Yearly Archives: 2005

Favicon Maker

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A “favicon” (favorite icon) is the small graphic that appears in front of a URL in an address bar. A web designer creates it and puts it in one or more of the web directories, typically naming it favicon.ico. It will also appear next to a favorites link. Many browsers will look for it, but to help guide browsers, an html line can be added in the header information:

<link rel=”icon” href=”favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon”>

macfive-favicon.gif

I recently redesigned the mac.fiveforks.com favicon. It appears above (and should appear in your browser.) It is based on a FiveForks logo I’m working on. More on that later.

I used this on-line utility to create the favicon:

www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/

Google Analytics

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Google is now giving away a free web analysis service. There is a limit to how much it will report unless you have Google Adwords (buy advertising.) It isn’t clear to me that our use of AdSense applies for the “no cap”, but I’m testing with Mac5 and will report.

From the official Google Blog: Circle of Analytics.

Now Serving: Seekers of Barbies and/or Trolls

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Ted and I have noticed in the Awstats web log analysis software that there are two words that bring more people to mac.fiveforks.com by far than any other words. While phrases like “unlock itunes” or “estonian girls” or “harry potter and the half blooded prince” are popular reasons people end up here, they pale in comparison to either of these two words:

trolls
barbies

In October, 252 visitors arrived from search engines looking for “trolls” while 227 visitors arrived because of “barbies”. We quickly figured out it had to do with the story of the Nekid Barbies and Trolls posted with a pretty funny photo. We figured the photo had something to do with it. Or maybe the word “nekid”. But we could not find this blog posting ranking very high in the search engines. Why were so many people finding the posting?

Today Ted figured it out. If you go to www.yahoo.com and click on the “images” tab, you can search for photos. You can type in either the word “trolls” or “barbies” and guess what photo has the #1 position!

I can only imagine that clicking on thumbnails in a Yahoo images search somehow moves a photo up in rank. If a lot of people click on it, then it must be what people are looking for, so move it up. Because our thumbnail (a row of flesh-colored nekid barbies with a troll) is unusual, it must have gotten a lot of clicks over time. It is now #1 and getting even more clicks because of that.

This is called an asset ready to be exploited.

Why has this article not generated more ad revenue? It turns out the link on Yahoo is to an old archive version (using the path and file name /archives/000709.html) instead of the newer archive structure (2004/05/nekid_barbies_a.html.) The older article did not have google ads, and it did not even display correctly because it was in the old template structure that did not work very well with the new css styles.

I’ve now replaced the 000709.html file with a nice new clean copy and added an extra google ad at the top. The money should start rolling in shortly. We could build a barbies / trolls empire off of this thing. Kathy is already checking eBay, looking for a wholesaler of troll dolls.

Now playing: Money For Nothing by Dire Straits

GMail’s Lead Engineer

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Comments on e-mail and Gmail from the lead engineer, Paul Buchheit. Our family has migrated to Gmail from Lotus Notes. Spam was getting awful, and because Gmail offers so much storage, I decided it made sense to outsource the whole problem of e-mail (technical) management to a company that is not likely to go away any time soon.

The “Conversations” concept is a real improvement in keeping track of the back-and-forth around a thread of e-mails. The new auto-save mode is TERRIFIC, especially given the problems with losing what you’ve typed in a web browser. Gmail saves whatever you have typed every minute or so. Your message sits in draft mode in the event you lose a connection.

Official Google Blog: Guess what just turned 34?

I Sing The Body Antenna

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finger-antenna.JPGWade borrowed the idea from Walt:

I sing the body electric

I celebrate the me yet to come

I toast to my own reunion

When I become one with the sun

— Wade Lassiter, soundtrack to the movie Fame

I SING the Body electric;

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul

— Walt Whitman

I knew the line from the song in the movie Fame, but not remembering that, I stumbled on the original by Walt Whitman. Or rather, a revision, by Walt Whitman. The 1860 original version of the poem started off “O my children! O mates!” He changed the first line to “I SING the body electric!” in 1867.

I ended up searching for the line because I thought of it when I used my finger in place of my broken cell phone antenna. I was only able to get good reception if I pressed my finger into the antenna well where it had snapped off. This created an indention in my finger, but I was able to get 5 bars instead of 2.

The body makes a good cell phone antenna in a pinch.

Hurricane Names Go Greek

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Hurricane Center May Run Out of Names

Only 21 names are reserved each year for hurricanes. The letters q, u, x, y, and z are not used.

The same list rotates every six years, so names are reused. The names of historical storms like Hugo and Andrew are retired. Katrina will certainly be retired.

When the names run out (which has not happened since alphabetic names have been used) they will use Greek letters: Alpha, Beta Gamma, up to Omega The cited article above does not say what happens if they ever have to retire Alpha.

Lights of America Model 2005A

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I had previously concluded to not buy Lights of America lightbulbs, but one problem with blogs is that they are not readily available as you are standing in Wal-Mart. (I suppose they will be some day.)

I leave a 25 watt bulb burning outside of our basement door to discourage unwanted visitors. Because I don’t routinely go to the basement, it often ends up being on continuously. While 25 watts is not a lot, switching to a 5 watt (25 watt 215 lumen equivalent) compact fluorescent makes me feel less guilty about leaving the light on.

We’ll see if it is still burning 6,000 hours later. That’s on June 16th, 2006.