Monthly Archive for October, 2006

AWStats fix for Portuguese search engines

If, like me, you use the current CVS version of AWStats, you may have found that, since they recently added Sapo to its list of known search engines, if your web site is located in Portugal (like mine are), your top search query is, suddenly, “Resumo“. Even if your site is in English. :shock:

“Resumo” is, in this context, Portuguese for “short version“, and it’s included by default in all Sapo queries. But why is this happening?

I’ve tracked it down to an AWStats bug, which I reported to the author, along with a patch. That patch, in addition to fixing that problem, also adds support for Clix queries. For more details, including the patch itself, please visit the SourceForge page for this bug.

WordPress 2.0.5 is out

As usual, get it from the usual place, and follow the instructions if you’re upgrading from a previous version. I’ve just upgraded 11 blogs in about a minute (most of which was spent backing up the databases and the files, in case Something Bad ™ happened).

List of changes here.

Apparently, there’s a new problem when running on a server with FastCGI installed: it may give a 500 error in some cases. If that’s your situation, there’s a workaround.

Nintendo DS Browser - my review

Nintendo DS Browser

Well, I’ve had it for a couple of days now. As far as I know, it hasn’t yet been released in Portugal, but I ordered it from Amazon.co.uk.

If you’ve used Opera Mobile version 8.x, you have an idea of what to expect, as the browser (while it has the “Opera” brand, it’s referred to as “Nintendo DS Browser”) is mostly the same, with the necessary changes for the different hardware, naturally.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is this: it’s a bit slow. Not unbearably so, but scrolling is far from smooth, especially on more complex pages. It also loads and renders them slower than you’re probably used to, even with a fast connection. It’s usable, sure, but it’s far from the experience of using Firefox on a PC, of course. In fact, Opera in my Nokia 6630 is faster than this one (but, then, modern cell phones are more powerful, hardware-wise, than a DS).

The browser has two vieweing modes: Small Screen Rendering mode (SSR), and Overview mode. The first works mostly like the mobile version: it ensures that you never have to scroll horizontally, by making every frame / column appear on top of each other. You can read pages perfectly, but you lose a lot of the formatting. One problem is that in sites with a menu on the left, the entire menu appears before the content, which means you have to scroll down a lot to start reading. Anyway, this mode is perfectly fine for reading blogs, for instance, but a forum (such as a phpBB one) is more complicated.

Overview mode shows the entire page with the original formatting. You see a “zoomed out” version on one of the screens, and a zoomed in section on the other. You can drag the zoomed in part with the stylus, of course. This way, you can see a site with its original look, but navigation becomes more difficult.

Personally, I stay in SSR mode most of the time, except when a site really requires its original formatting. One interesting example is GameKnot, an online chess server. With Overview mode and maximum zoom out, you can actually have the entire chess board on the clickable screen, and make your moves with the stylus! I’ve tried it and it works, which shows that Javascript support is acceptable.

You can write using a virtual keyboard, in the same way you write your name in a game, or use handwriting recognition. I didn’t like the latter; maybe it’s because I’m used to my old Palm, which recognizes characters differently. Many times, it didn’t recognize the letter I typed, and I’ve found no way to write accented characters. Anyway, the virtual keyboard works quite well, and you can certainly write faster than using T9 in a cell phone.

One problem, though: maybe it’s because this is the UK version, instead of a localized Portuguese one, but, as far as I can see, there is no way to write vowels like A and O with a tilde, like “ã” or “õ”. The browser shows them perfectly in pages, but they’re not available on the virtual keyboard. You can select which national keyboard you want (US, UK, SP, etc.), but there’s no Portuguese one. Maybe it’ll be available when (and if) they release the browser here. It’s not the end of the world, but it can be annoying if you want to use it for writing or commenting in Portuguese sites or blogs.

Personally, I use this browser mostly for reading in bed (blogs and other sites). :) It’s much more comfortable to use the small, light DS than a comparatively huge and heavy laptop. And I don’t currently have one of those, anyway. :)

No Java or Flash, but I don’t miss them. :)

It saves bookmarks and the browser configuration to the card, but not cookies or files. Cookies are lost when you turn the DS off, which means that you have to log in again in any site you access. A little annoying, but, as I said, you can write usernames and passwords quickly using the virtual keyboard.

So far, it hasn’t crashed once.

There are two versions, one for the old DS (”Phat”), and another for the DS Lite. The reason is that the browser comes with a memory expansion, which is inserted into the GBA port, and they include a smaller one for the DS Lite, which doesn’t stick out of the port (like GBA games do). The Phat version works on both DSs (sticking out of the GBA port on the Lite), but the Lite version is for the Lite only.

Curiously, this isn’t out in the US yet… one of the few times us Europeans got a better deal. :)

Introduction to SEO #2: what is SEO?

