The reason why website readers really must accept adverts

A lot of people find the adverts on my websites and other sites irritating. One visitor said that she found the website hard to read because of the adverts which was a distinct exaggeration. However, it is a point, and it needs to be discussed. I will tell you why adverts are essential and why visitors to websites 'must' accept them and even click on them.

Google Ads are a force for good in one way. The support the 'independent websites' which provide a valuable contribution to the internet. Image: Google.

On a personal level, I have spent tens of thousands of hours and spent many thousands of pounds and dollars in running PoC and ancillary websites like this one. I don't get paid a penny but if I was paid the minimum wage, I would have earned tens of thousands of pounds.

The overall cost over the 15 years of the websites would be somewhere around £250,000+ at a rough calculation if you add in the minimum wage payment. The Google adverts bring in a relatively small income. Nowadays it is around £500-£900 per month. The company which hosts the site charge £80 per month.

So those are the raw facts. Without the adverts I'd have to take a massive loss payable out of my savings or charge a visitation fee. If I charged a fee to visit the site's viewing figures would drop pretty dramatically because no one else is charging except the large news media companies. 

All PoC traffic would go elsewhere to websites like Wikipedia. So, adverts help to keep independent website alive. By 'independent' websites I mean those owned and managed by a person and not a group or a business.

Without ads there would be no websites owned and run by single individuals working alone. I think that would be a big loss to the internet. I would not continue if there were no ads. In fact, I would not have started.

Do you want the internet to be dominated by big corporations who charge for entry to their sites?

Visitors should payback what they have learned from visiting these independent sites by clicking on an advert. You don't have to buy anything. Just click on the ad and see the product. You may make a purchase and at the same time the website owner earns a tiny bit of money (around 10 pence).

It is a small price, and the inconvenience of ads are also a small price to pay for free information. The ad blocker businesses are wrong. They are predatory and damaging to the internet. I know Google and other businesses make pots of dosh from ads but that's the nature of capitalism. 

I believe that all internet users should support the independent websites as it supports free speech and it helps to provide checks and balances against the corporations who, for me. are often unconcerned about animal welfare.

Google Blogger Is Better Than WordPress

Yes, Google Blogger is better than WordPress in my opinion.  I've use Google Blogger for about 7 years.  I have used WordPress for about 2 years.  I've also had my website hosted by SiteSell for about 5 years. Don't use SiteSell.

Note: I am referring here not to websites hosted by WordPress but using the WordPress interface (the code, software) while the site is hosted on a commercial server like Hostgator -- you see it is bloody confusing ;). That is the first point. WordPress = confusing : Blogger = Simple.

Why do I think Google Blogger is better than WordPress?  Firstly, Blogger is more reliable.  It is way more reliable.  I have a clear sense that Google engineers are better than WordPress engineers. That makes sense because Google is an enormous company worth many billions of dollars with thousands of engineers writing the very best modern code.

A recent problem highlights what I mean.  Every so often WordPress issue an update to the basic code and the latest update was 3.9. It proved to be incompatible with certain plug-ins and themes.....and the visual editor does not work properly for a lot of people....and image manipulation and positioning etc. is a lot worse than the previous version which is causing a lot of problems for a lot of people and...  I needn't go on but the truth is you don't want to update your WordPress software when they say you have to because you're bound to get a problem somewhere when, for example, a bloody plug-in does not work properly after the update.

There are thousands of plug-ins for WordPress but lots of them - if not all of them - are scripts and they may slow down the load time of your site because the script code is at the top of the page and this causes a blockage when the browser loads the webpage.  Just another glitch. This is important, though, because search results (SEO) are partly dependent on load times.

WordPress is more flexible than Google Blogger.  I will concede that but you don't need flexibility beyond a certain point and there is a perfectly adequate amount of flexibility in Google Blogger to create a website that really appeals regarding appearance.

I almost forgot.  Google Blogger is entirely free.  If you want a unique URL then you have to pay for that but they're very cheap anyway normally.  But the actual hosting of the website is entirely free.

As the WordPress, there will be a fee to host the website and it will be between $100 and $2000 perhaps even more depending on what sort of hosting you choose.  These prices are per annum.

The most important benefit of using Google blogger is reliability.  You have piece of mind and most people these days simply want to focus on writing and not be bogged down with coding things.  With WordPress you really do need to know a bit about code because not infrequently you are involved in patching up incompatibility issues or problems here and there.

And the code is complicated.  WordPress code isn't just straightforward HTML.  It does depend on what version of WordPress you are using but  unless you're comfortable with coding you might be intimidated.  In addition, even simply running the control panels of plug-ins and your website generally can be complicated.  Google blogger is much more straightforward which allows you to focus on what matters, content.

Lastly, as Google Blogger is a Google product, if you consistently write  good (excellent) content on your Google blog, Google will like it and will find it in search results.  So the last good point about Google blogger and one reason why it is better than WordPress is because it is inherently better from the point of view of SEO and you haven't got to do any fancy SEO work to achieve that (unlike WordPress).

If you have questions please leave a comment.

Cat Websites: Success Not Dependent upon Quality

The Internet is not what visitors to websites think it is.  The quality of a website is not the major factor in how many visits a website gets.  Quality of content is surprisingly a secondary factor. The major factor is how well it is advertised. And one of the best ways to advertise a website is via Facebook. 

A huge number of website owners advertise their website through Facebook.  In other words, they create an article on their website and they put a link to that article on their Facebook webpage (it is very easy to create a Facebook webpage).  Then they build a massive audience to their Facebook webpage.  They do this by paying people to "like" the page through Asian businesses who charge a low fee.

