post

Woopra 1.2 Has Me Wooping For Joy

August 11, 2008 By 2 Comments

If you haven’t opened up your copy of Woopra yet, do so soon as they have released version 1.2 of their analytics client. This new version has finally fixed a long standing problem I’ve had with Woopra since the release of 1.1 and that is the referral com null redirection error. I’m happy to say, that feature works properly now.

After installing and running Woopra 1.2 for the first time, there are two things that you should notice right off the bat. The first, Woopra now has a new desktop shortcut icon.

New Woopra Desktop Shortcut Icon

Although the icon is not a drastic change, it has a slicker appearance than the other one.

The second thing you’ll notice is that Woopra now has a dashboard area or a homepage. I call it a dashboard because its purpose reminds of me of the WordPress dashboard. This is where news from the Woopra site is displayed along with advertisements on the right hand side. The advertisements are not that distracting and I feel this is one of the ways Woopra will be able to provide a tiered (paid for / free) service.


Click on the image to see the full size

The dashboard also provides at a glance information for each site you have configured to use Woopra. The dashboard contains information such as the live visitors, pageviews, and visits along with a mini bar graph for visual stats.

Other things that are new with Woopra:

  • Support for Machines Running Java 1.5
  • Map Customization
  • Color-coded Visitor Map
  • Analytics Filtering Improvements
  • File Menu Standardization
  • Live Visitor Counts on the Website Tabs
  • New Login System
  • Highlighted Tabs During Site Visits
  • Significant Memory Handling Improvements
  • Database Improvements Resulting in Multiple Speed Enhancements
  • Changes Implemented For Future Updates

So far, I’ve been pretty happy with this new release. If you have upgraded to Woopra 1.2, let me know what you like most about the new version. If you would like to read more about the features in Woopra 1.2, be sure to read the official blog post which goes into more detail.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
post

Incredible Lightning Video

August 10, 2008 By 4 Comments

While uploading the rest of my footage from the hail storm that hit northern Ohio on August 7th, I came across a featured video on YouTube of a lightning bolt. This was no ordinary lightning footage though as you can actually see all of the feeders traveling to the ground. Once one of the feeder bolts touches the ground, you can see the bolt light up with electricity. This is one of the best videos I have ever seen which clearly illustrates how lightning is formed.

Is this video a fake? Personally, I don’t think so. I think this video was taken with one of those super cameras which can take thousands of frames per second. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this post I did on a camera which shoots 5,400 FPS.

Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Retired With A Job

August 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’ve often been asked, ‘What do you old folks do now that you’re retired?’

Well…I’m fortunate to have a few friends who have chemical engineering backgrounds, and one of the things we enjoy most is turning beer, wine, bourbon, and martinis into urine. And, we’re pretty damn good at it too!!’

Filed Under: Jokes Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Back To The Beginning – Then And Now

August 9, 2008 By 2 Comments

Then And NowLife sucks without the Internet. So to kill time, I’ve been going through my backup files to figure out which ones I feel I can definitely live without. While organizing my backup files, I came across a text file which contains all of my posts from my blogging venture over at EFx2.com. What an interesting read. What I call my very first blog post in 2004 contained an abundant amount of typos with no regard to grammar. As a trip back in time and for archival purposes, here is what my very first blog post looked like.

General: Something Fresh
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 05:52 PM

Well I’m pretty new to the blog scene when it comes to having my own. I have read over the years about blogging, and I have seen many many weblogs that just end because well I guess they get boring and people don’t want to update them anymore.

I will try not to let that happen here. I am currently pretty involved with Photoshop and graphics design. Recently I have developed some skills related to Cinema4d, a 3D rendering program. Using this program allows me to create some cool renders that I have been using for some of my abstract wallpapers.

I hope to see you around and go ahead and leave a comment in the shoutbox. I will be at work turning this blogging site into a spiffy graphical wonder in the next few weeks or at least see where my limits are with this system.

