Blogging and the world of computer and technology has in the past seemed to be the domain of the geeky male. But that is no longer the case. We are privileged to have the fairer sex show us geeky males a thing or two. Here is a list of the top 10 women bloggers  in technology you should be reading. In no particular order.

1 Xeni Jardin
Boing Boing

A cross between Marilyn Monroe and a pocket-protector geek, Jardin has driven the eclectic blog about everything cool on the Web to 11 million page views a month.

2 Corvida Raven
SheGeeks

The 21-year-old communications major employed tools like Twitter to garner the attention of the technorati -- and land a gig at The Industry Standard.

3 Aliza Sherman
Web Worker Daily

In 1995, Sherman started Webgrrls International, the first woman-owned, full-service Web company. These days, she writes for Web Worker Daily and has three popular blogs of her own.

4 Gina Trapani
Lifehacker

She went from writing code to writing one of the highest-trafficked (25 million monthly visitors) technology blogs ever. The go-to online manual for geeks, Lifehacker is now a book, subtitled "88 Tech Tricks to Turbo-charge Your Day."

5 Lorelle vanFossen
Lorelle on Wordpress

Meet Lorelle on Wordpress, queen of wordpress, whose useful tips and tricks on everything Wordpress will help you become a better wordpress blogger.

6 Emily Chang
eHub

You just need to keep track of eHub to know what's happening around web 2.0. For years, its continues as an amazing Web 2.0 resource regularly updated with the latest buzz

7 Helena Stone
Chip Chick

Established in 2004, Chip Chick was a pioneer in the blogosphere, becoming amongst the first sites to focus on technology for women. The goal of Chip Chick has always been for women to have a site that helps them keep up with the latest technology trends

8 Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins, and Lisa Stone
BlogHer

BlogHer began as a labor of love in February 2005, when Lisa Stone invited Elisa Camahort Page to launch a conference together for women who blog. Today BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women. Not strictly dedicated to technology, but it does have a few good tech blogs.

9 Christina Tynan-Wood
Geek Girlfriends 

A Guide to Technology from the author of How to Be a Geek Goddess. It’s a place for women who like technology but want a hand getting or keeping up to speed.

10 Julie Strietelmeier
The Gadgeteer

Julie Strietelmeier is a self proclaimed gadget freak and she is proud of it. She started The Gadgetter on Geocities' free community pages in 1997. That's before blogging became a household term. The Gadgeteer is one of the most trusted site on the web for product reviews

Now this would not be fun at all if we did not mention the top women tech bloggers in South Africa. After all it is a celebration of Women's day. Here is a short list of top South African woman bloggers in technology of any kind or form.

Melissa Attree

Through My Own Eyes (Update: Chris from imod revealed to me that this was run by a guy. After some further research, I found that this was true. By the way, this  blog is mentioned on a few other places as run by a women. Sorry dude, but you have to be excluded. Bad one on me)

Michelle Clarke

Deshanta’s World

Are you a female blogger in the world of technology? Do you know of a good female tech blog I have missed. Here is your opportunity to list that blog. Just register on www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and free.

Robert Bravery is one of our Mybyte thoughtleaders to follow his posts and join the community that puts everyone in the ICT industry in one room - virtually.Sign up to www.mybyte.co.za its simple and free and gives you the tools to interact,share, get the latest news and opinion and collaborate with your colleagues and associates!

Here is a list of the top 10programming blogs you should follow. In no particular order.

1. Scott Hanselman’s ComputerZen.com
His tool list is considered a great resource, and his postings are read by some 20k + subscribers.

2. Coding Horror
Jeff Atwood has been a programmer for years and years; this experience plus his awareness of the human side of technology makes his blog a top destination.

3. GirlDeveloper
The irrepressible Sara Chipps is an ASP/NET/C#/SQL developer who holds forth on life in the trenches with a distinctly feminine touch. As she explains: “All marriage proposals must be accompanied by previous year’s W2.”

