Rob’s Personal Aggregator

Ksplice [via Slashdot]

Written by Meryl Evans.

I’m in the middle of moving to new computers. Two of them. The laptop is easy. The desktop, well, that’s a story for another post. New and faster computers with a fresh install can compel a person to look up applications, plugins and other tools to boost web worker efficiency. Browser add-ons are a perfect example.

Quick overview for those new to Firefox: Add-ons are little free tools that make your application experience better and easier. Add-ons don’t stop at browsers, either. Email applications like Thunderbird have them, too. They’re very easy to install. Just go to Firefox add-ons, browse, click “Add to Firefox” and click “Install” in the popup window. Once installed, you’ll need to restart Firefox to complete the process.

Here’s my list of current favorites:

Adblock Plus — No. More. Popup. Ads. Or auto-playing videos. You might also want to download a Filter Subscription. You can still create your own filters to block ads on specific sites.

Better Gmail 2. Two great feature additions for Gmail. Folders4Gmail lets you have labels in folder-like sub-folders. Attachment icons replace the useless paperclips with the icons of the app that the attachment uses. If it’s a Word document, it’ll show Word’s blue W icon. Better Gmail 2 has other good features, too.

Download Statusbar. Get rid of the download pop up box. Instead, downloads appear across the bottom of Firefox where they don’t intrude. When you’re ready to open one, just double-click the relevant filename in the status bar.

Firefox Environment Backup Extension (FEBE). Any kind of backup tool for an application is worth it because it restores data with little effort. This one backs up your add-ons and rebuilds them.

Long URL Please. Twitter increased the use of URL-shortening services. But some of us like to know where we’re going before we click. This add-on automatically expands shortened URLs. Even if you can’t see the full URL, you can mouse over the link to see the full link tooltip-style.

Print/Print Preview. Adds a print icon to the tool bar with a down arrow giving you the choices of Print, Print Preview or Page Setup. I limit printing to stay green. This add-on helps because it ensures I print only what I need and nothing more.

Read it Later. I’ve always saved articles to read later by opening them in a tab and keeping it there until I read it. No, it didn’t lead to having a bunch of open tabs. Because I don’t like many tabs, it compels me to read them soon so I can get rid of them. Read it Later took over the job. The add-on puts a checkmark in your browser. Click the checkmark to add the page to Read it Later, click it again to remove.

Web Developer. I’m not a web designer, but this toolbar has helped me out many times. You can disable Java, Javascript and colors, manage cookies, change up styles with CSS, adjust form options and much more.

Word Count Plus. Anyone who writes web content where word counts matter needs this. Simple tool where you highlight the text, click the icon and see the word count. Now it just needs an added feature to count characters for Twittering outside the box.

Xmarks. A bookmarks synchronizer that works between computers and across networks. I first used it back when it was Foxmarks, but encountered issues. Those issues are now gone, and the add-on comes with more features. It can synchronize passwords, give you information about a web page and create separate profiles. You can have a profile for each computer so you can pick and choose which bookmarks to display at each location.

I’m sure I’m still missing some of your favorite add-ons, but I limit how many I install because Firefox does become a memory hog. So here’s your chance to fill in the blanks.

What are your favorite/most frequently used Firefox add-ons?

Written by Meryl Evans.

I’m in the middle of moving to new computers. Two of them. The laptop is easy. The desktop, well, that’s a story for another post. New and faster computers with a fresh install can compel a person to look up applications, plugins and other tools to boost web worker efficiency. Browser add-ons are a perfect example.

Quick overview for those new to Firefox: Add-ons are little free tools that make your application experience better and easier. Add-ons don’t stop at browsers, either. Email applications like Thunderbird have them, too. They’re very easy to install. Just go to Firefox add-ons, browse, click “Add to Firefox” and click “Install” in the popup window. Once installed, you’ll need to restart Firefox to complete the process.

Here’s my list of current favorites:

Adblock Plus — No. More. Popup. Ads. Or auto-playing videos. You might also want to download a Filter Subscription. You can still create your own filters to block ads on specific sites.

Better Gmail 2. Two great feature additions for Gmail. Folders4Gmail lets you have labels in folder-like sub-folders. Attachment icons replace the useless paperclips with the icons of the app that the attachment uses. If it’s a Word document, it’ll show Word’s blue W icon. Better Gmail 2 has other good features, too.

Download Statusbar. Get rid of the download pop up box. Instead, downloads appear across the bottom of Firefox where they don’t intrude. When you’re ready to open one, just double-click the relevant filename in the status bar.

Firefox Environment Backup Extension (FEBE). Any kind of backup tool for an application is worth it because it restores data with little effort. This one backs up your add-ons and rebuilds them.

Long URL Please. Twitter increased the use of URL-shortening services. But some of us like to know where we’re going before we click. This add-on automatically expands shortened URLs. Even if you can’t see the full URL, you can mouse over the link to see the full link tooltip-style.