(NOTE: this is part of the “Introduction to SEO” series)

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. It’s the art of making as many people as possible arrive at a particular site - preferably those who are interested in it.

Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? OK, let’s try a different definition: SEO is the name for a number of methods for improving the chances of someone searching for the subject of a site, and having that site appear in the top search results.

Better? :)

Basically, there are two kinds of SEO:

  1. On-site: what you do in the site to make sure search engines index it optimally.
  2. Off-site: having other sites link to yours.

Each of the above will be expanded in the next two parts of this series.

You can also divide SEO in two other kinds: “white hat” (”honest” techniques) and “black hat” (less honest techniques). I will only write about the former. The latter require more effort, are effective just for short periods of time, and will, in the end, harm a site in terms of SEO, since search engines try to fight (and punish) those kinds of techniques.

Some examples of those: splogs (spam blogs), spam comments in blogs, “keyword stuffing”, hidden text (for instance, text and background of the same color), different content presented to users and to search bots, etc.. Like I said, these methods are increasing less effective - if they’re effective at all, these days - and almost always end up doing more harm than good. My suggestion: forget about them.

In fact, it is because some self-styled “SEO specialists” believe that SEO is using those increasingly inefficient methods, that sometimes people say “SEO is dying”. It isn’t. It’s just that most dirty tricks don’t work anymore. The methods I’ll talk about in the next two parts still work perfectly. :)

Flash 9 for Linux (beta) is finally available

(seen on ruimoura.net)

At last! Until recently, the newest version was Flash 7, which is only a couple of years old. But now you can download the Flash 9 beta, which is working perfectly here (SUSE 10.1)!

Now I can enter TotalWar.com again! :)

EDIT: just switched back to Flash 7. Some pages, such as this one, made the browser hang for several seconds each time I switched to that tab - and that’s in a fast computer. It seems the “beta” label is well deserved. :(

Coming soon: big list of "blogs about blogging" feeds

In a way, this is related to my previous post, Reading blogs away from my computer… because the blogs I most enjoy reading on my cell phone are the “work” blogs, those related to my work (blogging). For some reason, I always find the time and the will to read them when I just have my cell phone and no other means of connecting to the world. :)

So, I’ve been building a list of such blogs, which includes the usual suspects like ProBlogger, but also some other interesting ones, some of which I discovered just days ago.

The main condition is that they must have full feeds (they’re meant to be read in my phone!). I currently have more than 30 in my list, and I think others will find it as useful as I do - even to add to a “normal”, non-mobile aggregator.

I’ll be posting the list here, soon, in both OPML format (which you can import in any aggregator), and as a list of “./r2e add” commands for rss2email, which I currently use to convert feeds to email, to read on my phone. It still needs a few touches, and I know of some more blogs I want to investigate, first.

By the way, if you (yes, you!) have a related blog (about blogging, writing, monetizing, site promotion, seo, etc.), updated regularly, and with full feeds (this is really essential), feel free to let me know - I may add it to the list, if it’s not already there.

Reading blogs away from the computer

Now that I work at home (and yes, I’ve been incredibly lazy… where are the new posts? ahem… any day now :)), I’ve discovered something about myself: I don’t like to read stuff on my computer.

Sure, I do a lot of that, anyway, but, for instance, there are a lot of blogs that I have subscribed in Bloglines… only I usually skip them. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the content of those blogs - I do. I simply tend, repeatedly, to find excuses, other things I’d rather do at the time, and so on. However, I love to read them in other places - in bed, in a café, and so on. Whenever I’m alone, with nothing to do, and away from a computer.

Reading them in a mobile phone or PDA, then, is the logical answer (a laptop is still much too “PC-like”, with all its myriad distractions; when you can do everything, sometimes it’s hard to focus on just what you need to actually do). I currently use a Nokia 6630, which I’ve had for more than a year. I’ve tried several aggregators, and also the mobile Bloglines, which is accessed through a web browser such as Opera, and, while they work well, they’re too slow and cumbersome for my tastes. Therefore, I used a combination of newspipe (to convert posts from feeds to email messages) and Profimail (to access a mailbox through IMAP). Recently, I’ve dumped newspipe for rss2email, for reasons I’ll mention in a future post, and that’s what I have right now.

I’ve been considering other possibilities, though. As I said, a laptop isn’t a good idea here. I’d mostly like something a little bigger than the 6630, with a larger and better screen, and possibly a QWERTY keyboard (to do annotations and so on). The Nokia E61 seems to fit the bill (and it supports Wi-Fi, which would save me a lot of money in phone bills), though I wouldn’t like to spend too much money (after all, it’s mostly a luxury - I can keep using the 6630, or even battle my distaste for reading on the PC). A PocketPC (are they still called that, these days?) PDA might also do the trick, though the ones I saw recently would cost an arm and a leg (really, 800 euros!? what are they thinking?).

So, any suggestions / tips? :)




Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal