Top Sites - Spam, Scam, and Identity Theft Links

If you use Facebook, you need to understand that every single third-party company and individual who makes those cute little games and gadgets gets all your personal data for no good reason. And I guarantee you there is essentially no security on the servers where that data is stored. Even if you delete your Facebook account, all your personal data is still out there in the hands of total strangers, unprotected and waiting to be stolen. On top of this, Facebook is still being criticized for having horribly inadequate data protection of their own, so you should be using fake personal info on the site for a whole bunch of reasons.

Anyway, here's their security page - Facebook.com/security.
And user safety page - Facebook.com/safety.
And inadequate - privacy policy.

Twitter users, you should be checking the spam/scam alert page.

How many of these email & phone scams listed on the RCMP Phonebusters site have you come across?

Here's a great internet intrusion/attack testing tool. It checks your computer's ability to deflect and ignore communication attempts. It's called Shields Up, from security company Gibson Research. No downloads or anything are required, get simple File Sharing and Common Port vulnerability reports in about 10 seconds.

(MySpace is beyond help as far spam, profile hacking, and identity theft goes, so I'm not wasting my time putting links here. If you still use that site for some reason, good luck.)

My Main Computer Hardware

For you techies out there, here are the details of my primary system:

MBD - Elite (A780GM-A)
CPU - AMD (quad-core Phenom)
RAM - A-Data (4gig)
P/S - Cooler Master (600w)
HDD - Western Digital (160gig)
Video card - ATI (Radeon HD 4650, 1gig)
Display - two x 22" (Acer x223w)
Keyboard - Logitech Access
Mouse - Logitech Trackman Wheel
Router: D-Link (DIR-615, wireless N)

And never a single hiccup with any of it.

More About Me

Here's a little info about me. The profile section on Blogger is sort of lacking, and I didn't want to make a whole page just for this. And one benefit of using a regular blog post is I can link directly to this message from elsewhere.

My name is Jeff. I'm the owner of Second Glance Digital Media, and author of this blog. I'm a Search Engine Optimization specialist with a proven track record, and have been doing web design and graphics for about 10 years. Lately I've been building sites for small local businesses and getting them top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

You can read more on the Second Glance Digital Media site.

I also trade forex, and enjoy bicycling and sometimes video games. My pet peeve is local (Peterborough) "web designers" who don't know anything about web design. Especially the ones who say they do SEO, yet don't show up in searches because they haven't even coded their own sites properly! I hate the fact that business owners are being ripped off by amateurs. GRRRR! So I try to educate people the best I can.

You should also know that my brother Scott is an online marketing specialist, with about 12 years experience. He'll organize an entire online advertising campaign, do testing and tracking of different strategies, generate leads, and take commission from the new business he brings in. He currently works with a select few clients as a marketing consultant.

My expertise is building sites and getting them ranked high through proper design principles, and understanding how both people and search engines look at websites. Scott's expertise is finding out where your customers are, advertising to them in ways they'll respond to, and driving them to your site. So between us, you can get maximum traffic from both sides of the equation: organic and paid advertising.

If there's anything on your mind you'd like some advice on, leave a comment or drop me an email.

Couldn't Function Without My Trackball Mouse

I realized the other day that most of my friends are still using the "classic" style of computer mouse, the kind you have to move all over the desk. I haven't used one of those in years.

It's hard to imagine having to physically move a mouse around to play games, trade forex, design graphics, or even surf the internet. Especially with two 22" monitors. I often need to move the pointer across an enormous chunk of space really quick, and having to move a mouse around on my desk would drive me mad. At least the newer optical/laser models had better sensitivity, and got rid of those ridiculous mouse "pads" from back in the day, and the dust-collecting rubber balls. Those seem like humorous relics of a different era. Stories to tell our kids.

Anyway, I just want you to know that my trackball mouse is awesome, and warn you about some issues with other models.

Honestly, a lot of trackball mice are horrible. The biggest problem is many of them require you to use your fingers to move the ball rather than your thumb. This is a very poor design if you ask me, having the ball where your fingertips rest. As you can see by looking at your fingers, they have hinged joints that move back and forth in a straight line, and will cramp after a few minutes of side-to-side motion. However, your thumb is jointed differently and moves in all directions. Fingers are better for clicking buttons, so why would you want them on the trackball?

The most bizarre design has the ball stuck right in the middle, under your palm, with buttons around the edges. Moving the ball around with your palm requires you to move your entire arm, which is no advantage over traditional mice. It's the most spastic way to move anything, ever. And since your whole hand is moving around to spin the trackball, your fingers are also moving around instead of resting on any buttons. If you see one of these, throw it in the nearest lake or river, quick.

