Optimize Your Web

Most of you have heard of Pandora and Last.fm I hope.  I am here to tell you how to get the most out of them as you can.  What’s better than hearing the music that they play?  Hearing whatever song you want, when you want.  Now make sure you read the legal notice of this program (it’s made in Denmark), but The Last Ripper can rip the mp3 streams from Last.FM.  Now it currently stores each song in a folder organized by Artist then Album and then all songs in that album are renamed in there.

Sounds great right?  Well it is, but of course there can be improvements.  I for one, would like to be able to change how it stores the song (I would want one big directory with just the artistname-songname.mp3) but that may be something implemented down the road.  Basically, once you input your username and password for TheLastRipper, it connects and you’re off to search for an artist/song/album that you like and it records anything that comes up (unless you have it recorded before, and then it skips it).

Regardless, Last.FM (and hence TheLastRipper) and Pandora can be a great source of music, even if you don’t want to rip the songs.  For me, I like how Pandora groups together music when you search for something.  The only thing for those that want to record the streams is that there is not an easy to use Pandora stream ripper available.  If anyone has heard of anything, please let us know, as I am sure we are all interested.

I stumbled upon a pretty decent invoicing service.  It’s called Curdbee.  It allows you to customize what your invoices look like, track them with Paypal, and have all of your contacts easily accessible.  What’s the catch?  Well the only downfall that I have seen so far is that it puts a small advertisement for Curdbee in the invoice.

Only thing I do not understand is where they are going to make their money from.  There’s no ads on their site, and it doesn’t seem to be selling actual ads in the invoices.  If anyone can shed some light, that would be great.  Otherwise, for small businesses, or indivduals that need a clean and easy way to track online billing, give it a go.

Wanting to send a text message while sitting at your phone?  Google makes this easy by allow SMS messages from GMail.  If you are logged into Google, simply click here and you can see which of the awesome Google lab projects you want to try.

I suggest you try the SMS messaging, the custom colors for labels (especially if you’re a label-holic such as myself), pictures in chat, and Google Calendar.  There are plenty more that may be useful, but those seem to be really handy for myself.

Share with us if you have any good ones to add, or just want to post your opinion about it.

Wanting to take one of the many certificates that Microsoft offers?  Want to do it and get a second chance to take it for free if you don’t pass it?  Now is the time to quickly get that done.

Microsoft’s Second Chance will allow you to do so.  But just make sure you register before you purchase the exam.  They will give you a voucher number that will allow you to “cash in” your free second chance.  Here is what Microsoft has to say:

In the real world, you might need more than one chance at certification. With Second Shot, if you do not pass a Microsoft Certification exam on your first try, we’ll let you retake the exam for free.

As an additional incentive to work toward a Microsoft Certification, from October 15, 2008, to December 31, 2008, if you pass a Microsoft Certification exam on your first try, you get a 25 percent discount on a different exam.

Follow these three easy steps:

*WARNING*
Make sure you register BEFORE you purchase the exam, or else this offer will not be valid.
*WARNING*

Hopefully you will not need it, but it’s good insurance, and a good way to get a free “practice test”.

While trying to obtain my MCTS and then soon after that my MCPD, I have found a good combination of training methods that I previously wrote about here.  First, I have a background in Java (not an expert, but I know the syntax and actually received a minor in my undergraduate studies in Computer Science).  I also know some html, css, javascript, and php.  So while I am not proficient at any of these, the fact that I can get by and know about them puts me ahead of someone starting from scratch

If anyone is in my position, I think this information may help you.  First, before you sign up for any classes, make sure you are familiar with whichever language you choose to focus on (I am choosing C# due to the close relationship of syntax with Java).  I have received two books to teach myself what I need to know before I go to any class or do any practice tests.  These two books are: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation and Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5.  The second edition for the Self-Paced Training Kit you can pre-order, but I am not able to wait for it to be released.  Start off with the Training Kit book, and then move on to the ASP.NET book because of the way they are structured and the indepthness of the first one.

To go along with these books, I would suggest purchasing a membership for at least a year to the site LearnVisualStudio.Net.  It has been highly recommended by some .NET Developers that I know and it looks to have a very large amount of tutorials already made, as well as ongoing videos.

After I get a good grasp of the material from these 3 sources, I am going to take a practice test to see how I fare for the 2 exams for the MCTS.  If I feel the need, I will take a class for each exam (I believe they are 2 or 3 days long) and give feedback to those that are interested.  If you have any further websites or learning sources, feel free to post them in the comments.

Right now, I am in the tough decision of what combination of training methods I should choose in order to be a MCTS and then MCPD certified ASP.NET 3.5 developer.  Listed below are the possible methods and their pros and cons:

Books: They are cheap and can be taken anywhere for learning.  Bad thing is that you do not have much direction besides reading straight through and cannot ask for help on the book (some come with forum discussion areas, but feedback is not guaranteed to be fast, easily understood, or correct).

Online Training: Cost is higher, but these series of courses (to prepare for a certain exam) are scheduled to take a really long time.  While you do get some feedback and can ask questions, if time is a factor in your decision, probably one of the worst ways to train.

