and interior space and I think secretly we like that.  We Americans are older, taller, fatter and more used to luxury than ever before.

I drive a 2006 Scion xB, I’m 6 ft. 4 inches tall and still have enough headroom in the Scion to wear a hat.  Not a ball cap, but a real man’s hat.  I like the upright driving position and I do not feel like I am sitting on the street in that car.

The vehicle does not have to be a huge gas guzzling SUV, just give people some room like the Scion does and they are more happy.  We want interior room!

I just switched my default search over to ODP/Dmoz and I am very pleased with the results. I did it on a lark just to see what having only human reviewed result coming up first would be like. I have to say I’m finding more interesting sites for my queries than I have in a long time. I like ODP/Dmoz for this task for two reasons: 1.) they are by far the largest and most comprehensive directory on the web, 2.) at the bottom of the ODP search results pages they have the handy links that will let me continue my search on several leading search engines if I don’t find it with ODP.

It does take a little more time to find the specific site I want but sometimes fastest is not always the best. As I have indicated, I am finding ODP searches to be remarkably good, and if I get distracted by neat sites I don’t normally see in the search engine SERP’s but are still relevant all the better.

Switch to a Directory for November:

Anyone who is worried about search engines’ controlling to much of the web, or anyone who just likes to have some fun searching ought to consider switching their default search on their browser to a general directory for the month of November.

My short list of recommendations for directories are:

1. ODP/Dmoz - for the reasons stated above.
2. Yahoo Directory - second in size only to ODP, Yahoo directory’s search feature is pretty good and you can continue your search using the Yahoo search engine very easily if you do not find what you want in the directory.
3. Illumirate - I like this directory in that they rate the sites they list. It is smaller than the others but has a good database of sites that should appeal to a mainstream audience.

Other useful directories might include: Joeant and GoGuides.org

The idea here is to try a different way of searching for your everyday stuff - so add a little serendipity to your searches.   Try it for November and see what you think.

DazzlinDonna brings up a good point about the latest Google (Toolbar) PR update that has everybody talking:

No one likes to feel like a puppet on a string. Google is the puppeteer (or Googateer) and webmasters are the puppets. At any given moment, the Googateer can yank on any string, controlling the movements of the puppets.

In other words the uproar is about loss of control by webmasters not really the downgrading of PR.

Donna finishes by asking:

The question we should all keep asking is…HOW DO WE CUT THE STRINGS?

This is a question I will endeavor to answer.

Fighting back against Google Dominating the Search Engine marketplace: A modest proposal:

1. Quit Using Google: Okay if you are an SEO you will need to check Google for business, but for your own personal searches use some other search engine for your default. I have not used Google for several years. It was hard to quit at first but now I don’t miss it. I have had the best luck using Clusty with Yahoo as a backup when Clusty fails. We as webmasters cannot just sit around and complain, we have to set an example.

2. Put other search engines on your sites: Either put up a straight search box for Yahoo, Live, Ask or Dmoz. Or switch to Live or Yahoo for site search. Michael Martinez prefers Live search for site search and I tend to agree with his conclusions. The point here is to expose the public to other search engines. It’s a long term process but SEO’s, web designers and webmasters crank out a lot of websites, and if we all started putting Live/MSN or Yahoo site search on each and every site I’m willing to bet that it would start having an impact.

3. Recommend other search engines to friends: let’s face it, when your friends learn that you make a living on the web they tend to turn to you for help with their computers. When I help set up a computer for an inexperienced user I generally talk to them about my concerns about Google and ask them if they want to try Yahoo for a couple of months as the default on their browser. Many didn’t even know Yahoo had search, many were happy to try and most have stuck with Yahoo as their default.

4. Get out of the Adwords Habit: Shift part of your pay per click ad budget to other pay per click engines. For business reasons quitting Adwords completely is impossible, but hey money talks, if enough people start moving their cash elsewhere it gets Google’s attention.

5. Don’t do Adsense: Quit putting Google Adsense ads on your websites. I know that is a hard thing to do but you will never break free of Google if you continue to be dependent on them for your income. When you take Caesar’s coin you accept Caesar’s rules.

6. Explain to the public why you are doing the above: make a web page on each of your sites explaining why you are doing the one or more of the things listed above. The web is a powerful place of ideas - use it.

7. Do not wait for others to join you: start implementing the the above suggestions right now. Others will join you or they will not but that should not effect your course.

I have been advocating most of these things since the Searchking lawsuit years ago - normally the only response I get is a stunning silence. Everybody is afraid to talk about what the web community can do to break Google’s control of the web but until people start doing something they will remain peons in Google’s fief.

Do you agree? Where am I wrong or what else would you suggest doing?

A post, by Michael Martinez, about how the supplemental index negatively effects Google site search got me thinking about how this:

Back in the old days a search, particularly an entertainment related search, was very likely to return a number of sites on free web hosts such as Tripod and Geocities.  Created back in the days when domains and hosting were hideously  expensive these  free hosted sites  often gained a lot of links and became highly visible in the search engine results.  Sometimes these sites on free hosts would outrank corporate pages and sites by SEO’s.  Needless to say SEO’s and corporate interests hated them.

A few years ago Google decided to deemphasize anything on a free host in the SERPS.  Sure they probably still get some traffic for long search strings but for shorter searches you rarely see a free site in Google.  Yahoo seems to have copied this because in my unscientific tests I do not see many listings in the top Yahoo SERP’s either.  However, I do see free hosted sites in both the Live.com and Ask.com SERP’s so maybe those engines are not screening free hosts as heavily.

So what?

Well, in the science fiction field some of the best fan sites are still created on free hosts.  These have some great content that gets no exposure on either Google or Yahoo.  That means you really are not getting all the best sites when you do a search. It does have an effect on the quality of the search results.  You are not getting the whole picture and it highlights the need to always use multiple search engines when doing deep research.

Now I run a science fiction and fantasy directory, and perversely this gives my directory a reason to be, since I will help people find new sites, sites on free hosts and other obscure but good quality sites - so do not think I am going to complain very loudly.