4. ScottGu’s Blog
Scott runs the teams that build IIS, ASP.NET, Ajax, CLR, Compact Framework, Windows Forms, Commerce Server, Visual Web Developer and Visual Studio Tools for WPF

5. Joel on Software
Probably the leading programming blog in the entire Web universe

6. Dr. Dobb’s CodeTalk
Lively blog site fully devoted to gathering together some of the biggest thinkers in the development community.

7. The Database Programmer
Kenneth Downs has been programming databases since the early ‘90s, which is reflected in his incredibly detailed blog posts on the topic.

8. Dave Thomas – Pragmatic Programmer
Thomas has authored books on programming (“Programming Ruby,” “Agile Web Development with Rails”) and blogs as an expert coder.

9. David Hayden
Is an ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server Developer and Microsoft MVP with over 10 years experience.

10. CodeBetter
A community of developers who publish best practices, superior tools, proven methodologies and techniques within the software development community. A blog for developers of all levels a place to teach and learn.

Honourable Mention.

Stack Overflow
No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home, if you have a question it’s bound to be answered at Stack Overflow.

Do you have a list of favoured blogs you frequent on a daily or weekly basis? Why not post your list in the comments below.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders. To subscribe to the www.MyByte.co.za Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j if you are still not registered on www.Mybyte.co.za and would like to join the online  network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room virtually click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php.

A reader sent in links to two identical Microsoft marketing sites. One is a standard U.S./English version, the other in Polish.

The image is identical, except Microsoft has removed the head of the black man in the U.S. version and photoshopped in a white guy’s head instead. The Asian man and white woman made the cut to the Polish site unscathed. The original model’s hand was left in the Polish version of the ad.

Microsoft apologized and changed the Polish site to the original image. But is it too late? The deed was done and it’s all over the internet. In South Africa this would certainly cause an outcry. Heads would role.

Below are two screen pics of the bungle.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free!

The Latest in the iBomb saga. A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France’s and the European Commissions’ consumer affair watchdogs.

The phone began making a hissing noise and the screen suddenly broke, sending pieces flying in the air, was struck in the eye by a piece of glass, the boy's mother said.

Do you really want to buy one?

There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France.

The iPhone is not the only thing that explodes from Apple. Be aware, the iPod may also be a bomb. It is also known to explode. Read about the Exploding iPod.

Apple believes these incidents are ‘isolated’ but will carry out tests to identify the root cause of the problem.

Reuters reports that Apple told the EU it considers the reported incidents isolated. “Apple have come back to us ... and what they’ve said to us is that they consider these are isolated incidents. They don’t consider that there’s a general problem.”

Do you have an iPod or iPhone? Are you worried?

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Video share websites are changing the way we view media and the media we view on the Internet. Whether you’re looking for a clip of your favourite movie, an important newscast, a how–to video or just some good entertainment, you’ll find it on the Internet. Maybe you want to share that funny pet video you recorded recently, or perhaps your child's graduation.

Video share sites make it easy to browse, find and watch your favourite streaming video, as well as give you the ability to upload your own masterpieces.

Video is so much part of our lives these days. Everything from cell phones, laptops, even key chain trinkets have video cameras now days. Video sharing sites make it easy to share those captured moments with all and sundry.

There are currently over 60 video share websites on the Internet and the number continues to grow. Video syndication is a hot blog marketing tactic. With a lot of bloggers entering what is now termed vlogging. Blogging with video.

Here is a list of the top five free video sharing sites.

1. YouTube - YouTube wasn’t the first video share site, but it has become the best video sharing site
2. Metacafe - Offers quality videos and a dedicated review system that keeps content up to high standards.
3. Break - The vast majority of the videos on Break are humorous, whether they are bloopers and blunders caught on video or scripted clips created by users. They don’t allow you to just upload anything.
4. Dailymotion - Most of the videos on Dailymotion tend to be more professional in nature. They have newscasts, commercials and short films.
5. Vimeo - Is quickly becoming both a popular video share site and a social networking site. It has very little video creation tools and resources. Your video needs to be finished before you upload it.

Honourable mention –Zoopy – A south African based video sharing site. Still has a way to go, but impressive. Zoopy brings all four media types into one location.

What video sharing site do you use? Which one do you think is the best? Do you use one that is not mentioned here but is worthy of the mention? Leave your comments in the comment box below.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free!

