Which version of Java for a 64-bit Vista machine?
Posted December 16, 2009 – 10:01 pmI was recently trying to clean up things on my computer and noticed for the several’th time that I had 2 versions of Java installed and running on my laptop (a 64-bit Windows Vista machine).
Java is a programming language used in browsers – like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Java plugs into these browsers and helps them to do things like display graphics, play games, run widgets, etc.
I wasn’t sure if I needed both versions of the program or not, so decided to investigate.
It turns out that one version of Java on my machine is an x64 version (64 bit) and the other is an x86 version (32 bit).
Did I need both? Answer is ‘yes’ – at least in my case.
Reason is that I need the 32-bit version to run in tandem with 32-bit browsers that I use – and I need the 64-bit version to run with the lone 64-bit browser that I use (Internet Explorer x64).
Further information can be found here: Java on 64-bit Windows.
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No Comments | Tags: using computersBest keywords for a small business: Focus on the ‘long tail’
Posted April 5, 2009 – 7:06 pmChoosing the best website keywords is a crucial starting point for an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Small businesses face special challenges when choosing keywords because they can never expect to achieve the kind of SEO traction that big companies can.
As a result, small businesses must be more calculating and deliberate in choosing keywords – they need to choose terms which can get them to the top of Google SERPs (search engine results pages) without a big investment of time or money.
The first step is to do some analysis to figure out what keywords are the most likely to help you gain search engine visibility on Google, Yahoo, Ask, and other search engines. By ‘keywords’, I mean both individual words as well as short 2-5 word phrases that are relevant to describing your business.
Your goal is to achieve search engine ‘visibility’. Seach engine visibility happens only when you are able to break into the top 10 results of a search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engine. If your website is not in the Top 10 results – meaning on page 1 of the SERPs (search engine results pages), then your chances of someone finding you drop significantly.
In fact, even on page 1, your chances of being clicked on drops sharply from postion #1 to position #10. Ideally, you want to be in the top 3, perhaps the top 5, for the best possible search engine traffic generation.
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Small business SEO: Top 5 things to increase your website’s search engine visibility
Posted March 24, 2009 – 2:22 pmSmall businesses are usually pretty terrible when it comes gaining visibility on search engines. That’s because they don’t implement the search engine optimization (SEO) basics for their websites to gain traction with search engines like Google.
This post outlines the Top 5 do-it-yourself SEO steps you can take to improve your small business website and dramatically increase your visibility on Google and other search engines.
- Use keyword-rich page titles unique to each page
- Craft informative keyword-rich page descriptions
- Use distinctive set of meta keywords for each page
- Create SEO-friendly page url’s
- Choose an SEO-friendly domain name
These 5 steps constitute SEO 101 – the basic blocking and tackling of SEO for any website large or small. Of themselves, these 5 steps will not only improve your website’s SEO visibility, they will also create the foundation for other things you may want to do later. Without the right ‘foundation’, everything else you try with your website – even pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google AdWords – are going to be harder and more expensive.
No Comments | Tags: DIY SEO, small businessEvery small business should be a web publisher
Posted March 23, 2009 – 1:50 pmIf you run a small business, then you can probably increase your website traffic significantly if you think more like a web publisher than a small business owner.
In contrast, most small business websites have very little content – and the content they do have is very specific to the company’s products and services. As a result, the only people who ever find the company’s website via a Google search are people who already know about the company and are searching for it specifically.
Why? Because a web publisher publishes content designed to maximize search visibility and increase visitor traction. They figure out how to use search engines like Google and Yahoo to generate as much traffic as possible – and then they figure out how to organize their website to maximize user engagement once visitors find the site.
If you think like a web publisher, you will create a much better small business website that:
- Drives more traffic via search engines like Google, and
- Achieves much higher traction and engagement with visitors
What is a Web Publisher?
Becoming a web publisher involves stepping beyond simply describing your company as you might in a printed brochure (even an pretty comprehensive one), and instead involves focusing on creating a mini-information portal rich with information about the need your product or service fulfills.
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Use Google toolbar for do-it-yourself SEO
Posted March 23, 2009 – 11:30 amIf you enable the Google Page Rank indicator, the Google toolbar is a handy tool for do-it-yourself search engine optimization (DIY SEO). I recommend it for anyone who works with a small business website, an online media site, or a blog who wants to understand and improve their site’s search performance.
