Thats it! I’m gonna say it. Overrated! I’m not talking about the Tampa Bay Rays, the Tennessee Titans or even Obama. I’m talking about tableless design. You hear all these so called “gurus” bragging about their tableless designs using only css, but have you ever taken the time to look at all their code? I don’t mean just their HTML code, I mean all of it, css and javascript included. Rarely have I seen tableless design result in fewer lines of code overall. Usually, to simply get everything to match up in all browsers, the css and javascript needed negates the advantage of fewer lines of HTML code. Not to mention, when coding for SEO, the TH tag actually means something to Google, whereas a div tag is quiet ambiguous. Once you consider just how efficient it is to code using some tables versus trying to get a tableless design to line up correctly in all browsers, you begin to see that these braggarts are promoting an agenda aimed at simply keeping themselves in business. They are promoting a practice that is so ridiculously overdone that no one else wants to do it, so now they’re the only game in town. Buyer beware, the same things can be accomplished with similar, if not better, results.
I’ve written before about online video players, and since that post, USA network has stepped up their game. I’m still waiting for the CW network to get their stuff together in time for the return of Reaper. A&E is still totally clueless, and I can’t stand to miss Intervention and Dog the Bounty Hunter. But I would like to call out the Food Network on two things. The first; they don’t provide full episodes online. I’m hooked on ‘Good Eats‘ but its on at a weird time for me, so I miss it alot. So I want everyone to harass them.
Second, and this is my biggest beef, I would like to petition them to start a single man’s/ college kid guide to microwave cooking. I’ll be glad to provide recipes and even host the darn thing. I serious, I can do things with Ramen noodles that would make an Iron Chef envious. Here’s a quick tip: While boiling Ramen noodles, add a little crushed pepper and dried onion, both things you could have readily available in a dorm room, and next thing you know, you have gourmet noodles. It doesn’t matter what seasoning packet comes with them, add those two for a little kick. Your friends will be impressed.
Next tip: Chef Boyardee. Take just about any canned pasta they have and before you microwave it, add a little garlic powder and EVOO( see I can be like Rachel Ray too! - extra virgin olive oil) and you would be amazed at just how much that raises the bar for cheap pasta. Seriously, you do that and it’s pretty much Fazoli’s. It’s definitely better than Pizza Hut.
You like your mom’s homemade soup? Celery salt. You like stuffing but can’t stand Stove Top? Add celery salt and sage, or make it even simplier, double the margarine and add poultry seassoning. Just like Thanksgiving! Don’t get me started on how perfect fish cooks in the microwave. Fish is meant to be cooked with invisible waves of electricity. Take your favorite white fish(catfish, tilapia or even cod), baste it in your favorite salad dressing and microwave it for a few minutes and you’re cooking with the Naked Chef.
I once cooked red beans and rice with sausage using a 100w light bulb and aluminum foil that would make Emeril say “Bam!”
You do this and you can set up an account on CyberSpaceMenus and you’ll be paying for your own tution in no time!
Now I’ve made my case for a new show. If I could only get a studio next to Giadaландшафт(link #2), I would work for free!
I would like to welcome Ben S. Harris to the team. He began work on July 13th at roughly 8:35 am. He’ll be in charge of diaper circulation and 3rd shift meal time.
SEO and chasing SERPS have been a topic since Google came onto the scene and there has been trends and techniques have depreciated. That being said, I was talking with my former boss, Jeff Phillips, during a chance encounter at Wal-Mart about staying active blogging and generating inbound links. I notice when I take a break from those things my rankings drop. It’s not that my competitors start getting more relevant content than me, or more links. I’ve heard some rumblings here and there on other blogs or forums about this latest trend, but no one has come right out and said it: Google thinks site growth and activity is extremely important! It likes a huge site with tons of inbound links, but it loves a medium site with growth and inbound activity. I’m trademarking that term, I posted it here first. Pretty soon it will be everywhere.
I think this a push towards tradional media buzz being a relavant factor in rankings. Google is now telling us our site must generate some sort of buzz around it or else you must not be very important. Its no longer all about proper html coding, the number of inbound links on your site or the amount of content. Getting people to link to you isn’t a new concept. Blogging isn’t a new concept. But I think Google has taken the two and decided to watch closely how active they are as opposed to how much there is. A site with a 1000 links to it but with a steady stream of 10 or 20 new ones a day will out rank an identical site with 4000 inbound links and 1 comming in a day, everything else being equal. GoogleTrends is now intergrated into the algorithm. Thats right, you heard it here first (or at least I hope I’m the first).
The big sites don’t have to worry because they’re always an “active site”. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe and IMDB always have buzz. It’s the middle class websites that are going to forced to fight it out in the trenches.
I don’t watch alot of television anymore. I know that sounds weird coming from a nerd like myself. But this doesn’t mean I don’t watch alot of TV shows. I love Reaper, Heroes, Chuck, Psyche and House. I’m even a closet My Name is Earl fan and don’t get me started on how much I love ‘Good Eats’ on the Food Network. I could watch Penn & Teller’s ‘Bullshit’ for hours. I can watch and record all these shows on a 36 in plasma screen. Do I do it? Nope. When I want to watch something, I do it online. Most major networks put their new episodes up online shortly after their original air date. They have all made the conversion to some sort of Flash player, probably streaming FLV files. Some do it better than others, and that’s what I’m going to review today.
