Review: New Google Keyword Tool Sucks!

Posted August 13, 2010 – 5:21 pm in: Uncategorized

I am very disappointed by the new version of Google’s Keyword Tool. In my opinion, the new keyword tool is a big step backward and basically sucks.

Google’s Keyword Tool is a keyword research tool that is part of Google AdWords. Until now, it has been the most accurate, most accessible, and most useful keyword research tool available.

But there are major problems with the new version which result in much lower quality and accuracy keyword suggestions.

Sadly, Google announced this week that the new version of the Keyword Tool is coming out of beta at the end of August. At that time, the old tool will no longer be accessible. In recent months while Google has been testing the beta in general release, Google has provided an prominent link from the new interface to the old interface. That has allowed me to put off the day of reckoning.

But with the imminent demise of the old version upon us, I’ve taken some time to carefully test and compare the two versions side-by-side. The result is not pretty. My conclusion: Without a doubt that the new version generates just incredibly, dramatically worse keyword lists than the old version.

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Review of Buzzr, A Drupal Website Builder

Posted August 9, 2010 – 6:03 pm in: Uncategorized

Buzzr is a new hosted website building platform based on Drupal, a popular open source content management system (CMS).

Buzzr aims to make it much easier to build websites in Drupal by creating a user-friendly front end for the Drupal CMS. In a sense, Buzzr is a sort of WordPress-for-Drupal.

However, while WordPress is primarily designed to build blog-based websites, Drupal is fundamentally a more powerful and versatile website development platform that can be used to make virtually any kind of website. However, with this richness comes complexity that puts Drupal out of reach for many people.

Buzzr is trying to capture some of the superior functionality of Drupal while improving the interface to make it accessible to a much wider range of people. I think they have been largely successful in doing so.

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How to Add Custom CSS to Google Reader in Chrome

Posted July 30, 2010 – 8:28 pm in: Uncategorized

When I switched to Google Reader from Netvibes Wasabi, I created a custom skin using a Google Chrome extension called Reader Plus. The result was to make Reader look a bit like my old Wasabi layout which I found so much more readable.

Here’s the details:

Netvibes Wasabi – A Very Readable Layout

Here’s a screenshot of my old Netvibes Wasabi reader – one of the basic ‘official’ themes of the zillions they offer. This layout was just a dream to read. I loved the spacing, the use of favicons, the nice date headers in the item stream, and the colors, among other things.

Netvibes skin How to Add Custom CSS to Google Reader in Chrome

In general, Netvibes comes with a lot, lot more configuration and, especially, theming options than does Google Reader. One feature that I especially liked with the “Give feed items more space” option – this incrementally opened up the spacing giving feed items just the right amount of breathing room.

Google Reader – Too Dense and Cluttered

Here’s a screenshot of the same feeds in the default Google Reader skin.

The main differences are too much white, item list and feeds sidebar are much too dense, and there’s a lot of unnecessary visual clutter (e.g., stars on every item). It’s hard to believe that the same company that designed a clutter-free search page and it’s highly efficient and readable search results format came up with this.

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RSS Feed Readers: Changing from Netvibes Wasabi to Google Reader

Posted July 29, 2010 – 3:55 pm in: computers

I’ve finally done it: I’ve changed over from Netvibes Wasabi to Google Reader as my main RSS reader.

Back in March, I did a detailed comparison of Windows RSS readers and concluded that Netvibes Wasabi and Google Reader were the two best feed readers.

For desktop viewing, the main tradeoff at that time was between design / readability and feed handling. Google Reader was hands-down better at handling a wide range of different types of feeds. Netvibes was, to my eye at least, the hands-down winner in terms of design and readability.

Despite the problems with the feed handling, I ended up sticking with Netvibes.

But as of yesterday, that’s changed: I have now permanently switched over to Google Reader and dropped Netvibes.

The reason for the change was three-fold:

  • I have some new responsibilities and simply can’t work around Netvibes feed handling issues any longer
  • I found a Chrome extension that allows you to easily create your own skin for Google Reader, so I added some custom CSS and now have a Netvibes-type layout (see separate post)
  • I’m need better mobile access to my feeds and that favors Google Reader by a lot
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Best RSS Feed Reader for Windows?

Posted March 7, 2010 – 5:39 pm in: Uncategorized

Recently, I’ve been doing a deep dive comparison of the top RSS readers for Windows.

It all started when I became aware of the new Netvibes Wasabi edition. This version was released last fall (here and here).

Wasabi provides an alternate format for viewing feeds within Netvibes. The new Wasabi reader is more in the style of Google Reader as compared to the ‘start page’ (or ‘widget’) style Netvibes reader I’ve been using for some years. You can switch back and forth between the ‘widget view’ and the ‘reader view’ with a click of a button.

While my initial reaction to Wasabi was very positive, I had some problems with my feeds. Thus began a month long re-look at all the major Windows RSS readers to see if there was something better.

At the same time I starting looking into the top feed readers, I also cleaned up and expanded my custom feeds. These include feeds generated by Yahoo Pipes, Google Alerts, Google News, and Twitter Search. Turns out these custom feeds are fairly problematic for many feed readers and were the stumbling block that got me looking elsewhere beyond Wasabi.

Here’s a recap of what I found about the best RSS readers for Windows.

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Google Chrome browser gets even better with extensions

Posted January 25, 2010 – 1:40 pm in: Uncategorized

I’ve been using the Google Chrome browser since Day One – in my book, it is the best everyday browser out there. Largely because it is lightweight and superfast loading pages.

I’ve been using the Chrome Developer version for many months – it was the only version that worked well with my dual monitor setup.

In December, Google launched an apps store for Chrome – except that they call apps ‘extensions’. I’ve been using these extensions for several weeks and LOVE them! but they haven’t been available in the general release versions of Chrome.

Today, Google unveiled a new general release version of Chrome – now extensions are available to everyone. You should definitely try them out. Quite fantastic stuff!

My favorites are:

  • xmarks - manage bookmarks across browsers and/or computers located anywhere
  • lastpass - manage passwords and login info across browsers and/or computers
  • evernote - the official extension for the evernote note taking / web clipping service that is all the rage (and deservedly so)
  • delicious - beautifully designed widget for adding bookmarks to your Delicious account. cleaner and better than the Firefox version.
  • netvibes - auto-detects RSS feeds in Chrome and provides one-click button to add it to your Netvibes RSS reader (still only available for developer version, i think).

These are essential in my book.

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