Classes: If you complete the prerequisties, classes are the fastest way to learn.  Instructors that are certified know exactly what you are needing to work on for the exams, give great pointers, and will answer any questions you may have.  Downside is that they are the most expensive way to learn and if you are starting, the prerequisties probably have their own classes (which leads to even more money having to be spent).

Vocational, Community College: While these classes may give you a better understanding and allow for quick feedback, they are basically in the same basket as online courses, except you can’t choose what time of the day to work on the class like you can with online classes.

Online Videos/Tutorials: These can come from places such as Microsoft.com, or be hosted on third party non-affiliated websites to show you how to start application development from scratch.  These should be mixed in with any variety of training methods you choose due to their short time, and (most of the time) free of charge while providing useful information for our knowledge enhancing.

So needless to say, I am going to approach these exams in a structured manner.  I am going to first get the books and read/practice code/syntax and get a solid grasp of the language and structure before I move on to the next method.  Throughout the training process, I am going to mix in tutorials and online videos to see how a professional instructor or programmer organizes and writes their application.  I believe after this, I will take a class and learn within the time (2 days to a week normally) before I take the exam.  Another helpful thing: practice exams.  Take these to make sure you are ready to take the actual exam, because nothing is a bigger waste of money than going into an exam and not knowing where your skill level resides.  If anyone has any suggestions or other combinations, please let me know.

People have made wordpress plug ins for everything, but there are certain ones that every blog needs. The following plug ins are compatible with WordPress 2.6.1:

Askimet – http://akismet.com/ and use your Wordpress API key http://wordpress.com/api-keys/
aLinks – http://alinks.headzoo.com/ – Automatically links keywords
All in One SEO Pack – http://semperfiwebdesign.com/ – Add SEO techniques to your blog. Change your settings once, get the benefit each time.
cforms – http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin
Google XML Sitemaps – http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/
Sociable – http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/
SRG Clean Archives – http://www.idunzo.com/projects/clean-archives/
**Replace Smart Archives on nickswitzer.net

Subscribe to Comments – http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
WWW Redirect – http://www.justinshattuck.com/wordpress-www-redirect-plugin/
WP-Cumulus – http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/15/wp-cumulus-released
or Another Tag Cloud Program

Optional Plugins
FlickrRSS – http://eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/
Exec-PHP – http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/
LinkXL – http://www.linkxl.com/wp_plugin/ – for TLA

This is just a quick little list, if you have any questions or want some advice, please contact me.

After needing much documentation on both installation instructions, I need to reiterate the importance of documentation for both yourself or future readers.  I had a large project that I was completing with a colleague and after having to upgrade, reformat, and reconfigure many machines (around 20-30), I had many programs that had no documentation at all.

Reasons you may not realize why you should document:

-Just because you finally figure something out, does not mean that you will at a later time or that the next person will figure it out. If it’s not already written, write it down, even if it’s a temporary fix. It may turn into the only fix or help you find a permanent solution later with more information or further knowledge.
-Something that may seem simple to you at that time, may not be simple later or to the next person. So if it is not common sense, DOCUMENT!.

And documentation should extend to keep all licenses together and safe. It’s very hard to tell a customer that you cannot help them because they do not have their license with them. And for all types of documentation and licenses, do one thing and keep them protected. I would recommend buying something like a firesafe that they can keep those and extremely important records such as portable media backups of tax information, databases (if you do not have off site storage as well as on site for redundancy). While a fire may be devastating, it may be a breath of fresh air to know that you still have some things safe.

Ever wondered what the purpose of User Agent settings were for?  Well it has changed over the years, and was used to determine what type of browser or service was accessing your website.  Mainly it is used by people to determine what browser their main subscription base is using in order to tailor their website to that viewing.  One thing that I have seen is that some people use a spoofed user agent setting are trying to see things that they only want a website crawler such as Google’s GoogleBot to view.  This may be taking advantage of if they are showing the crawler special files that they may try to SEO optimize in order to get better ranking.

If you are looking to see whether or not the GoogleBot that has visited your site is legit, visit this list to check and see.  Also, if you are looking to tweak your user agent settings (that I mentioned in my “Top Firefox Pluggins (Addons)”) through your Mozilla Firefox, download it here.

Make sure that you use the correctly formatted user agent information, which you can get a huge list here.  For more information, please feel free to contact me with questions or tips.

For those that are constantly reviewing site visitors with Google Analytics (or any web site analyzer), there are a few things you should realize about their measurements.

Avg. Time on Site.
-This is calculated when they first request a page, and then when they request another.  This is not a true indication of the time.  Say if a person wants to read one of your posts (say a really lengthy and informative post, and it fulfills their needs) it doesn’t say actually how long they sat there and read it.  So it counts it as 0 time on your site if they do not click something else on your site.

Bounce Rate:
Many people don’t go to a website to find specific information and while they’re using that information for their intended purpose, do they continue to search your site unless either A) they’re returning to find out what else you wrote or B) complete finished whatever task they needed to accomplish at your site, and was curious about more.

So in conclusion, these are not great indicators of how your site helps people unless you have 20 articles written about similar subjects.  Because there is not a way for them to see (unless the person clicks something after reading the article, which many don’t).  If anyone has a good alternative or way to determine these and other measurements better, please feel free to share with all of us.