Open Source Licensing does have some sort of restrictions placed on them as well as not accepting all free software. However, the differences in extension of the category are small: nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is free.

We all want something for free. But many would argue that free or cheap software is of low quality. You get what you pay for. While in many cases this might be true, it is not so of all free software. There are in fact loads of award winning fantastic free software packages out there that you would be willing to pay for.

Some of the more famous ones include:

• Firefox
• MySQL
• Open Office
• PHP
• Linux
• Firebird

You might not know this, but there are literally thousands of free and open source software packages available to you for download on the internet. All you have to do is look.

What I have done is compile a short list of lists or directories of free and open source software. I make no guarantee to the validity of any of these lists or software.

• Free Software Directory
• Snapfiles Freeware
• Gizmo’s Freeware
• Freeware Guide
• Open Source Windows
• PCMag The Best Free Software of 2009
• Winaddons Top 300
• Mohawke’s Free list
• Wikipedia list of open source software
• 121Space
• CNet Best Free Software
• Freeware Home

This is not by any stretch of the imagination an exhaustive list. There are obviously some great lists or sites that I have left out.

A word of caution: There are many gimmicky sites that point you to “free” offers all over the Web, but most are disappointing because they lead you to enter contests that promise free gifts to the winner. Free contests almost always require you to input your name, e-mail address, and other personal data. Steer clear of such sites, since in giving out your e-mail address, you open yourself up to receiving unsolicited marketing materials of all kinds. Your inbox will quickly be flooded and unmanageable on a daily basis.

Do you have a great list of free and open source software you would like to share with us? Leave your list in the comments below

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free!

You might not know this, but there are literally hundreds of search engines. Some have come and gone. Amongst these are a bunch of Speciality Search Engines.

What is a Speciality Search Engine?

A speciality search engine, sometimes called a topical or vertical search engine, searches a specially-created database limited to a particular subject. Speciality search engines fall into two main categories: service or subject-specific. Speciality service search engines provide services that are often not available from larger general search engines. Subject-specific search engines search a database tailored to a particular subject. Depending on your area of interest and the type of information you are seeking, speciality search engines can provide more relevant results more quickly than a general purpose search engine such as Google or Yahoo.

For example, suppose you searched on Google for the term “labour”. Your results would be everything from government departments to job websites, construction to law. But what you were actually looking for was labour as it relates to pregnancy. So you would have to qualify that search with more search terms.

Now this is not too bad, as long as your search terms don’t become too long. What would suite you better is if you would use a speciality search engine that searches medial or pregnancy related sites only. This way you would be guaranteed to get the results you’re looking for.

Speciality search engines are also an excellent source for topical research. Because of this it would be wise to also submit your blog or website to some of the speciality search engines that cater for your niche.

Examples Of speciality Search Engines.

• SearchDotNet – Microsoft .NET related Search engine.
• AskJeeves – Your question and answer search engine.
• LawCrawler – Search engine for Legal Professionals.
• Yahooligans - Yahoo for kids, designed for ages 7 to 12.
• CleanSearch - Search engine that attempts to filter out adult content.
• MedHunt  - Search engine and index of medical information.

Along with the speciality filters that the likes of Google and Yahoo offer, we would surely be able to find what we are looking for. Google also provide speciality search filters such as Scholar search, Blog Search, Image and News search.

Geographical Search Engines.

There are also geographical search engines. These search for websites that are located in a specific geographical location. Along with the geographical filters that the big three have, there are search engines like Ananzi which only search South African sites.

• AsiaGuide - Search engine for Asia.
• Ananzi – Search Engine for South Africa.
• WebWombat  - Search engine  within the .au (Australia) and .nz (New Zealand) domains.
• Middle East Internet Pages  - A Yahoo-like directory to sites in the Middle East.

A Broader List

The short list above is just the tip of the ice-berg. I cannot possibly list all the speciality search engines. Here is a list of websites that in turn have a more exhaustive list of speciality search engines grouped by topic.