Most of these businesses are in Asia where they can pay people a very small amount of money to homeworkers to “like" any website that you want, including a Facebook webpage.

There are very many Internet businesses who will guarantee to get for you thousands of "Facebook Likes" to your Facebook webpage.

When the website owner puts a link to their website on their Facebook webpage everyone who likes the Facebook webpage receives a notification to the link.  Then they click on the link and go to the website.  The result is that the website gets more hits and this is a form of advertising.

That is the reality of the internet. I doubt whether anyone is interested but they should be because the websites with the best content should get the most hits.

What is the best content? That is another story but it is not really the best content....

WordPress Version 3.9 Incompatible With Some Themes and Plug-Ins

As far as I am concerned, the code writers at WordPress should not issue updates to their software unless and until they know it is compatible with all known plug-ins and themes. Now, I know that will be impossible to do and in which case the whole WordPress model/system is a failure.

You cannot issue updates and upgrades to WordPress such as version 3.9 without knowing that it works with other third-party software which is part of the WordPress system. Plug-ins are written by all kinds of people and are part of the WordPress system of building a website. The underlying software is written by the WordPress code writers but they seem to think that they can ignore the plug-ins which are used by every single person who has a WordPress website.

The recent 3.9 WordPress upgrade has cause endless problems most particularly with the most important part of a WordPress blog, which is the visual editor. The visual editor is a bit like a word processor and it is not working properly because of this upgrade.

The upgrade was meant to improve image and video handling. As far as I'm concerned it does not. It doesn't work at all and I'm extremely disappointed in WordPress.

The more I read about this sort of thing, the more I realise that the WordPress model, the whole system upon which it is built is a bit of a failure because plug-ins are often incompatible with the WordPress coding. And so are the themes.

It is highly irritating to deal with these bugs. It is time wasting and often extremely hard to resolve these problems. It's a bloody failure, as I said, and something has to done about it because I'm tired of being lectured to by some geek who seems to be blaming the plug-in and the theme code writers rather than themselves!

Note to cat lovers: Sorry but I had to get this off my chest.

Making a living from a website

Date: March 2012: Having done it myself,  I can confirm that someone totally new to website building can make a living in America (USA) from a single content website, working alone. How much do you have to earn to make living in the US? It depends what your demands are. You can live cheap and have no children or have five kids and send them to expensive schools etc.. Anyway, we are told that a living wage is about $4,000 per month. I am sure you can live off less.

Update June 2014. I earn less (about half) these days from my site because it is impossible to compete after 7 years or so. Also you run out of content. You exhaust the subject matter. You have to evolve as well which is hard. It takes money. I give away all the money earned these days or pay writers with it.

You can make $4,000 per month from a single website within about 2 years of starting from scratch without any prior knowledge of how to build a website or make money from it. As I said, I know because I did it. However, there are a number of big caveats...

It is not easy. Why should it be? In fact it is tricky and hard work. There is an element of luck as well. There are no set formulae for success either. It is no easier making money on the Internet than it is making it somewhere else. The advantages of Internet work are that you can do it whenever you like and wherever you like. And you are your own boss. A lot of people would like that.

I now earn less than $4,000 due to competition, copyright infringements, Google changing its algorithm etc.. That is the nature of the beast. I am endeavouring to come back though!

There are a lot of failures. Expectations should be realistic. It is getting harder for an individual to make money on the Internet working alone as competition grows. It has even changed substantially since I started about 4.5 years ago.

You have to continually build the site because that is what the search engines demand. I think the sort person who has a good chance of being successful making a living in America from a content site is:

• suited to website building work - meaning he or she likes building websites and likes researching information.
• reasonably intelligent;
• hard working;
• a stayer - has stamina;
• at least proficient in writing good English and is...
• committed and
• able to take some risks and be willing to learn by mistakes.

Note 1 : if you have commitment, stamina and an inquiring mind you can do without the rest because you can learn as you go.  Don't be put off by the list. But to summarize, it will not be an easy journey. Why should it be?

Note 2: A suitable person for making a living from a website is someone who likes and is good at:

1. science (html coding)
2. art (illustrations)
3. design (layout)
4. writing (text)

....these are ideals. The more of the above the better. Writing skills must be decent. I think that you have to be a good allrounder if you work alone and initially you almost certainly will work alone.

Note 3: There are other ways of making money on the internet. This article deals with building the classic content website. This is the way anyone can make money using advertising on the site such as Google AdSense.

I don't have the figures, but it is probable that about one in 100 attempts to make a living from the internet are successful (1%). However, there are some inspiring stories. One person comes to mind. She is the owner/creator of http://www.2createawebsite.com/. She is certainly one of the most successful individual internet entrepreneurs - meaning working on the site as an individual rather than a team effort. She says she developed RSI (repetitive strain injury) in her hands and now dictates some of her content. That gives a clue as to the amount of work that you need to put in. She earns big though (I often dictate my articles now too).

Website Hosting

I would recommend SiteSell, Wordpress and Google Blogger. SiteSell charge but they provide you with the chance to learn as you build so you can get off the ground quickly. This motivates as you can see results more quickly. It can be very demotivating if nothing happens for months and nothing will happen for months normally.

Important update: I now reject SiteSell. They kicked forced me to move my website. Here is the story. 


You can make good money using free Google Blogger without even having a custom domain name. However, Google might not like it. You can customise the domain with Google Blogger.

Revenue

AdSense, Casale Media, Infolinks, Custom advertising. These are the simple ways I make money. There are many other ways including selling products as an affiliate. You act as an agent by advertising your partner's products on your site and get a commission. I tend to avoid these because of the management needed to control the business. That is a personal choice.