The Best: NBC/USA - Ok, technically not a tie since they share content. Law and Order, Monk and even Psyche(one of my favorites) is being picked up by NBC from USA. So it would stand to reason, their video players are almost identical. NBC does a better job wrapping the player in a show themed stage or template, but they both use the same ad technology, which works pretty seamlessly with the show you’re watching. Full screen functions pretty much as you would expect it and the commercials don’t interfere with that. More on that later. Runner-Up: Fox. When watching a show, they have a bar at the bottom that shows you the quality of the stream you’re getting, which is way cool. The stream will downgrade automatically if there’s lag, so you never get a jumpy presentation.
The Mediocre The CW Network ???????? - I absolutely love Reaper. I’m a big Kevin Smith fan, so him being attached to it meant I was going to give the show a shot. To my wife’s regrets, I love the show. I think it’s one of the more creative shows out there. That being said, the CW network has to pony up some bucks and get their online video player up to par. You can go full screen, but as soon as it’s time for showing a commercial, the whole player goes to the smallest resolution possible and, here’s the kicker; it doesn’t return to full screen. You have to actively click the full screen button again. Really annoying when you’re across the room or running the whole thing through a TV or projector.
The Worst A&E - The player is really small, there’s no full screen button or even resolution control. Their full episodes are actually multiple clips that play in order and have to re-buffer after each commercial break. Oh, and here’s the worst thing of all…they run one commercial for their entire site. I watched a couple of episodes of Intervention last night and I had to watch the same Priceline ad at least 20 times. The other networks at least change the commercials, some even have really cool interactive commercials that you don’t see watching TV. I recently read that A&E has sought to change it’s demographic and has been pretty successful in doing so, but they’re really dropping the ball here.
The Absent The Food Network - Ok, I know the Food Network doesn’t target 21-35 year old computer geeks, but Alton Brown’s ‘Good Eats’ actually has a bit of a cult following among college kids and middle age nerds like myself. So I was really surprised to find out that a network that doesn’t syndicate their content, doesn’t offer episodes online. They only offer short clips. I can find that on YouTube. For a network devoted to shows about very specific processes, you would think that would offer a way for people to review what they’ve watched, get a recipe they missed, or learn the difference between grilling and true bar-b-que.
Does Googlebombing really work? If it does, how can you compete for competetive terms if serps can be so easily manipulated on the worlds largest search engine?
Last year, a blantant display of what could be called googlebombing was pulled off by a closely knit group of Search Engine Marketers. If you haven’t been following the story, Searchenginewatch.com and Seomoz.org whipped up a possey of blog members to create postings on their websites, myspace accounts, etc, to point to letter on Colbertnation.com with the anchor text of “Greatest Living American”. The SEO community succeeded in pulling off the Googlebomb and currently Colbertnation.com ranks #1 for Greatest Living American. Or did they?
Well, a quick search on Google shows colbertnation #1 for greatest Living American, so the googlebomb must have worked. But wait, what exactly is a googlebomb? Google Webmaster Central defines it as a prank where people attempt to cause someone else’s site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query. Googlebombs very rarely happen for common queries, because the lack of any relevant results for that phrase is part of why a Googlebomb can work. One of the earliest Googlebombs was for the phrase “talentless hack,” for example.
UPDATE: I’m re-posting this article by Jeff Phillips since, now as I look back, the Google-bombs have all backfired. Articles about the bombs out rank the inteneded bomb pages. Take a look - JSH
Weezer’s new video for ‘Pork and Beans’ is now available on YouTube(link). To steal from a poster on Fazed.net, “So that’s what a nerdgasm feels like.” They actually went out and got internet celebrities to make appearances in the video. There’s the Numa Numa guy, Chrissy Crocker, lonelygirl15, the Chocolate Rain kid, Miss Carolina, the diet coke and mentos guys. It’s like a 3 minute clip of internet fame. And these are actual cameos and not just look-a-likes. They even reference “All your base are belong to us.”
I do think they missed a few very important ones though. First and foremost, The Star Wars Kid, which I read he had some serious mental breakdowns after his video leaked. But they do make a cool reference to him with light sabre drum sticks. How cool is that?
The other? My personal favorites: The Icy Hot Stunaz. If you don’t know who they are, google it and enjoy their total awesome-ness.
Just a quick observation today. Graqphic design/Web design is really no different than fashion. Everything has been done before, what is old is now new and all that really changes is how it’s done and what your pair it with. Now, with the exception of color palettes changing thanks to better monitors and video cards, Web 2.0 style design resembles alot of the older stuff from the very early 90’s. The late 90’s and early 2000’s had a very industrial, futuristic look and feel to the web. I blame Flash for that. But now, Web 2.0 styles are driving things toward the familiar simplicity of web design from 15yrs ago, minus of course the technology pinnacle of the day back then, the ever annoying animated GIF.
Does this mean in 2015 the techo-driven Flash interface will make a return and we will all be forced to interact like we are in The Minority Report? Only time will tell.