If you want to try a trackball mouse, get the Logitech Trackman Wheel. When you rest your hand on this mouse, your thumb lands on the ball, and your 1st and 2nd fingers each rest on a button (with a scroll wheel/3rd button in between). You can whip the cursor across a vast distance instantly, yet you'll be amazed by the precise tracking. The ball pops out easily so you can wipe off your potato chip grime. You don't even need the included Logitech software, as your O/S mouse settings are more than adequate to fine tune it. Straight out of the box it works on any Mac or PC. It's a right-handed USB device, and also comes with a ps/2 port adapter.

Check your favorite online store, or go here: Tiger Direct

Some Sites Are Irritating On Laptops

Web sites should be designed so they are easy to use on all browsers, on all platforms, at all resolutions. But many sites are very irritating to use on a laptop.

The biggest problem is wasted space at the top of a page. A good example of this is mapquest.com vs. maps.google.com.

Along the very top, Google maps has a small line of text links and the search box, and about 3/4 of the page is a map. No scrolling required. Brilliant, since that's why you go to a map site, right?

On the other hand, I see nothing on Mapquest other than their huge logo and buttons across the top, some links that take you off the map page, several search boxes, and the top inch of a map. Plus a massive ad to the right, which literally takes up a quarter of the screen. So I type a location, but when the result comes up, I have to scroll down to see the map. Then scroll back up to search again. Then scroll back down. This wouldn't matter on a home computer, with a mouse and bigger monitor, but when I'm using my laptop in a car or other awkward place (the only reason I ever got a laptop), I don't have time to screw around scrolling up and down for no good reason. I'm not lounging around on a couch like some college kid. I want the map.

Another problem with some sites is when you have a page you sign into, and the cursor is NOT automatically in the text box. So you have to click the cursor into the box before you can type anything. Go to Twitter or Facebook and the cursor is waiting for you in the sign-in box. But go to Compete.com and there's no cursor at all. This site has 3 boxes where you type sites to compare, but no cursor anywhere. Pressing the TAB key does nothing, the cursor simply doesn't exist until you click within a text box. This can be solved with one line of code.

Now the unfortunate part of all this... I noticed that some sites I've built are pretty irritating to use on a laptop as well. When designing sites on a 22" monitor, it's easy to get lost in that environment and forget that few people have such a big display.

I went back through all the sites I've built over the past few years and reconsidered some things. I got thinking - how many visitors would be using laptops? This might vary depending on the site, and analytics show it's a small percentage of visitors, but I decided to err on the side of caution and make some simple changes.

I changed some sites so the header area was smaller, and more useful content was shown immediately. I made some text bigger, some smaller. Some navigation buttons were moved. Navigation buttons that work better down the left side are now nearer the top and visible without scrolling. These changes made a few sites easier to use on a laptop, but they also made them cleaner and more immediately useful on any size monitor. If you are a designer, I encourage you to use a small laptop display in your development, it's a good tool to help keep sites as simple and useful as possible for the end user.

An Inevitable Look At Google Wave

Google seems convinced that real-time communication will change the world. As opposed to the current, and absolutely intolerable, 3-second delay in uploading blog posts, emails, or tweets.

(Some of my friends have actually discovered something called the "telephone", which is truly brilliant for "real-time" communication. I've even heard tales of multiple people using this device to chat at the same time! Don't look up "Skype" or "iChat" unless you are prepared to be amazed.)

- OMG, they're having a live chat!? That's MAGIC!
- Build your own blog... you mean like Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, and a dozen others? Amazing!
- Embed stuff like videos, pictures, links, and feeds into your blog? Uh... you mean like Facebook, and Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, and a dozen others? Incredible!
- Share photos? Sure, I'll believe that when I see it! Wow, you people must be on drugs!
- Real-time collaboration tools? You mean like the business software that has been around for years, that only a tiny fraction of the market ever has, or ever will, use? Genius!

Sites like Plaxo and Friendfeed already aggregate your content from multiple other sites. Almost all of the blog and social sites I've joined have asked for a dozen other logins during the signup process, so I could do everything from that site without logging into the others. All my blogs, messages, pictures, video, audio, and friend updates from all over the web can all be organized by any of these sites. Kind of like Wave, except they really exist.

Pretty soon Google will "develop" something that is simply Skype, but they'll have a big press release, call it Google SpeakBonanza, and tell everyone it's groundbreaking for some reason.