Dividing the Internet Cake

There is a finite amount of knowledge-based information. News is infinite as it constantly expands. Social media is infinite as it is really about personal news. That must constantly change too as news is aligned to the passage of time which is infinite. Information, in fact, does expand by much more slowly than news.

Most sites are not news sites. These sites provide information. The number of sites providing information is expanding rapidly. All they do is repeat what another site said. The cake that is of a more or less fixed size is being divided into ever smaller portions. This translates to less visitors per site.

The larger sites stay above this dilemma because Google wants them to. It has to find some way to rationalize and simplify the mass of websites and webpages on the internet.

Sitesell Review

SiteSell host my site. I am getting a bit worried about SiteSell. The engineering seems to be fragile. Today 6th December 2011 around midday, my site is down, SiteSell.com is down, log-in is down, my subdomains except this one is down and all the other sites that are hosted by SiteSell are down too. Sounds horrible and scary. I don't know what is going on. I don't recall being notified but may have missed an email or something.

But even if they are doing work on the servers that serve the websites that they host, their website, SiteSell.com should run, surely? And we should have access to something.

I may have this completely wrong but it has been 30 mins or more now that the sites have been down and by down I mean nothing loads, no website, zilch.

Update: 40 mins down and my site is back. Were we warned?  If, yes, I missed it. If, no, we should have been because it is unnerving.

Update: 2:08 pm we are down again for a very short time. No site. Have to stop work. SiteSell.com also down.

How to improve

In my humble opinion - no criticism intended - SiteSell should either increase their yearly subscription that has remained the same for a long time or reduce some of their facilities to simplify. Either way more focus needs to be placed on technology; making it more modern, more reliable and faster. There needs to be investment in technology and engineering. The internet has evolved. A lot or people access the internet on mobiles. These people need speed, readability and navigation that suits small devices. SiteSell is behind the curve in regards to providing for these people. I asked about this 2 years ago.

Also some of the services provided by SiteSell are gradually becoming less important, almost redundant. One of these is at the core of SiteSell - SEO - search engine optimization. Google does not rely on well SEOed sites anymore. It is using other criteria to rank sites high in search results such as page load time and whether the site is a "brand" or not. This seems unfair but we have to follow Google. They are in charge of the internet with social media such as FB.

What Is a Blogger?

A blogger is a person who writes articles (posts) in a blog. A blog is a certain kind of website in which the posts are dated and the most recent post is presented as the home page.

The blog website is in the form of a diary with each page dated automatically. The initial intention must have been to allow people to record day to day events on a website.

However, the differences between the normal website and the blog website has narrowed. They greatly overlap, in fact, and blog websites can be anything you want them to be. This website is one example.

I write about cats and computers! I occasionally make posts that are date sensitive but most often they are not so it is not a blog really but just a website.

There are advantages to using a blog website - in this instance a Google Blogger site hosted by Google servers - as a normal website.

The home page is constantly refreshed, for instance. That is nice. A lot of stories are date related anyway so the date stamping is relevant to a certain extent.

An with Google Blogger you can label the posts and the labels are listed in the margins. This groups similar articles together. The blog becomes very similar to a classic website as the labels become a navigation bar.

These days there is very little difference as far as I am concerned between a blog and a normal website. The overlap is large.

True bloggers are people like political commentators who write about news events which are of course time sensitive.

You will find that many people use blogs to record family events particularly as Google Blogger is a free service. That means you can start up very easily.

However, I use Google Blogger because it is damn good and it is so easy to make a post. The technical aspects of publishing on the internet are removed and you can focus on expressing yourself.

However, bloggers should blog daily. Google likes that and will rank your pages and blog higher in search results as a result.

If you leave a blog dormant for a long time it will gradually become invisible and not be listed in search results except perhaps for one or two pages.

What is a blogger? ANS: a person who writes articles regularly on a time sensitive website usually making comments about daily changes and events.



From What Is a Blogger? to Home Page

Free Blogger Layouts

You don't need to go in search for free Blogger layouts anymore. By free Blogger layouts I presume people mean templates for their blog.

Google are constantly upgrading their free facilities such as Blogger, Google Docs and Picasa Web. Fairly recently they made some big and fabulous changes to their Blogger templates.

You have enough options to totally personalise your blogger blog. You can even change the domain name to avoid having the .blogspot extension in it - use setting>publishing>advanced settings to do this. You'll need a domain name too. But it is good to have Blogger host your website as they have massively efficient servers that are fast and reliable. You can also use Blogger as a subdomain to your main site. This site is a subdomain to Pictures of Cats dot org.

Photo: by dannysullivan

Back to the free Blogger layouts. There was a time when you had to go in search of templates at third party sites. This was because Blogger templates, although very good, were limited. Not so now.

You can change the width of each column, the style and appearance of the template, the fonts in type and size, the background and much more.

There are a host of "widgets" that allow you to quickly add add on html, video, Adsense etc. to make the website look very professional very quickly.

You can built a site and write your first page in about a hour! One last important point. Google likes its own offspring so it favours blogs over other sites in search results provided the post is good and if the keyword has high demand and low supply your posts will be on page one of search results in no time.

One last point. Blogger templates are written by third parties, people unassociated with Google Blogger and often they are imperfect. Some functions don't work properly. Personally I would not recommend any Blogger template. Stick to creating good content and a website that functions perfectly - a Google one.

 From Free Blogger Layouts to Home Page

The Lifespan of a Website

What is the lifespan of a website? There is nothing as far as I know on the internet about this of any use.