The Google toolbar is simple to install and works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. For some reason, Google’s own browser, Google Chrome, does not support the toolbar, nor does Apple’s Safari browser.
Click this link to download Google toolbar. Once you have downloaded and installed, you will see the new toolbar appear in your browser near the top.
The part that is relevant to DIY SEO is the ‘Page Rank’ feature. This feature may not be enabled automatically. To enable the Page Rank indicator, go to: Options > Tools > Page Rank. Enable Page Rank by checking the box.
Click here for detailed instructions for enabling the Page Rank indicator, including a short video.
Once enabled, you will see a new part of the toolbar that shows a short horizontal bar with a down arrow to the right. The bar uses green to indicate the Page Rank of web pages – more green equals higher Page Rank.
Web hosting review: Media Temple vs. Dreamhost
Posted March 10, 2009 – 9:14 pmSome months back before I started this blog, I posted a detailed review of web hosting providers Media Temple and Dreamhost on one of my websites, CallingGuides.com, and on the Drupal.org website (Drupal being the content management platform I use for many of my sites).
The review recounts my experiences with these two web hosting providers and highlights the dramatic performance differences that I saw between them. Basically, Media Temple blew Dreamhost out of the water.
There is a graphic on the post showing the huge reduction in page load times the moment I moved over to Media Temple (graphic is from my Google Webmaster account). Media Temple performance was great then (Sep 08) and it remains great today. I couldn’t be happier.
As noted in the write-up, the comparison is not quite apples-to-apples. With Dreamhost, I had a pretty cheap shared hosting plan for, like, $120 per year for unlimited sites and MySQL databases. Though you can find even cheaper plans elsewhere, the Dreamhost plan I had is typical of the shared plans you can get with many providers, such as Bluehost, among others.
With Media Temple, I skipped past their shared hosting plan and bought their ‘Dedicated Virtual’ hosting plan for about $600 per year (I needed to host way more websites than their shared plan would allow, else I would have tried that).
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How to price banner advertising on your website
Posted March 10, 2009 – 6:15 pmIf you are a smaller content publisher, setting the prices for banner ads, text links, and other types of online advertising for your websites can be challenging.
Over time, you will eventually converge on the right pricing based on what your advertisers say and what prices seem to move the most inventory. But in the early days when you first introduce paid advertising to your website, it can seem pretty much like a shot in the dark – even if your site has been around for a while and has some decent traffic sell against.
In fact, ad pricing is as much art as science, especially for smaller publishers who offer access to specialty niches and audiences. To some degree, the right price is whatever price you can get away with charging. However, it is probably best to apply a bit of rigor to the process so you can defend your pricing against hardnosed ad buyers from agencies or advertisers.
To figure out what your online ad prices should be, you should visit a site like Federated Media and go through the process of planning an advertising campaign. Federated Media is a well known and fairly exclusive advertising network that’s popular with the digerati in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. It inclues some very popular sites such as TechCrunch and Mashable, but also plenty of lesser known sites as well.
Obviously, the campaign you build is pure make believe, but if you walk through their campaign planning tool, it’ll give you access to the quoted pricing of 100+ popular websites from a variety of content categories and niche markets.
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Replace the battery in an iPod Mini 6GB
Posted March 9, 2009 – 8:14 pmMy iPod Mini battery had been fading for a while. I love the device, but it just wasn’t usable anymore when it wasn’t plugged in.
Courtesy of Ho John Lee
I went online and found a couple of iPod Mini battery replacement videos and they laid out exactly how to do, what tools were needed, and how long it would take.
I had understood the batteries to be sealed and irreplaceable, but then I heard that with a little effort you could put in a new battery yourself for, like, $10 to cover the cost of the battery.
The battery replacement process looked reasonably easy and it was. Once you organize your workspace, get the right tools, and have the replacement battery on hand, it takes 10-15 minutes or so.
Rather than me describe the process, it is easiest to watch somebody do it. I found this iPod Mini battery replacement video quite good, but there are numerous others. In this one, the fellow has clearly done it before, so you shouldn’t expect it to be so smooth, but the process is just as he explains and he highlights the main sticking points in his voice overlay.
Couple points that I would make:
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