Here's why I think Wave will suck by trying to cram everything you could ever do into one window:

1) If your browser crashes, everything you are doing crashes all at once. How dumb is that?
2) It takes away the freedom of being able to move any window anywhere on your desktop (two desktops in my case).

It won't make anything faster, or easier, or safer, or cheaper, or more fun. I honestly don't understand what they're thinking. It's lame, limiting, and a step backwards compared to what already exists.

Or maybe there's something I'm not understanding. We'll see what happens over the coming months.

Quick Update of Big News

Here's some of the biggest news of the past couple of weeks:

Facebook is implementing real-time search, and also just acquired FriendFeed.

Yahoo & Microsoft have formally announced plans to merge their Bing and Yahoo search services somehow. Everyone has seen this coming, but they've finally confirmed it.

Google's Webmaster Central team says of the "Caffeine" update: "It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions." As with every algorithm update, confusion and bizarre assumptions abound. Now Matt will spend a few weeks answering dopey questions as usual.

Macs At Twitter, Social CEOs, Gmail, Youtube...

Here's a look behind the scenes at Twitter, highlighting their exclusive use of Macs and Apple software.

Here's an article about how the elite Fortune 100 CEOs basically don’t use social media.

Gmail got some new features. The official Gmail blog has an overview. As usual, Google makes a huge deal out of another microscopic and potentially useless update, this time the ability to label messages.

YouTube lets you customize your channel page. So far you can change colors and add a header and background. Check the official YouTube video blog for more news.

The Most Illegal Broadcasts Imaginable

This past week I watched The Proposal, The Hangover, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Transformers 2 on my computer for free. All of these are currently in theaters.

Keep in mind I haven't downloaded anything, I merely tuned in to Justin.tv and watched them stream across the internet. No sign-up, no download, no obligation. You just go to the site and watch whatever they are playing.

I don't understand how this site is still operating, or why people haven't been fined and/or thrown in jail. My only guess is that the individuals broadcasting these movies (from their own computers) live in countries that the US can't legally touch, and the site itself is hiding behind the guise of providing a streaming web cam service with no control over what people broadcast. Site ownership is apparently in Bellevue, WA, so surely there will be hell to pay for allowing such blatant and open copyright infringement. I'd bet good money that authorities are allowing it to operate on purpose, and are in the midst of an investigation tracking all the sources of illegal material, and will lay a huge number of charges at some point in the future. In the meantime, I guess we can watch all the movies we want for free.

(P.S. There is a wide variety of movies, TV shows, and pay-per-view. Other flicks I've seen include Twilight, Angels & Demons, Role Models, Get Smart, Step Brothers, Employee Of The Month...)

Facebook, Firefox, Opera, Google...

Facebook movie closer to reality? Lots of info hitting the airwaves right now. This isn't exactly a breaking story, since Aaron Sorkin's official Facebook Movie group went up in August of 2008. For some of the latest gossip, check this CNET article

The new Firefox 3.5 is due out sometime around the start of July 2009. Watch the video overview on the Firefox YouTube channel

The new Opera 10 will incorporated some built-in applications, plus the concept of "client-based serving" right inside the browser, a very ambitious feature. There's a video overview of the Opera 10 beta on the CNET Blog

Google has begun a series of tips to help online business webmasters stay on top of their site analytics, and maximize traffic, revenue, and AdSense income in these poor economic times. Go to the Google AdSense Blog

Project Natal, HTML books, Yahoo ranking...

If you haven’t seen demo videos of the Xbox 360 Project Natal controller, here’s a YouTube link - Project Natal/Milo demo

Is this thing practical? How many similar devices have come and gone since the eighties? Sure, the graphics are better than ever before, but why is this different than all the other really cool gadgets that never caught on? They're going to have to innovate games unlike anything we've seen before. Personally, I think the gaming industry needs to evolve past shooters and driving games anyway.
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If you happen to be new to web design, forget online tutorials, start with an HTML book by Elizabeth Castro. Look for the "Visual Quick Start" series. You’ll have a great understanding of the basics in no time, and be ready to move on to intermediate stuff after a week or two of playing around with what she shows you. It's excellent foundation material, and the books are handy references.
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We hear enough from Google, so here's a candid interview with Laura Lippay of Yahoo - on WebProNews

Windows 7 Test Version

What Microsoft calls the "release candidate" of the new operating system is available to download for free "at least through July 2009", according to their web site. So if you want a copy, get it now.

This is intended to be a fully-functioning trial version of the successor to XP, but remember this is a test version only. This isn't something to be using for important work, or if you have concerns about privacy. This software is designed specifically to be in constant contact with Microsoft, and send tons of information directly to them about what you are doing with your computer, exactly how and when you are using it, other installed software, errors it encounters, and how well it's working in general. It will also update and modify itself as the engineers see fit. This is the sole reason it's being given away for free - to monitor people using it. This should be installed on a spare drive as a play toy and nothing more.

The software should function until July of 2010, then will start shutting down every 2 hours on purpose. This is a warning that it will completely stop functioning soon, as it's designed to, so you don't get caught off guard.

If you do try it out, be sure to share your thoughts.

Facebook, E-Commerce, Twitter ads...

Grady Burnett has now joined Sheryl Sandberg working at Facebook. They both had been senior employees in the Adwords/AdSense units at Google. This is big news as Facebook continues to work on more targeted ways to nail members with advertising. These two people will likely be valuable in helping develop a better interface for the advertisers as well.

Here's a good, concise interview about e-commerce and conversion rates from Web Pro News.

I get the feeling that Microsoft may begin serving ads on Twitter soon. They've been testing for some time in markets outside North America. There's also a company called Federated Media that runs a site called www.exectweets.com, which extracts the tweets of business executives from Twitter. This is just one of the many "powered by Twitter" sites, but is noteworthy due to a partnership with Microsoft, which runs ads on the site.

Twitter Is A Search Engine?

Recently, a couple of tech industry types have suggested that Twitter isn't a microblogging site, but is a search engine. Huh? And they're being serious. So the next time you're looking for a website that sells computer parts, or a video to show you how to make fishing lures, I guess all you need to do is search Twitter.

Let's think about this for a second. CNN is a news site, I'm sure we can agree on that. But wait... all of the content on the site, both articles and videos, can be searched. So doesn't that make it a search engine, rather than a news site? Hardly. The only thing it means is their content is searchable, which is no different than any other site with lots of content. Hundreds of thousands of sites have a search feature. Likewise, the fact that I can search for "skateboarding" videos on YouTube, or "hockey" news on my local newspaper site doesn't make them search engines. All it means is the webmaster was smart enough to put a search box on the site so people can find what they came for.

If I need to know what time a movie starts downtown tonight, I'll want to find the movie theater website. Which means I'll do a search on Yahoo or Google and find it in 15 seconds. Alternately, I could search Yahoo or Google for a mortgage calculator, or pictures of David Letterman, or information about turtles, or anything else I could possibly think of. What kind of idiot would search for those things on Twitter? The results, if any, would be nothing more than telling you who recently said the word "turtle" in a message. Wow, that's some search engine.

Twitter lets people post comments and communications. And it happens to have an internal search tool, the same as any other site. It isn't a search engine.

Google/Yahoo/Bing/Ask will search the entire landscape of the internet with the sole purpose of finding what you've asked for. Articles, pictures, videos, whatever. Which is why they are called search engines.

How Many Social Network Sites Do We Need?

I keep discovering "social networking" sites that hardly have any members, even those that have been around for several years. And I don't mean industry-specific or niche sites, but wide open networks. Are they not marketing them, or are they just truly lame?

Another thing I've learned is that most social networking sites have a majority of fly-by visitors, and generally less than 40% regular users. So it would appear that many people are curious about the current social networking hype and go check out these sites, yet few of them find reasons to come back. Look at it this way, if a site claims a million visitors a month, you can bet that at least 60% of those are one-time visitors who will never return. Facebook and MySpace are solid, with 55-60% regular users, and 25-35% fly-by visitors. The remaining percentages are hard-core users who are on every single day.

I'm assuming in the next year or two there will be a purging of these sites, where a few of the successful ones will buy the decent smaller ones, and the others will simply disappear because they never worked. Just like tech companies in 2000, and banks in 2009.

FTP software: FileZilla is free and works great

If you need a great ftp program, FileZilla is working for me just fine. I'd heard of it years ago, but was already using Ipswitch with no problems. Since then, I've changed hard drives a few times, rebuilt a few computers, and long story short, I needed some ftp software for my newest computer.

After a predictable search for free stuff on CNET, I learned that FileZilla was still king of the hill in that category. After downloading it and using it on my main computer, I also installed it on my secondary computer where I do most of my graphic design. This saves me from having to transfer those files to my main computer to upload to my sites.

Frequently it seems ftp programs are described as useful for uploads to YouTube and other sites, which I honestly don't understand, since those sites have their own systems for uploading. Regardless, I only use ftp to upload files into directories of sites I've built on my server. FileZilla is free, yet has all the elements found in other programs costing $49. I definitely recommend it.