General is the category while Something Fresh was the name of the post. You know, I think I remember that day in November when I hit the publish button for the first time. So what have I learned since then?

  • Spell checking is a godsend.
  • I’m a much better writer, now that I have blogged for such a long period of time. I’m getting better with each post.
  • Blogging is still fun when you write about the things that interest you.
  • Comments are still one of the best things I love about blogging.
  • The friendships I have made over the years through blogging have been wonderful.

Back in 2004, there was no Web 2.0. It seemed like blogging was much simpler just four years ago. Now a days, you have videos, screencasts, podcasts, audio posts, images, galleries, massive interaction, and everywhere you look, there is something embeddable. I may sound like an old fart reminiscing the good ole days, but I’m simply comparing two different time periods of blogging. I’m sure those who started blogging back in 2000 have much more to say in regards to then and now.

What I’m interested in, is hearing your history of blogging. Create a blog post and link back to this one if you must or simply leave a comment. When did you start blogging? What changes have you noticed between then and now? If you feel a little daring, you can also share your thoughts on the future of blogging.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,
post

This Phish Isn't Biting

August 8, 2008 By 17 Comments

As I checked my email inbox this afternoon, I discovered an email which was supposedly sent from CNN. The subject line was CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert. The problem is, I’ve never configured custom alerts on the CNN webpage. However, The email looks very legitimate and I almost clicked on the links until I noticed that the FULL STORY link points to a site other than CNN. Check out this screenshot.

I’ve never received a phishing email which has appeared to originate from CNN. I’ve received similar looking emails from Paypal, Ebay, Chase bank, Bank Of America, etc. They almost fooled me on this attempt.

The funny thing is, when I typed in the URL of the full story link into Google, I checked out the search result for the McAfee Site Advisor and according to them, the site is just fine, no significant problems found.

Here is what I find disturbing. How many people do you think may have been as careful as I was with this link and checked out the site advisor page only to see that there was not any problems associated with the site thus, they went ahead and clicked on the link? Thankfully, the comments section of the McAfee post filled me in on the details:

“…didn’t find any significant problems.” Better look harder!!!
CNN.com Daily Top 10 spam has disguised links to <http://www.blackhawkk9.com/cnntop.html> concerning which:
DANGEROUS: LinkScanner Online has found [Trojan Fake Codec]
Yeah, as well as clicking the fake link of your choice they want you to download a trojan loader, submit your machine to a botnet and further their aims to rule the observable universe (nice work if you can get it).

Name: blackhawkk9.com
Address: 68.178.211.52
(Owned by GoDaddy.com Inc)
Nameservers:
ns17.domaincontrol.com 64.202.165
ns18.domaincontrol.com 208.109.255.9

Registrar: GoDaddy.com Inc

Also, I sent word about this email on Twitter and many other people have reported receiving the same thing.

Word of warning, do not click on the links within this email. Immediately send it to the trash bin or your spam folder or simply delete it. Although this email smelled phishy, this phish almost took the bait.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

For You Comment Trolls

August 4, 2008 By 4 Comments

I can’t help but think of Ernest acting the role of Akismet in this scene.

Wow, what a classic movie that was. I’ll admit, it scared me when it was released to the public but not anymore! Anyone else enjoy the Ernest series of movies?

Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Nasa TV To Air Solar Eclipse Live From China

August 1, 2008 By 1 Comment

At 6 A.M. EST Nasa TV will begin to stream live video of the solar eclipse which will be taking place today. The event is scheduled for 6 – 8:15 a.m. EST and will contain Live Solar Eclipse Coverage from China (the period of totality is 7:08 -7:10 a.m.)

The last time I saw a total solar eclipse was when I was in middle school. What an awesome event to witness first hand. Especially if you live in an area of totality. Have you ever witnessed a total solar eclipse?

*UPDATE*

The live NasaTV Stream does not appear to be working for me. However, here are two other Live sources of the event.

