Tad's IT Blog
Posts tagged blogging
Bing Search Getting Faster on Blogs
Jul 21st
Microsoft’s newly-branded Bing search seems to be getting faster at indexing & displaying relevant blog content.
Just a month ago, shortly after the Bing launch, I was doing some tests on how fast Bing was indexing content as compared to Yahoo and Google – especially with respect to blogs.
I put up a number of blog posts on Bing Maps and KML, and then 1-2 days later, began searching around on Google and Bing for more info on Bing Maps KML implementation. Within about an hour, Google had already indexed my KML blog posts, and had them available in the results, integrated in to the normal SERPs. Bing, however, had none of my blog posts indexed, and after a week still had none of my posts indexed. Now, these were posts I also went and threw links to on forums and all over the web, as I was trying to get a specific question answered – so both Google and Bing had spiders all over my site basically hourly. However, 2 weeks later, I was searching for more info on Bing Maps and KML, and in Google I almost couldn’t get anything but my blog posts – whereas Bing still was not indexing it. They’re showing now.
Well, now the situation appears to have changed. I made a post on one of my other blogs about a new Dianetics DVD that came out. I haven’t really linked this one from anywhere, so I thought it’d be interesting to see how they were showing up.
Oddly enough, in both Bing and Google, my posts are showing up on the first page of results when searching for “new dianetics dvd”. Bing was indexing & showing blog post results after only about 10 hours of having been posted.
In any case, I thought it an interesting observation – and one that’s probably going to get me to use Bing more – as when trying to solve programming problems, the answers are commonly on forums and blogs, something that was getting a poor hit rate on Bing but showing relevant results in Google.
Google Transit Still has Massive Holes
Jun 16th
I just read on the C|Net Download Blog that:
“…As with the online version, Google’s Transit works in 250 cities.”
The blog post is describing how the Android OS now supports voice as well as transit instructions. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, the editor of this blog was in San Francisco, where all features of Google’s Maps & Earth service are working at their best. However, as an owner of an iPhone, I am many times at the mercy of the massive holes that unfortunately still remain in this service. Now, if Google would specifically say that they don’t offer Google Transit in my area (the DC Metro area) then I would just be pleasantly surprised when data starts to populate in my phone regarding bus stops and metro stops.
But, when just looking up how to get from where I was in Arlington to Downtown DC, I ran into this:
The location where I was, was fairly close to a Metro rail station. So, I punched in directions on how to get to the Metro station, and thence to downtown.
Bogus Directions from Google Transit
The directions I got back clearly show that only the BUS is loaded into Google Transit’s coverage of the DC Metro area, and not the train. This is despte the fact that the train is marked perfectly in Google Earth, but somehow did not make it into the Google Maps / Google Transit data space.
So, from Arlington, it has me first walk to the Metro station. Then, it has me take a GWU Shuttle bus about an hour away from DC to Ashburn, VA, to the George Washington Ashburn campus, and then hop on another bus all the way back in to DC, and then to walk from George Washington University to my final destination in town (about 40 mins walking).
If the Metro was added, it would have simply told me to hop on the train and take it downtown, change to the Red Line, and then be 2 doors down from my destination.
Now, I can’t knock them too hard — as they do have a phenomenal service that has grown in leaps and bounds over the past year. But when you offer transit mapping to millions of handheld users, you have now exposed the data (or lack thereof) to people to really need it and could otherwise end up stranded when they start relying on their handheld device to tell them where to go.
Probably a good solution on this would be to simply not mark Google Transit service as being available, until such a time when all of the data is loaded & tested — as opposed to stat-pushing it so that it appears that “250 cities are covered” whereas the travel instructions in the 3rd-biggest metro area in the USA are not even remotely usable.
Just got the WP app to work from my iphone
May 20th
I’m about to leave on a cross-country trip to move across the nation, so I figured the easiest way to catalog the trip would be the wordpress app for iPhone. So, just got that to work on my self hosted blog (took a little doing) and now we’re a go!
Evidence is this post sent from my iPhone, with a live view from my iPhone camera. Hope this works out well!
Photo Album Test-o-Rama
Apr 30th
I figured, in putting Windows Live Writer 2009 through its paces, that I’d try one of these newly-touted features, which is an instant upload of a photo album. The above photos were some shots taken at Washington Park Zoo, and around Beaverton, Oregon, picked randomly from my local hard disk. While the instant-collage that it makes is pretty spiffy, the only upload option then is to upload them to Windows Live’s photo gallery, so they can be displayed there.
This was my first exposure to their on-line photo gallery product, and being a long-term Flickr user, that left a little bit to be desired. It actually now begs for a side-by-side comparison with the other leading photo services, but my initial comparison to Flickr is:
- Photos look terrible: ‘Kay, I’m not talking about my framing or my choice of lighting or whatnot, I’m talking about the fact that Flickr very obviously does some sharpening and some brightness/contrast to the uploaded photos to make them look sharp. The same photos uploaded to Flickr and to Windows Live look decidedly better on Flickr.
As an example, here’s a side-by-side comparo with Flickr and Live.
- Stats? Well, perhaps it’s because I used to work for WebTrends, but I’m a total junkie for stats. Even the free Flickr account will let you see how many views your individual photos are getting, and the pro acct will let you get all manner of analytics on your photos. I searched and can find no such option on Windows Live.
- Full Image Download: A point in Microsoft’s favour is the generous helping if disk space you get right off the bat. Flickr lets you upload 100MB/mo, but my free Microsoft account gave me 25GB to play with, and the instant ability to upload full-rez images. That’s pretty nice for sharing full-quality images with family across the country.
- Geo-Tagging: Okay, and maybe it’s also because I’m a total map junkie and am addicted hopelessly to Google Earth, but I really dig Flickr’s ability to geo-tag photos. For example, in terms of presentation, I was able to very easily just put together a map of my recent train trip up from Los Angeles to Portland Oregon, and display it as a map on Flickr:
Perhaps that’s not a real big feature for some people, but I find it a very powerful way to present photos, and an intriguing way to browse the photos of others, or a place I’d like to travel to.
In any case, I appreciate the work that went into making the instant-collage feature for Windows Live Writer 2009. I now just think that a little bit of tweaking to the Live Photo Gallery product could make it a real winner and a genuine competitor to Flickr.
War of the Blogging Clients
Apr 30th
I’ve written a number of different articles in the past, exploring the difference in the blogging experience between blogging via the browser (i.e. using the built-in WordPress 2.7 AJAX interface), or blogging with the best of the Linux clients (i.e. Flock) or Windows (i.e. LiveWriter).
Now that I’ve got the newest Windows Live Writer 2009 up and running, I’m preparing to make another go at this. But before I do, I want to make sure my list is complete, in coming up with the best blogging client and environment on the net.
Here’s what I’m comparing, and please comment if you know of a better one that I’m missing out on:
Windows Live Writer 2009: It’s what I’m writing this current post on, and has been updated as late with a new-look UI, and some nifty new features. Once more, it’s tough to beat the simplicity and speed of being able to paste the clipboard straight into a blog post as a drop-shadowed or reflected images like this can. Really pretty slick. - Microsoft Word 2007: After years of being an OpenOffice.org man, firing up Word 2007 surprised me when I saw the detailed blogging features it has. How about the ability to stick smart charts straight into your blog as an image! Looks cool, but has anybody even used that feature yet? I have yet to see an Office 2007-authored WordPress blog, so I don’t know – will have to test it.
- Flock browser: Another long-term favorite of mine is the Flock browser’s built-in blogging interface that remembers all of your blog accounts and allows a hotkey-assisted blog-this in any operating system – Mac, Linux or Windows. And I’ve blogged on each quite extensively, and haven’t seen anything else on Linux that’s as polished.
Now, unfortunately for me I know there are more (like BlogJet, ScribeFire for Firefox, etc) but will need to see how many of those other ones really bring something neat to the table. There have been some past reviews of the field from some months ago, but now I want an updated view.
- I’ll get back to you on this thread once I’ve gotten to wring some work out of these clients, but would welcome any suggestions or opinions!
Live: Broadcasting from Oregon
Apr 28th
Out taking photos in the Tualatin Hills Nature Park in Beaverton, OR
I’m firing up now my first self-hosted WordPress blog — broadcasting live from my temporary abode in Beaverton, Oregon. This first post is really just a test of my new server, analytics and hosting settings, as all of my other WordPress blogs have been on wordpress.com, and not using the WordPress.org blogging software.
I must say, as a web developer and search engine tweaker, it is an infinitely better and more rewarding experience to host it yourself, as there are so many more tools you can put to use and ways to manage and monitor what’s going on. Hope to have quite a bit of fun with this in the near future.
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