The point is that the lifespan is short unless the website is constantly renewed. By short I mean 2 to three years or so. I don't mean that it will die at three years of age but it will begin to fade. It is almost as of Google insists that it fades at three years of age. Google demands change and unless you can deliver your site will most likely fade.

Also competition will catch up with you and that will impact the popularity of your website.

Some sites are much less likely to fade because the internet depends on them such as search engines. The news sites are more or less fireproof because they have thousands of people feeding them, constantly rebuilding them in effect.

The term "website maintenance" is not the kind of maintenance that we are familiar with. It means rebuilding and renewing on an ongoing basis. This effectively makes a new site, so the lifespan is constantly restarted.

People starting a website should be aware that it is not built and left to earn money. The process of building is never ending unless you don't mind if the website ends in a relatively short time!



Creating the nuts and bolts of a website these days is very easy. The hard part is writing good content then getting it noticed, visited and maintaining it. The last element is the hardest of all in the long term.

See how to publicize your blog.



From The Lifespan of a Website to Home Page

What Does The New Google Algorithm Achieve?

This is what the Google algorithm looks like to me!
Photo by Zer0Her0 (Flickr CC file)

I am critical of the new Google algorithm but cannot criticize Google. I'll tell you why. Firstly, though I think we need to decide what the internet is for or what it should be for. Taking a broad brush approach, there are three types of website: (1) content sites like this one and PoC, (2) social network type sites and ancillary sites like Facebook and (3) sites that sell products or are fronts for businesses selling products or providing services. I am sure there are other categories. Content sites make their money from advertising and affiliate work (acting as an agent of another online or offline business and directing traffic to it and receiving commission for that).

Another fundamental thing about the internet is that it is all on one "high street". It is very cramped. What I mean is that on the ground, in the land of reality - shops and stores - there are hundreds of thousands of Main Streets or High Streets where there are stores selling things and getting visitors through the door. On the internet, in the ether, when doing a general search there is one high street of 10 stores and it is page one of a Google search result! Most people find sites using Google and most people don't go beyond page one. That is a defect of the internet. Perhaps Google should artificially create many more Main Streets.They are actually doing this by breaking searches down into categories such as video, images etc.

As I understand it the new Google algorithm tackles the deficiencies in the Google search results for content sites. The internet has progressed very rapidly unabated and almost without control for years. It is a semi-anarchic business world. Google is itself a business although with the power that it exercises over the lives of internet entrepreneurs you could argue that it should be a publicly run, unbiased and regulated body that creates a level playing field. It does not do that in my view. Google does things that improves its business. We must never forget that. It is completely to be expected and we can't criticize Google for that. It is normal. So don't expect fair play and an altruistic approach by Google.

Google search for content should find the best content and present that at the top of the search results. The purpose of that objective is not to please people searching for information but to promote Google as the most efficient search engine.

It has not always quite achieved that and it still does not. There have been times when I have clicked on some sites that feature at the top of page one of a search result to find nothing but adverts and some stupid one line piece of content that is nearly meaningless. I have seen sites that are made up entirely of Google-translated into English pages that are almost unreadable and which were getting decent traffic with decent Alexa rankings. If you search Google News for "wildcats" all you get are football and baseball teams! How about the real thing? I have seen and continue to see image searches that produce rubbish images at the top and fantastic pro images well down the listings - not good.

The Google engineers are good though. They are probably the best. But they don't have complete control on how to manage search in an absolutely fair and proper way. The algorithm is very complex we are told and works on assessing hundreds of different criteria.

The new Google algorithm is intended to improve search results, to put the best web page at the top and to cut out the spammy farm sites. These sites use software to dice and slice copied content from the good sites to re-present it and make money through high value advertising. Camera reviews, which are full of hard data that cannot be copyrighted, is an excellent example. The new Google algorithm has been referred to as the "farmer algorithm". Farm sites grow content! They are not written I guess.

Has the new algorithm worked? There are many webmasters who are frankly p*ss*d off because for them it has not worked. They have the opportunity to vent their frustration on this page at Google. At the date of this post there are 43 pages of submissions! Mine is one of them. There are a lot of people who feel unjustly adversely affected by the new Google algorithm because they have made great efforts to produce the best possible content. Yet Google has downgraded their search results in respect of these sites. Some farm sites are still growing their crops successfully.

The same has happened, albeit on a relative smallish scale for PoC - Pictures of Cats.org. I have lost about 10% of traffic at least from day one of the change: 24th February 2011 (the figures are from the host server not Google Analytics). I am referring to the main site. There are satellite sites, which are Google blogger site subdomains. The satellite sites have not lost traffic. This indicates that the satellite sites have had an impact on the main site. About.com a nice site has lost 10% traffic - this is strange as About.com is a genuine site and a very large site.

PoC is all hand written content. 2,500 pages of a total of 6,500 pages is unique in terms of topic (all the pages are unique in terms of content) as it is the thoughts of visitors reciting their experiences. My content is carefully researched often from bought books and research papers and I also add value through my analysis and assessment. I don't just say the same stuff. I am doing what Google wants me to do and getting punished for it. Well that is what is feels like. I think that you will find that the techie sites have done well out of the changes and the second level topics such as domestic and wild cats have not. Promoting techie sites promotes Google. Also Google favors its own products. If you use a Google product it will probably do better after the algorithm changes.

So, in conclusion, the Google engineers have not quite got it right in my view for the rest of us but it has got it right for Google (to promote themselves). I love Google and their products but right now I am a bit fed up with them. PoC has added 2,500 pages over a year and gets less traffic now than a year ago! Sure competition is fierce but to compete with Google as well as the rest is too much. What is the point I have to ask?