Exploratorium Stream

Stream of Telescope Only photos

Filed Under: Cool Stuff Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Three Golden Rules Of SEO

August 1, 2008 By 11 Comments

davefleet logo

I can’t even remember how I came across this blog post on DaveFleet.com but it’s a discussion on whether or not SEO could devalue news releases.

Dave does an excellent job conveying the aspect of SEO sheep within his post.

My problem with this, as with many SEO principles in general, is that people will take it to an extreme. They’ll follow the advice like sheep and will force inappropriate keywords (read: jargon) into their writing, and their products (and clients) will suffer.

Sure, these releases may rank highly for some words but so what? People arrive, see a poorly written release or page, fail to find what they want and leave. It’s a cheap tactic – one that’s no better than spamming people with emails.

When I read that paragraph, I wanted to shake Dave’s hand as that is how I feel about SEO in general. As I’ve always pointed out, SEO is not hard. Why people spend thousands of dollars on an SEO guru is beyond me. I have yet to spend a dime and Jeffro2pt0.com shows up on the first page of search results for things that I have written about. No optimization needed.

As for news releases? I don’t want to read a news release which contains a bunch of keyword stuffing crap. Instead, the release should be relevant, useful and to the point so as not to waste the readers time. Dave hits the nail on the head when he says, “Just Write Well“.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a news release, blog post, book, story, forum post, just write it well and everything else will fall into place. It’s worked for me and no, you won’t have to hire me as an SEO consultant for $500.00 an hour for me to repeat this common sense.

Three golden steps of SEO:

  1. Write Well – Writing well can make or break content. The best of both worlds is writing well while injecting a sprinkling of keywords into the content. There is nothing wrong with adding specialized keywords into your content just so long as they don’t take away from the article/release.
  2. Be As Relevant As Possible To The Niche You Are Writing About – It’s all about relevancy. From the blog title, meta site description tags and meta keywords, it’s about taking everything your site has to offer and making it relevant towards whatever niche you are writing about. For example, if you are writing a tech blog, don’t write about popculture events or if Brittany Spears is back in rehab. Also, don’t use hundreds of keywords in your meta tag area. This will penalize your site in the search results.
  3. Write Unique, Desirable Content – This one is pretty self explanatory. If the content you write is unique, chances are, people will link to it. This creates back links and will propel your content ahead of others. The desirable content is content that your audience wants. Find out what your audience needs and provide that to them. Desirable content will also aide in generating back links if your content covers a wide audience.

Do those three things on a consistent basis and I guarantee you’ll notice a spike in organic search engine traffic.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,
post

Woopra 1.2 RC2 Now Out For Testing

August 1, 2008 By 4 Comments

Woopra.com LogoWhile traversing the web, I noticed that Woopra 1.2 RC2 had been released and is now being tested by the public. Mac users on older operating systems who have not been able to use Woopra because of Java 1.5 will be pleased as this new release should fix that issue.

Some other things worth mentioning:

  • The Woopra main dashboard “home” view is improved and will showcase the Woopra Blog and a summary of your websites.
  • Major improvements in speed, stability, CPU performance, and less memory leaks and crashes, with even more efficient code coming your way.
  • Woopra Connection Handling for servers.
  • Ability to add your logo to the Woopra map.

Thank goodness a new version appears to be on the horizon as I have had nothing but trouble with the software since they released 1.1. For example, when I click on the Currently Viewing link, I get a com null redirection error. No idea why that is and it has driven me up the wall. Others have reported the same issue in the forum. Woopra was a blast to use, but ever since 1.1 was released (should of been codenamed party pooper) I’ve opened Woopra less than 3 times a month.

I know quite a lot of you have jumped on the Woopra bandwagon. Have you had a positive experience with 1.1? Did anything break? Has the coolness factor of Woopra disappeared?

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,
Newer Posts »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.