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Tag: google

Net: Google Pack

May 10, 2007
1 Comment


I’ve just realised I’ve never mentioned Google’s “Google Pack” – so why am I mentioning it now? Well, the other day I needed to upgrade my copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader: but the Adobe/Macromedia Site only give me a 56k download file (it should be more like 20Mb for the Acrobat PDF Reader) and various other download sites gave me the same…

However, the Google Pack includes Adobe PDF Reader, Norton Security Scan, Spyware Doctor, Google Photos Screensaver (which I’ve also installed), Firefox with the Google toolbar (which I already had installed), Picasa (for photos – and it’s fun finding all the photos you thought you had mislaid) and much more besides.

I very much recommend the Google Pack – if only all software was so easy to install and keep up to date (I just wish Google would include all of their software – such as Google Earth and Google Talk – as options in the Google Pack).

Net: Major Site Changes Across the Internet

December 11, 2003
2 Comments

Well, it seems Google has admitted that there is a problem with their search engine (after all the news coverage after the “Florida Update” where lots of sites went ‘missing’ – take a look at the New Google Website and let me know what you think.

As for the BBC, well, I’m pleased to announce that as from now – I’m providing all the news for them! Don’t believe me – check http://news.bbc.co.uk yourself!

(Ok, ok – it’s a bug in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and many other browsers – but if you are on Windows you can get a patch from WindowsUpdate – thanks to CNN).

In other news – do NOT trust any links on sites or in email – that Paypal or Ebay site may not be what it seems…

Search: Google Calculator II

August 13, 2003
1 Comment

LOL (laugh out loud!). Being a typical geek, I tried several calculations in the Google Calculator to get a screenshot showing 42: but I should have remembered my Douglas Adams and just searched for “answer to life, the universe and everything”.

No kidding – Google returns “answer to life, the universe and everything = 42” – try it yourself!.

I now also know roughly how much I weigh in kilograms ( 13 stones to kilograms : yes, Google does conversions as well), I’m sure that “four and twenty” does actually mean twenty four blackbirds, and I know how many Newtons I need to travel back in time to a fortnight plus 17 days ago with my copy of “555.6 kilometers under the sea.

Kewl! (well, it keeps me entertained).

Search: Google Calculator

August 13, 2003
1 Comment

Google CalculatorAlright, own up – who erased my memory so that I knew nothing about the Google calculator function until jake at Utterly Boring blogged about it? To think, I won’t have to drop to the command line at work and do perl -e "print 6*7 when I want to do quick sums anymore (yes, yes, Windows has a calc.exe function – but I just don’t like it for a reason I’m unable to explain to myself).

And there I was thinking that Google News Alerts was the latest thing to be offered by “the big G” (whose anti site Google Watch now has a watch site of it’s own Google Watch Watch [as spotted by Neil]).

Search: Choosing a good Search Engine Optimization Company

August 4, 2003
3 Comments

Huh, just came across something that slightly cheered me up. I just saw an advertisement (provided by Google Adsense: see top of the page) for a company offering one of the services I do for a job (search engine optimisation and placement). I went to their site to see how good they were (as I hadn’t heard of them before) and…

They’ve got a “Google PR” value of “0”, I can’t find their site on Google search for their company name (never a good sign) and finally some of the techniques they “suggest” are good for a site (such as “dynamic meta tags”) would, most likely, get your site banned from the search engine. A good SEO (search engine optimizer) will optimise a site in such a way that it’ll work as a “static site” OR dynamically driven (ok, some “hacks” may be needed to avoid query strings). I also checked their “recommend client” site: no optimisation (bar the “now-redundant” meta tags) and site can’t easily be found in Google!

Therefore, I’d like to suggest the following to anyone considering employing a search engine optimization company: First of all, can you easily find them in the search engines for a) their company name and b) one of their keyphrases (sometimes this is harder to figure out as it may not be easy to see what they are targeting).

Secondly: Do your research. If they suggest creating hidden pages/links, cloaking/fast redirects, duplicate pages (or anything else on Google’s “Do not do” list), then steer clear of them as the site could easily be reported for spam

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