The internet is still not regulated carefully enough. It is still too anarchic. You have to allow the best to succeed and at the moment too many parasites and scammers are allowed to thrive. We need a proper worldwide oversight body that regulates the search engines and which is far stricter on the bad boys of the internet. Or the search engines need to behave even more altruistically and objectively. Note: Google provide a host of excellent free apps that I use extensively. We must praise them for that generosity.

For as long as content is assessed by a computer program directed by a "bot" how will it be able to conclusively decide what is the best content? It can only assess on the basis of how many people see it and for how long but that is not conclusive evidence. Computers can't yet read and decide what is quality writing.

In my case what may have caused a 10% drop in traffic is that I have a blogger site (this one, which as mentioned is a subdomain) which on rare occasions discusses similar topics to the main site. Also this site seems to have taken traffic from the parent site because the new algorithm favors Google products. For example, YouTube is featured more at the top of page one of search results. Google owns YouTube.

That said no one knows exactly what is really going on. All the websites discussing the new algorithm are in the dark if we are honest.

Update: Here is an interesting observation. A search for "oriental shorthair" results in a Flickr photo taken by me coming high up in a Google search result. My original page which is comprehensive in describing the Oriental Shorthair cat (entitled "Oriental Shorthair Cat") is listed below this single photo taken from a Flip camcorder video (in respect of a text link).  Flickr is owned by Yahoo. Why is Google keeping Yahoo happy? Note: Google has listed an image from my site at the top.

It appears that the new Google algorithm is trying to consolidate the internet because it is too big. It seems to be favoring the big sites and it likes new work (although About.com has lost 10% of traffic due to the new algorithm and that is a nice large site). It seems to want to constantly turn over the internet an give other sites a chance as if it is gardening it. It doesn't matter if the new stuff is awful or stolen. No doubt these super engineers will be fine tuning the changes to improve things.

Update: i hate the internet. It appears that the new Google algorithm cannot tell when a person steals text and photographs in breach of copyright. Many people steal my work and the photos of Helmi Flick. Google lists these sites above mine sometimes - the stolen material is ranked higher by Google than the original work or on a par with it. I have to make complaints to Google. When will Google be able to tell who publishes the original work and who copies it? If Google could do that it could de-list the copiers from search results or delete web pages if it was a Blogger site, without first receiving a complaint.

Update 1st May 2011: Google's new algorithm prefers a 20 line page on cat history on this Blogger site subdomain that is a Google translation from Wikipedia France (a poor page) to my page on the same subject and same title that is comprehensive. Perhaps Google doesn't like links on pages. But when you have a big site you have to have links on pages!

Page one Google Search 1st May 2011.

Is Google trying to force us to use Adwords? Is this a way to push people to sign up to Adwords to recover lost traffic? Just a thought.



From New Google Algorithm to Home Page

Google My Maps to Improve Your Blog

I would strongly advise using Google My Maps to Improve your blog. I use this fantastic software to create maps to illustrate the geographic ranges of the wild cats. OK, that is pretty specific stuff. But the potential is awesome. You can also use third party software to embed your maps into you blog. I am guessing but I am pretty sure that Google will be doing this themselves soon.

At the moment you would normally produce your map using My Maps and then link to it. But having produced some maps of my own I found a means to embed them. Here is an example:



In the above map, the range of the African golden cat is illustrated in blue. Little is known about this wild cat so my idea is that if the map is public and anyone can upgrade it, this should in time result in a greater knowledge of this cat, which in turn should assist conservation efforts. The original map that feeds this embed is here: African golden cat range. This is serious but stuff but it can be fun too. You can see the page on the range of this wild cat here: African golden cat geographic range.

The kinds of things that can be done with Google My Maps are outlined in this Google video:



This next video you have probably seen! It is that good but it illustrates how you can let other people collaborate on your maps (if you allow it) and allow the map to be public or private:



Most people will use Google My Maps to, for example, plot routes to places which can then be published. A classic purpose might be to show people how to find your house if you are having a party or selling it. You can add photographs and videos to places that are identified by flags, which can be dragged into position very easily.

There are just so many possibilities for Google My Maps to improve your Blog. On the basis that you can embed the map and write notes, add photos and embed videos about the places marked on the map you can virtually build an entire page around a map. Of course, for SEO reasons you'll need to add some words to the article too!



From Google My Maps to Improve Your Blog to Home Page

Quality Content is King on the Internet

Staying at number one in Google search can be fraught with anxiety. We know how hard it can be to get to the number one position on a search engine results page (SERP). It can take a hell of a long time and the best SEO that you can apply or you just might get lucky but, frankly, there is no luck on the internet as it is all controlled by those algorithms. What is particularly interesting is how, do you stay at the top once you are there and if you got to the number one position quite quickly but then disappeared, what happened and why?

In my experience the key is this. Google can track what we do off the page. Here is a possible example. Say your web page is at the top of page one of SERP. You built it a few days before it hit page one number one. Then after two weeks it has gone to page 5. What is happening, in my opinion, is that Google is measuring the amount of time people stay on the new page. Google measures what happens before, during and after the visit to the page in question and in so doing is able to tell how valuable the page is to visitors.

If visitors consistently arrive, stay a short time and then search again, the page is not, on the face of it, providing the information that it says it should. Google of course knows the search keywords or phrase so can measure that against the title and content of the article. If visitors stay on the page for longer than average and then perhaps go to another page from the same website and then off the internet that would indicate that the page has satisfied the market and that the website has as well. Google is measuring the quality of the content through visitor behavior.

