NorthWest Miscellanea

I remember when the term Ajax was already about 8 months old or so, and I had no idea what it was, aside from the household cleaner. I asked someone on a forum, how Yahoo did this particular thing on their site, and someone answered: “it’s Ajax”, and then to my surprise found out that books were being written about it already.

Just found out that there is a term coined for certain web based apps, called “Mashups”. They’re basically a mixture of services - possibly Google maps mixed in with Amazon API - to accomplish a certain outcome, a certain type of result.

In this case, with Google maps and Amazon, you could combine the two to provide a way for users on their cell phone, let’s say, to find a third party seller’s location who is selling something you found.

OK, probably a bad example.

If you use an RSS reader, and you want to be notified about new mashups, use this feed link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/programmableweb/mashup

A book on Amazon Mashups

http://www.programmableweb.com/

Though I use Treepad a lot (as the main headquarters for all planned projects, and for things such as taking notes when I listen to an MP3 or view an instruction video), I decided, for listing the web hosting and registrar accounts for my web sites, to try using a database utility for this specifically.Even though I hardly use my Palm Pilot, I still decided to use a Palm pilot program called: “SmartListToGo” for these accounts.. It comes in two pieces:

- The desktop, windows-based program
- The palm pilot utility that syncs up with it.

I really only use the desktop-based side of it, and decided to open a new Database to track my accounts:

You can do this with MS Access too, but I don’t have Access.

By clicking on the “Time Left” column (field), I can sort by that field, and at the very top, I know instantly how soon I will have to dish out some cash to keep the account running.

So when I have spare time, and I want to, At-a-Glance know if any of my accounts will run out soon …

1. I start SmartListTogo, which loads quicker than any of my other apps.
2. Click on “Time Left” to sort by it in Ascending order
3. My eyes go directly to two places:
1. The Time Left field, and 2. The Hosting field is checked, and I make sure I renew the account.

(The next account coming up that I will have to do something about is Spunkyworld which will expire in .1 month.)

Note: The fields: “Time Left” and Amount of time elapsed are both “advanced expressions” that are possible in SmartListToGo.

- “Time Left” is: Months paid for - Amount of Time Elapsed

- Amount of time elapsed” is (Today -(Start Date of Account))/30

( This one is hidden from all of my DB views, it’s just there to play its role in the first calculation )

I only have three affiliate sites, so this obviously comes in more handy for someone with a couple of dozen or more.

I’m going to add another entry to describe how I use SmartListToGo for tracking my Merchants later.

It seems like the trend toward actually having to provide real value for your web visitors, is gaining bigger wheels and travelling faster.

Between

seeing blog posts by Matt Cutts (Google search engineer) explaining Google’s steps towards ranking sites for honest to goodness value versus other manipulated link-attaining

and …

reading pdfs/emails from guys such as Ken Evoy concerning Google’s continual quest to render SEO techniques a lot less useful to spend time on,

.. I am really starting to see this trend taking shape.

A quote from a pdf emailed from Ken Evoy:

“Frankly, it’s the height of ego and self-delusion for any “outsider” [someone not at Google] to pretend that they know how any major search engine determines what a Web page is all about.

And yet, post after post in SEO forums are all about that. It’s really just speculation, a waste of time“

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Marketing expert Michael Fortin has a blog entry concerning the importance and benefits of keeping a journal, including the benefits to business success:

Blog Entry here