Print/Print Preview. Adds a print icon to the tool bar with a down arrow giving you the choices of Print, Print Preview or Page Setup. I limit printing to stay green. This add-on helps because it ensures I print only what I need and nothing more.

Read it Later. I’ve always saved articles to read later by opening them in a tab and keeping it there until I read it. No, it didn’t lead to having a bunch of open tabs. Because I don’t like many tabs, it compels me to read them soon so I can get rid of them. Read it Later took over the job. The add-on puts a checkmark in your browser. Click the checkmark to add the page to Read it Later, click it again to remove.

Web Developer. I’m not a web designer, but this toolbar has helped me out many times. You can disable Java, Javascript and colors, manage cookies, change up styles with CSS, adjust form options and much more.

Word Count Plus. Anyone who writes web content where word counts matter needs this. Simple tool where you highlight the text, click the icon and see the word count. Now it just needs an added feature to count characters for Twittering outside the box.

Xmarks. A bookmarks synchronizer that works between computers and across networks. I first used it back when it was Foxmarks, but encountered issues. Those issues are now gone, and the add-on comes with more features. It can synchronize passwords, give you information about a web page and create separate profiles. You can have a profile for each computer so you can pick and choose which bookmarks to display at each location.

I’m sure I’m still missing some of your favorite add-ons, but I limit how many I install because Firefox does become a memory hog. So here’s your chance to fill in the blanks.

What are your favorite/most frequently used Firefox add-ons?

We hear lots of questions about site architecture issues and traffic drops, so it was a pleasure to talk about it in greater detail at SMX London and I’d like to highlight some key concepts from my presentation here. First off, let’s gain a better understanding of drops in traffic, and then we’ll take a look at site design and architecture issues.

Understanding drops in traffic

As you know, fluctuations in search results happen all the time; the web is constantly evolving and so is our index. Improvements in our ability to understand our users’ interests and queries also often lead to differences in how our algorithms select and rank pages. We realize, however, that such changes might be confusing and sometimes foster misconceptions, so we’d like to address a couple of these myths head-on.

Myth number 1: Duplicate content causes drops in traffic!
Webmasters often wonder if the duplicates on their site can have a negative effect on their site’s traffic. As mentioned in our guidelines, unless this duplication is intended to manipulate Google and/or users, the duplication is not a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. The second part of my presentation illustrates in greater detail how to deal with duplicate content using canonicalization.

Myth number 2: Affiliate programs cause drops in traffic!
Original and compelling content is crucial for a good user experience. If your website participates in affiliate programs, it’s essential to consider whether the same content is available in many other places on the web. Affiliate sites with little or no original and compelling content are not likely to rank well in Google search results, but including affiliate links within the context of original and compelling content isn’t in itself the sort of thing that leads to traffic drops.

Having reviewed a few of the most common concerns, I’d like to highlight two important sections of the presentation. The first illustrates how malicious attacks — such as an injection of hidden text and links — might cause your site to be removed from Google’s search results. On a happier note, it also covers how you can use the Google cache and Webmaster Tools to identify this issue. On a related note, if we’ve found a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines such as the use of hidden text or the presence of malware on your site, you will typically find a note regarding this in your Webmaster Tools Message center.
You may also find your site’s traffic decreased if your users are being redirected to another site…for example, due to a hacker-applied server- or page-level redirection triggered by referrals from search engines. A similar scenario — but with different results — is the case in which a hacker has instituted a redirection for crawlers only. While this will cause no immediate drop in traffic since users and their visits are not affected, it might lead to a decrease in pages indexed over time.

Site design and architecture issues
Now that we’ve seen how malicious changes might affect your site and its traffic, let’s examine some design and architecture issues. Specifically, you want to ensure that your site is able to be both effectively crawled and indexed, which is the prerequisite to being shown in our search results. What should you consider?

• First off, check that your robots.txt file has the correct status code and is not returning an error.
• Keep in mind some best practices when moving to a new site and the new “Change of address” feature recently added to Webmaster Tools.
• Review the settings of the robots.txt file to make sure no pages — particularly those rewritten and/or dynamic — are blocked inappropriately.
• Finally, make good use of the rel=”canonical” attribute to reduce the indexing of duplicate content on your domain. The example in the presentation shows how using this attribute helps Google understand that a duplicate can be clustered with the canonical and that the original, or canonical, page should be indexed.

In conclusion, remember that fluctuations in search results are normal but there are steps that you can take to avoid malicious attacks or design and architecture issues that might cause your site to disappear or fluctuate unpredictably in search results. Start by learning more about attacks by hackers and spammers, make sure everything is running properly at crawling and indexing level by double-checking the HTML suggestions in Webmaster Tools, and finally, test your robots.txt file in case you are accidentally blocking Googlebot. And don’t forget about those “robots.txt unreachable” errors!