• Searchenginewatch
• Searchengineguide
• 101TopRanking
• ISEDB
• CompletePlanet 

Related Reading:

PDF Search Engines

A new Twitter search engine launched by former Microsoft veteran.

Google goes hyper with Caffeine.

Google vs Bing vs Yahoo?

What is your favourite Search Engine?

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on twitter @mybyte

If you have any serious data in a database you will most likely work a lot with dates. Date values are stored in date table columns in the form of a timestamp. An SQL timestamp is a record containing date/time data, such as the month, day, year, hour, and minutes/seconds.

There is a neat little function in MS SQL called DatePart. It’s syntax is Datepart([date part (Varchar)],[Expression(Datetime)])

So today is Friday, and  a simple test would reveal that.

SELECT DATEPART(WEEKDAY, GETDATE())

Which would return 6. 6 Being day six, if your first day is Sunday, that being day 1. You can check this out by using:

Select @@datefirst

The weekday datepart returns a number that corresponds to the day of the week, for example: Sunday = 1, Saturday = 7. The number produced by the weekday datepart depends on the value set by SET DATEFIRST. This sets the first day of the week.

So with this in hand you can write a little function to return the name of the week days.

We can use that by issuing the following t-sql command which would return Friday for today:

SELECT GetWeekDayNameOfDate(GETDATE()) as WeekDayName

The nice thing about this is that you can now create a function that returns the week day name in your own particular language by just substituting the strings.

But wait. There is an easier way. MSSQL has another neat little date function, it’s called Datename. This can return the actual given weekday name. It has the same syntax as Datepart, Datepart([date part (Varchar)],[Expression(Datetime)])

So to find out what today's name is just issue this command:

Select DATENAME(WEEKDAY, GETDATE()) as Weekday

So my problem was solved, I could now find out which blog posts were causing those fantastic spikes. By doing this, perhaps I could learn something. I could find out what type of posts my readers enjoyed.

I issued the following command on my blog database:

or

Both returned the posts I needed. Problem solved.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

This is not only a phenomenon with younger and newer blogs, but the A-list and well established blogs suffer from the same problem. Albeit that you might not recognise it at first, but it’s there. After all, if those 10’s of thousands of visitors stop visiting, then there goes your A-list blog down the tube.

Hard work

Getting traffic is a hard job. There is no quick fix. Sure you might get some huge traffic spikes, but we are looking for sustainability here.

If you are anything like me then you know that bloggers, whether part time or full time, have very little spare time on their hands. I for one try to write at least one post every day, but with so much else going one I find it difficult to write more than that.

Guest posting is a tried and tested way of getting traffic and exposure. Problem is, if you have very little time to write you own posts, then writing guest posts is even more difficult. You do not want to sacrifice a post on your blog for one on another. Although it is not that dramatic, you know what I mean.

A radical idea – swapping posts.

Enter in a radical idea. Why not take the post that I wrote for my blog, make that into a guest post. Send that to another blogger. But here is the clincher, have that same blogger send you his/her post and then you post that to your blog. That way no one misses out on a blog post.

What am I saying here? Well this is what I call post swapping. Find a blog in your niche and area of expertise, and swap blog posts with each other. That way you are exposed to his audience, and he/she is exposed to your audience. You will also receive traffic from the other bloggers audience and readership and vice versa.

I think its is a brilliant idea. Very simple yet very effective. So what are you waiting for? Find yourselves a blogging buddy, and start swapping posts. You do not have to do it every day. But perhaps once a week or once a month.

Now if you have more than one blogging buddy, you can swap a number of posts with each other. It’s a win win situation.

So who is your blogging buddy, who are you going to swap posts with?

Update:

There seems to be a little confusion as to whether this scheme will produce duplicate posts. Well it should not. You are simply exchanging posts. A post that normally would have been posted on your blog, is now posted on someone else's blog and vice versa. This way there is no duplicate posts because you have swapped the post out for another one. This way you also do not have to write an extra guest post, your original post becomes the guest post. Also Your blog does not skip a post, because your blogging buddy has written one for you.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

Gates told a New Dheli business forum crowd that he had been forced to quit the site due to it being "just way too much trouble" to deal with.

I read this on Mashable. But what interested me the most was a mock-up of what Bill Gates’ Facebook page might look like, courtesy of PC World

I just had to laugh at the competitive updates between Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. Have a look at the below graphic, It’s hilarious. Click on the pic to get a larger more legible view.

With Microsoft’s $240 Million stake in Facebook I wonder how involved Bill really is in FB. In fact I am sure Microsoft will try to have some sort of input. Even if it is just casual influence.

You can also visit his unofficial Facebook fan page.

Perhaps you could come up with a few FB updates between the two of your own. Share them in the comments.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

Caster Semenya - Gender Controversy

Controversy always brings attention. It opens you up and shines the spotlight on you. Controversy is not for the faint hearted. But it certainly does work. Controversy sells. If you have been writing your blog for a while, you have probably used controversial posts to engage your users and gain more traction in the blogging world. If not, then why not?

Many bloggers shy away from controversy, they play it safe, while others fully embrace it. The problem with controversy is, if it’s not done correctly, it can severely backfire on you and produce the opposite affect.

Why are some bloggers afraid of controversy?

1. They’re afraid that they will lose readers.
2. They’re afraid of nasty comments and flames being left on their blog.
3. They’re afraid of alienating other bloggers that they might have built a relationship with.
4. They’re afraid of the potential of losing advertisers.

Those concerns are not trivial. But if you want to be a serious blogger, then you have to embrace controversy, or at least be controversial now and again.

Reasons to be controversial

If you have the ability to generate controversy with your content, do it. Not convinced? Here are some reasons why you should consider it.

It’s effective.

Nothing gets more attention than controversy. That's why reality shows are popular. That's why Newspapers use them. That’s why the power journalists use them. That's why rock stars are so controversial. Done correctly and at the right time, it can be a great asset.

Display Your ability at dealing with opposing viewpoints

Let people see the smooth way you react to the rude comments from people who take your words personally that WILL follow. shows your readers that you are not one sided and one dimensional.

It Sets You Apart

Isn’t that what you want from a blog. To be different than the rat race. Controversy sets you apart from the mundane.

You build your reputation as an expert.

Controversial blog posts help you to build a reputation as an expert in the niche, if you can write both controversially and intelligently. It means that you can see both sides of the story.

Negative Attention is Sometimes even Better than Positive Attention

Nothing spreads faster than outrage. Wide exposure for a controversial view is much better than no exposure for towing the conventional wisdom line.  You will often get readers that would never have darkened the door of your blog.

It's Fun to Do

What's more fun than seeing something controversial? Being controversial or doing something controversial. It's not for the faint of heart, but if you can take it, boy is that a fun ride!

Controversial Ideas

There are many ways to create controversy. If you can pull it off, and have the heart to withstand the storm, the go for it. A little bit of controversy will give you some exposure on the Web. There are many more ways to create controversy on your blog, here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Take on other top bloggers.
2. Make bold predictions.
3. Make off the wall predictions.
4. Talk about the difference between men and women.
5. Bash Twitter!
6. Pick Microsoft over Apple, or Linux.
7. Bash the iPhone!
8. Defend or oppose abortion.
9. Post a controversial video.
10. Pick Facebook over Twitter, or Twitter over Facebook.
11. Discuss how Zune is better than the iPod.
12. Talk about how Kindle will never make it.
13. Bash Digg and its new toolbar.
14. Argue why Wikipedia is overrated.
15. Talk about why Twitter and Facebook should be paid services.
16. Talk about dubious ways to gain followers on Twitter.
17. Discus how much Linux sucks.
18. Trash Apple
19. Pick on a political figure and take the opposite view.
20. Pick on a celebrity.

There are literally tons of ideas that you can use. The idea is to find some popular topics, and take the opposite view. But with credibility and a sense of respect. Don’t make it personal. Just this week, rumours flooded the internet of the death of Matt Damon. That's not controversy, that stupidity. He obviously was not dead.

Just be careful. Remember, you cannot take back what you said.

Do you have a list of controversial ideas? Share them with us in the comments.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

Wolfram Alpha's main aim is to make knowledge and facts available to everyone and is presented in the simplest manner possible.

The answer computing capability of this engine has been applauded all over the internet and many leading websites touted it as the next Google or the Google killer. This I doubt very much, as the two are so very different in their approach and appeal. It’s like comparing a screwdriver to a hammer.

WolframAlpha already draws on more than two decades of work on the technical computing application Mathematica, the flagship product of Wolfram Research. The application is well-known in academic circles, where it is used to perform complex calculations, manipulate data and create graphs and visualisations, but the average internet user is probably not aware of it.

Alpha doesn't search the web; it queries and performs calculations on about 10 trillion pieces of mathematical, geometric, financial, chemical, historical and astronomical data. The data sets are curated by Wolfram Research and have been available in Mathematica

WolframAlpha is not perfect and still needs a lot of work. However, I believe it will get there. The guys at WolframAlpha haven't just sat back and hoped WolframAlpha will take off. No, they've been hard at work attempting to improve upon their search offering.

Most of the work has centred around two things:

• Things that searchers want that Wolfram|Alpha doesn't know yet
• Questions that Wolfram|Alpha doesn't understand (aka linguistics)

Here's what else the WolframAlpha team has been up to - all of this since launch:

• Codebase has grown by a staggering 52%--adding well over 2 million lines of Mathematica code.
• Classified 54,233 of feedbacks as bugs or suggestions. Of these, 31,006 are now in the implementation queue, consolidated to about 5800 to-do items.
• 3,907 people who have submitted bugs have been told they've been fixed.
• To-do list has grown from 250 per week to 600 per week.

Here is a demo video and the full version video you can watch and understand what WolframAlpha can do.

Why don’t you give WolframAlpha a quick whirl and let us know your thoughts.

Related Reading:

WolframAlpha, Your research resource tool.

PDF Search Engines

A new Twitter search engine launched by former Microsoft veteran.

A List of Speciality Search Engines

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

The collection of statistics is broken down into five main areas of focus:

• Technology
• Macro Economic Trends
• Media Landscape
• Media Consumption
• Consumer Trends.

Each topic is then subdivided into relevant subcategories. For example, within Technology, you can drill down into Broadband, Mobile, Devices, and Speed. The stats are not compelling to look at, but offer some insightful facts.

Strangely Google has launched this valuable resource tucked away on the UK domain. Because of this choice, many of the stats provided have a UK or European focus. However, mixed in with the localized data are global stats as well. This is probably a beta test thing, and hopefully will be promoted to a world resource.

If you want to have a more stat like search, a recommendation is to use a fantastic tool like WolframAlpha.  WolframAlpha is that search engine that all researchers and students lack in their arsenal. It provides a huge amount of statistical information.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

People try to raise their own websites' search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like "Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site." This is called comment spam. Google, actually Matt Cuts, introduced a new tag back in 2005, (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, in an effort to address the spam problem.

Comment Spam.

The problem is, that it did not stem the flow of comment spam. The theory is that if spammers are spamming in blog comments to get better SEO and anchored links for their sites, NoFollow would render such spam useless. Problem is, spammers still spam.

Now, NoFollow has been adopted beyond blog comments. Bloggers and Social Networking sites are making all or most of their external, and even internal links “nofollow” links.

If you want to stop spam, there are probably many more effective ways of doing so. None more effective than human intervention, moderation.

There are two types of nofollow attributes. One is the nofollow link attribute and the other is the nofollow HTML attribute.

The NoFollow HTML Attribute

Originally this was created by Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen from Google and Blogger to prevent people from spamming the comments of blogs so that spammers could not pick up PageRank, Link Juice or Anchor Text Value from a link posted in someone's comments.

The above attribute tells some search engines like Google and Bing not to crawl any of the outgoing links on the page.

The NoFollow Link Attribute

Later on Matt and his team came up with the rel="nofollow" link attribute that allowed you to target which links in your site you wanted to transfer PageRank and link juice.

Qualified and Targeted Traffic

The traditional view is that DoFollow link’s are the only ones you should worry about and that NoFollow links offer no value to your search engine optimization efforts. The thing is that there is no such thing as a DoFollow link. It is just a term given to links that lack the “nofollow” attribute. It is simply not true, because links back to a website have more value than just link juice or pagerank.

It is widely known that Google has an 80% market share in terms of search engine result pages or SERPS.  Back linking is a very important part of the entire process and any valid link to your website does count as a vote. It is also true that a link without the NoFollow tag is a stronger vote for your website and thus will help you overrule ranking in the long-term. However many people forget that Google is not the only game in town. Many of the other search engines pay little or no attention to the nofollow tag.

Even if there are many NoFollow links back to your site or blog, you can still get a lot of highly qualified and targeted traffic from places where you have these links. After all it is people that you are more concerned about than search engines, right.  People will visit the sites,  find your link and visit your website regardless of the back link SEO value.

Pagerank Junkies

Many SEO professional lose site of this. Concentrating more on Google Pagerank and using that as a measure of success. This is simply not true. You can be very successful and rank well in SERP or Search Engine Results pages without high page rank. It’s content that gets you there. Remember Content is King.

These so called SEO experts are what we call PR Junkies. They have no real long term goal or idea of broad Search Engine Optimisation. This can, in the long term, be detrimental to your SEO efforts.

Adding too many nofollow links to your site can actually hurt your site. It is a sure way to show to the rest of the world that you are not interested in sharing link love, that all you are about is your own pagerank, that you’re selfish and self centred.

Now if everyone adopts the idea of nofollow, then there will be no link love going around, nor sharing of pagerank. This in itself is counterproductive, as eventually, pagerank will be meaningless, because there is none going around.

Pagerank Sculpting.

Using the nofollow tag in your links is known as PageRank Sculpting. PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power of one website page to another page. Traditionally this was intended to act on pages of the of the same website. For example, there is no reason to give high pagerank to your “Terms of Service”, rather save that PageRank for other pages. But this has gone beyond same website pages, Now people are using this for external pages. In so doing, they are in fact stopping their PageRank from being shared. Bad boy.

Matt Cuts says: “But in general, I wouldn’t recommend PageRank sculpting.” Read the rest of this post on Matt Cuts blog post on PageRank Sculpting.

Also check out PageRank sculpting: does it still help you to get higher Google rankings

Don’t be Shy with the Pagerank

Don’t be shy in sharing some of your page rank. Give and it will be given unto you. Share and share alike. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. How do you expect to get Pagerank and link love from other sites if you do not offer the same?

I do understand that some blogging software have nofollow tags built in. This is sometimes difficult to change. Most of the time this only affects their comment sections. Nevertheless, when creating a blog post, don’t be drawn into adding nofollow attributes to your links within your post. It just isn't cricket anymore.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

Ghabuntu, drew this to my attention as I was scouring his blog posts. Somewhere in the region of about  330,000 of IBM's current 360,000 employees have already started using Symphony and the rest have recently been told to stop using Microsoft Office.

Reports in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, say that IBM employees have 10 days to comply. If IBM employees really want to continue using Microsoft Office after that they will have to get their manager's approval.

Lotus Symphony is an office productivity suite that incorporates huge chunks of customised Open Office. It was developed by IBM in an attempt at luring customers away from Microsoft Office.

The office wars are just beginning. What's great about this is it gives us more choices. Yes you have to pay for Microsoft Office, but you have to admit, it comes packed with some amazing features and is very powerful. But most of the time the majority of users never get to use all that power and only touch on the features.

Microsoft Office Alternatives

So if you don’t need all the Guns ‘n Roses here are some Microsoft Office Alternatives. Some are free while others carry a relatively small price. This list mainly supplied by Free Microsoft Office Alternatives or Replacements

• OpenOffice.org – Consists of Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw , Math, QuickStarter and the macro recorder. Supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange as its default file formats, and also Microsoft Office ‘97-2003 formats. OpenOffice reads and writes Office 2007's default .docx and .xlsx XML file formats
• StarOffice (via Google Pack) – Also known as StarSuite in East Asia, and is the base Office suite that OpenOffice.org built on. Consists of StarWriter , StarCalc , StarImpress , StarDraw  and StarBase. Supports XML. Original license costs $70 USD, but you can download free via Google Pack. StarOffice 5.2 is still available for free.
• IBM Lotus Symphony – Comprises of Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. Supports the OpenDocument format (ODF), and Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite formats. Able to export to Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
• GNOME Office (GO) – Consists of AbiWord, Gnumeric and GNOME-DB. Available for free download for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
• Kingsoft WPS Office – Kingsoft WPS Office is a Microsoft Office compatible suite of applications. It comprises of Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation, all of which have a close resemblance to the familiar layout and functionality of Microsoft Office prior to 2007 version. Kingsoft Office 2007 Personal English version is now available for free download.
• EuroOffice - EuroOffice is the name of a free and open-source OpenOffice.org derivative and a set of accompanying free and non-free extensions. Most of the extensions also work with "vanilla" OpenOffice.org. The EuroOffice application suite provides us a means to enable some of our extensions to do more than what is possible in OpenOffice.org.
• SSuite Office Software - The Fifth Element, part of the list of software from SSuite, which has come from South Africa to take on the Colossus of Redmond, is an office-application collection with a wider range than Microsoft Office has. Any decent suite can do word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and e-mail. The Fifth Element also includes a browser, plus tools for managing LANs, holding chats, and making calls using VoIP

Online Web-based Office Applications

Then lets not forget cloud computing, where you can have your personal office on the internet. Here is a list of Online Web-based Office Applications or Suites.

• Google Docs – A free, Web-based word processor , spreadsheet , and presentation application offered by Google.
• ThinkFree Office Online – ThinkFree Online is free online edition of ThinkFree Office by Haansoft ThinkFree, and consists a word processor , a spreadsheet  and a presentation program. ThinkFree Online runs in web browser using a mix of Java applet and Ajax technologies.
• Zoho Office Suite – Zoho Office Suite is a web office suite that includes tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM and other applications.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte

A while back I wrote some posts on speciality search engines. Were I outlined some neat search engines that one should always have in your research arsenal. Some were Topic specific some were product specific, like the list of PDF search engines. Well here is a search engine that you will either like or hate. Not because it is a good or bad search engine, but because of what it does.

It is called TinEye. TinEye is a “Reverse Image Search Engine”. It has an incredible ability to find images on the web that are strikingly similar no matter how that image has changed or been used.

From their website: “TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.”

Check out more information on their FAQ Page.

TinEye is still in beta, but it has some very promising features. At the moment TinEye claims it has over 3 billion images in their database. This database is being updated on a daily basis.

TinEye is the type of application that you either love or hate. If you are an artist, Graphic Designer, or anyone that posts images to the web, it is an excellent tool for finding how your images are being used all over the web. Because copyright infringements are so rife on the internet, this tool will go a long way in finding those infringements. What you do about that is your problem.

If you are one of those guys who steal images from the web, and I am talking about probably everyone here, then you will hate this search engine. Because it will soon find all images that are being used, no matter how that image has been changed.

I am ashamed to say that I have done that in the past. Now I try my level best to use images that are clearly in the public domain. This tool will go a long way in helping me to determine that.

Obviously images that are free and in the public domain will show up more, because they are used more often all over the web.

As an example I took the image below, which is an image I found on FreeFoto, and did a TinEye reverse search.

TinEye returned 161 result many of which were the exact same picture. But there were some results where the image was so radically changed that I had to look twice to recognise the original picture.

An amazing array of results. This is amazing because of the many differences TinEye finds and the accuracy of comparison to the original image. I do not even want to know what the algorithm looks like nor the computing power which might be needed. These guys have done an excellent job.

Be careful what image you use on your blog or website. Because now they can find you. There is nowhere you can hide. In cyberspace no one will hear you scream.

Robert Bravery is one of our www.MyByte.co.za Thought leaders to subscribe to the Thought Leaders RSS feed click here http://snurl.com/md27j. Still not registered on www.MyByte.co.za ? Join the online network that connects the entire ICT industry in one room –virtually. Simply click here http://www.mybyte.co.za/signup.php its simple and it’s free! Follow us on Twitter @mybyte