This then, once again, tells us the obvious really. Everything that we do on the internet as website creators is very secondary to the quality of the content. Google can measure the quality of your content through its algorithm. Above all else the business that is Google needs us to build meaningful and excellent content to satisfy its customers. It knows where it is. However, and this is a big however, although good old Google is very good it is not perfect and it gets it wrong sometimes. One weakness, I think, is that a good page that is short but nonetheless provides the answer to a question may fail just because visitors can read, digest and get off quickly. Algorithms will have weaknesses.

From Quality Content is King to Home Page

Expired Copyright

Here are some rules on expired copyright, which are quite complicated. In the USA the rules would seem to be as set out below in the table, which has been produced with the permission of the author. It comes from this web page (there is no more on this page than is here: http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm). I am constantly concerned about expired copyright or waived copyright. A lot of authors, creators, waive copyright totally or partially under a creative commons license (see video below). This is a good way of using work that would otherwise be copyrighted (see http://creativecommons.org/) - opens in new window.

DATE OF WORK	PROTECTED FROM	TERM
Created 1-1-78 or after	When work is fixed in tangible medium of expression	Life + 70 years1(or if work of corporate authorship, the shorter of 95 years from publication, or 120 years from creation2
Published before 1923	In public domain	None
Published from 1923 - 63	When published with notice3	28 years + could be renewed for 47 years, now extended by 20 years for a total renewal of 67 years. If not so renewed, now in public domain
Published from 1964 - 77	When published with notice	28 years for first term; now automatic extension of 67 years for second term
Created before 1-1-78 but not published	1-1-78, the effective date of the 1976 Act which eliminated common law copyright	Life + 70 years or 12-31-2002, whichever is greater
Created before 1-1-78 but published between then and 12-31-2002	1-1-78, the effective date of the 1976 Act which eliminated common law copyright	Life + 70 years or 12-31-2047 whichever is greater

As can be seen from the chart the general rule is that if it is published before 1923 the work (say a book) is in the public domain.

The protection provided by the Berne convention is life of author plus 50 years (source: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk). The clock starts from the 1st January of the year following the specified event.

There are some exceptions under the Berne in respect of film, anonymous and artistic works. Also it is wise to check the laws pertaining to the individual country which may be different. The Berne Convention signatories are (src: http://www.copyrightaid.co.uk):

• Albania
• Algeria
• Andorra
• Antigua and Barbuda
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Australia
• Austria
• Azerbaijan
• Bahamas
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Barbados
• Belarus
• Belgium
• Belize
• Benin
• Bhutan
• Bolivia
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Botswana
• Brazil
• Brunei
• Bulgaria
• Burkina Faso
• Cameroon
• Canada
• Cape Verde
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Chile
• China
• Colombia
• Comoros
• Congo
• CostaRica
• Coted Ivoire
• Croatia
• Cuba
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Djibouti
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• Egypt
• El Salvador
• Equatorial Guinea
• Estonia
• Fiji
• Finland
• France
• Gabon
• Gambia
• Georgia
• Germany
• Ghana
• Greece
• Grenada
• Guatemala
• Guinea
• Guinea-Bissau
• Guyana
• Haiti
• Holy See
• Honduras
• Hungary
• Iceland
• India
• Indonesia
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• Korea
• Kyrgyzstan

• Latvia
• Lebanon
• Lesotho
• Liberia
• Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
• Liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Macedonia
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Malaysia
• Mali
• Malta
• Mauritania
• Mauritius
• Mexico
• Micronesia
• Moldova
• Monaco
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Namibia
• Nepal
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Nicaragua
• Niger
• Nigeria
• Norway
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Panama
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Philippines
• Poland
• Portugal
• Qatar
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• Rwanda
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Vincent and Grenadines
• Samoa
• Saudi Arabia
• Senegal
• Serbia and Montenegro
• Singapore
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• Sudan
• Suriname
• Swaziland
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Syrian Arab Republic
• Tajikistan
• Tanzania, United Republic of
• Thailand
• Theformer Yugoslav
• Togo
• Tonga
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• United States of America
• Uruguay
• Uzbekistan
• Venezuela
• Vietnam
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe

From Expired Copyright to Home Page

Picasa 3

Picasa 3 is fantastic. It is typically Google; highly functional, easy to use and attractive, all at the same time.

And it makes a great companion to Google Blogger. You know, it is easy to use a product like Picasa and then leave it for a while. Life moves on. But in the case of Picasa I was delighted when I revisited it after being away for about a year. It was good in 2008. It is fabulous now. And it’s all free. If this was 1999 or even 2005 someone would be charging a good price for this software. After purchase, it would have come in a package in the form of a CD, maybe after a week’s wait. Now you can find it, download it, use it all in the space of under ten minutes. Picasa 3 does a fabulous job of sorting and filing your photographs and if you have a lot, this is important.

It does such a good job that if you have a lot of photographs you are almost bound to discover photographs that you forgot you had. That happened to me with some fabulous Norwegian Forest Cat photographs that Helmi Flick kindly sent me some time ago. How did I miss them? No excuses.

Well, what better way to explore Picasa 3 than with these photographs. Two simple to use but powerful features are the collage function and the video maker. A notable feature is the ease of use combined with speed. Both of these factors are very important particularly if you are working alone and trying to compete against websites where they have greater resources. Efficient blogging and speed blogging is important. And it is motivating if things go quickly and in a trouble free manner.

The video below of the Norwegian Forest Cat Family was made using Picasa 3. Please note that there are two aspects to Picasa 3. There are the Picasa Web Albums, which is air computing (everything takes place online using Google servers) and Picasa 3, the software for which resides on your hard drive and which links to the online albums as well as deal with a lot of stuff on your computer.

When you make a video you do it on your computer and then upload it to YouTube, for example.

The above video was made in about one hour from scratch during which:

1. I found and downloaded the software
2. I learned how to make a video using Picasa 3
3. I made the video
4. I uploaded the video to YouTube

This shows how intuitive, easy and pleasing the whole process is. For example, one of the complications with video is getting the formatting correct. In HD you need to select dimensions of at least 1280 x 720 but this is very easy to do as the controls stare you in the face.

Here are the steps I took from a cold start i.e no application/program on my hard drive to embedding the videos on this page:

1. Search for Picasa 3 using Google and you get a link to the free Picasa 3 download at the top of page one of search listings.
2. Download Picasa and simply follow the instructions to install the software. For people new to this process that means either saving the installation file to your computer and then running it or running it immediately. Either way produces the same result but one needs immediate action.
3. I always request that the installation process install a shortcut icon the desktop. If you miss this you can install a desktop icon by clicking on the start button (bottom left of the screen) and then searching for Picasa 3. Once it comes up as a search result simply drag it onto the desktop.
4. Click on the shortcut icon on the desktop.
5. Picasa 3 starts up surprisingly quickly and starts to collate and file all the picture folders on your computer by the date the photo was taken (recorded in camera). You can move photos from one folder to another by clicking and dragging. You can also tag photos by type and favourite, for example. Importing from a camera is intuitive. Plus all the usual editing controls to improve the photos are available. Sharing online is equality intuitive as the program will upload to your Picasa Web Album. The basic features are covered in the the video at the top of this page.
6. One of the great strengths of this software is the search facility, unsurprising, of course as it is Google doing the searches. When the search result are shown a full list of folders accompanies the folder that ranks as the most likely.
7. OK back to making a video. Select the photos that will be used to make the video. If they are all in the same place, you can click on the first photo and then click on one that is a long way from the first while holding down the shift key. This will highlight all the photos in-between.
8. Then click on the video icon on the bottom of the page.
9. The video is created. From this starting point you can create text pages, create captions, select the transition of choice (dissolve is default – a nice long dissolve), import more images or videos to incorporate in the new video and more including adding music. Music should be licensed for use under a creative commons license or royalty free for which you will need to pay a download fee but thereafter use is unlimited but there can be no resale etc. A Google search for “Royalty Free Music” will produce a list of providers.
10. When finished preparing the video, click create video and after that upload video.
11. For HD camcorders the dimension should be 1280 x 720 (720p).

That is it for creating videos. For collages, after you have highlighted the selected images as described above you select (from the menu) Create>collage and follow the simple instructions. You can see a collage I created for the Pictures of Cats org website here: Norwegian Forest Cat Family. The video below is another short video created with this software.

As to Picasa Web Albums that is equally impressive. All posts to a Blogger blog results in images being stored on a Picasa Web Album. It is very easy to create code in relation to these images and show them on your Blogger site. This means you can show bigger images and slide shows (big slide shows – see this page for example). The code can be accessed on the right hand side of the page and then copied and pasted into the Edit Html window of the Blogger input page. This is the screen shot where you can find the code to embed:

This image is linked from a Picasa Web Album.

Picasa 3 is well worth exploring and it is of real value to Bloggers. Here is another video I made in about an hour this morning, in bed! Of course it would be nothing without Helmi Flick photographs.

From Picasa 3 to Home Page

Picasa Web Slide Show for Your Blog

Picasa Web Slide Show for Your Blog. Picasa Web has improved significantly over the years. I just went back to it after many months without using it and it is mightily impressive now, very powerful and quick. It would be as it is made by Google. That’s enough Google worship. I have used Google Picasa Web for some time. I use it to store the pictures and in fact all the pictures that are uploaded to Blogger blog are saved in Picasa Web under a new folder automatically created. And that even applies to posts for your blog made with Windows Live Writer. I was surprised at that. But it is good news as images stored on Picasa Web Albums are included in a Google image search so this spreads the word a bit and gets you known a bit more on the internet.

Making a Picasa Web slide show for your blog is simplicity itself (as is, by the way, creating code to place images in your blog from Picasa Web). The code for the slide show and images are generated automatically.

First create a Picasa Web album and before that get a Google account, of course (if you haven’t one already). Once you have opened a Google account you can then begin populating your Picasa Web album with pictures. You can get to Picasa Web from your iGoogle home page by selecting from the menus to the top left of the page and picking “more” which drops down to a further menu to “Photos”.

Uploading images to your Picasa Web album is easy. Just follow the instructions. It is so easy it would be waste of time to go over it here.

Once you have at least a few picture in our album you can create the slide show (like the ones on this page, which I created in seconds, literally) by going to the right hand side of the page where you will see “link to this album” and a small arrow after the words. Click on the arrow (yes, you can miss that, I certainly did for a while). A drop down list of options comes up and select “embed slide show”. A series of options then comes up which are self explanatory and which includes image size. A great feature is you can make large format slide shows. The one below is small but the one on this page (new window), for example, is in the largest format and they run very smoothly and not slowly.

There are many other features that the Google people have added to Picasa Web over the time I first signed up to it. A Picasa Web slide show for your blog or any other website is one of the best, in my opinion. To create slide shows in the old fashioned way meant creating code. There are third party suppliers of slide shows but they have a greater commercialism meaning the supplier wants more out of it for themselves. Google provides Picasa Web free and it is less encumbered with commercialism.

From Picasa Web Slide Show for Your Blog to Home Page

You Tube is Down 4th June 2009

As far as I can see, at 21:00 GMT You Tube is Down 4th June 2009. I find it astonishing that this can happen. Allegedly, on an earlier occasion about one year ago, the Pakistan government somehow blocked YouTube from functioning as a video or videos insulted the Islam faith. Well I am not going to comment on that as I don't know if that is true.

But I wonder if it is true that a government (or an organization) can block YouTube and bring it down or stop it working. There are many millions of videos embedded in websites all over the world and they are all blank as at this precise minute. A disaster for millions of site. I don't rely on YouTube video but have a reasonable number on the site and it doesn't look good right now.

If this became a routine problem it would damage YouTube badly, maybe bring it down as there are alternative websites that host videos.

Can anyone clarify what is going on. Maybe Google are just smartening up the site but they usually warn of down time and it seems impossible to have YouTube down for any time as too many people depend on it 24/7.

Update 4th June 2009: It is back on. Down time lasted about 20 mins that's all. Is this just upgrading the servers? I find it odd that a site this big should go down at all at any time.

You Tube is Down 4th June 2009 to Home Page




From to Home Page

Gothic Background Image

For all those goths (is that spelled correctly?) I think I know of a site where the best gothic background images can be found. Or at least the best gothic wallpaper. That said I am not all together sure what that means! This is the site: DinPattern. The patterns are very sophisticated and I think there is a strong gothic influence. They form a perfect wallpapered background.

Here are some examples:

Don’t use this image, but go to the website and download as they are inch perfect and need to be so that fit together to form a perfect wallpaper image.

This one is called “bones”. Very gothic I think. These are top notch background images. Please go to the site and leave a comment to thank the person who made these and leave a small donation if you want to. One last one as an example:

Called “Dark”

From Gothic background Images to Home Page

CSS Background Image

The CSS Background image is quite popular for Blogger users. There is a website dedicated to providing them as you might know. It is a successful website (I’m jealous!).

But if you want to put your own background image onto your Blogger blog it is easy to do and it will be all yours and of your making, which I think is better for you (achievement) and the visitors (more personal and unique, which is very important on the internet).

Blogger code is css code (cascading style sheets). Css code is code that dictates the look and feel of the whole website (usually) although it can be used to affect a single page (i.e. the code is on the page in question as opposed to on a separate sheet and then referred to).

This short post tells you how to put a background image into a Blogger blog. First prepare the image. I carelessly use a large rather “heavy” (large file size) image for a background that I use on my YouTube Home Page for example. I also use it for one or two pages of the main website but my main site is not written in css but straight Html.

By default the background image is placed in the top left corner of the page and then repeated vertically and horizontally. Small images will therefore create a kind of wallpaper effect and are generally recommended but a dramatic large image that fits the page well can look outstanding. Some of the best background images are ones that are formulated to knit together seamlessly. Perhaps the best website for this is: DINPATTERN . The patterns are extremely slick and elegant but a bit gothic and flock wallpaper like. Bottom line; try and produce your own image. A large image on a black background can work well but this is about taste!

These are the steps to take to add a css background image to your Blogger blog:

1. Get to the Edit HTML page of your blog. You can do that from Dashboard>Layout>Edit HTML tab
2. Make sure that you have an up to date downloaded copy of the template on your computer and if not simply click on “Download Full Template” at the top of the page. The small file that is downloaded (XML file) can be uploaded to renew the altered template if it all goes pear shaped. But if you review your work at each stage this shouldn’t be necessary.
3. Press Ctrl F and a search box comes up bottom left of the screen.
4. Copy this code (in red) into the search box: body { . It will find the code automatically and quickly painted in green.
5. Just below this line of code place the code highlighted in red below (over write what is already there which should be background:$bgcolor;). This is how it will look (note: the image URL in the example is not a real image URL but the code is correct. Just replace the URL with your own. Make sure all the code is in place.

body {
background-image:URL(http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/images/Maine-Coon-white.jpg);
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

With the above code the image scrolls up and down with the website. I prefer it when the background stays still and the blog moves over it; it can look nice. This is the modified code to achieve a static background:

body {
background-image: url(http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/images/Maine-Coon-white.jpg); background-attachment: fixed; background-position: center;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

You can see how this looks on this site: 3 Stray Cats

How do you know what the URL of the image is to put into the block of css code? Well, you will need to upload an image of your own making to a server. It might be a server that hosts your other website (this is the case for me). If Blogger is your only website, you can upload your background image to various free servers:

1. Google Picasa Web Albums (as a Google member/subscriber you can open an account easily). This is my preference.
2. Photobucket
3. There are numerous image hosting sites
4. I see no reason why you can’t use Blogspot, the host for your Blogger blog. You can upload the image in the usual way in compose mode as if you are creating a new post and then go into Edit Html mode and dissect out the URL of the image. I explain this further below:

This is an example of the Blogger image code as uploaded:

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha-wcIvuHLujkpx2Bh4wYUmnyn8wpivcJ57keLD1OSaWnY88mo8a9_qa5uPfeFY0RZHdKlJFEuODHbD8yyeEwtvYod5-VaOZb-Wf38wz1QbvQkAEJSG2D89myOcHLUlHvmKfV1mcsunBxC/s1600-h/website-info.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha-wcIvuHLujkpx2Bh4wYUmnyn8wpivcJ57keLD1OSaWnY88mo8a9_qa5uPfeFY0RZHdKlJFEuODHbD8yyeEwtvYod5-VaOZb-Wf38wz1QbvQkAEJSG2D89myOcHLUlHvmKfV1mcsunBxC/s320/website-info.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342224703109077538" border="0" /></a>

It looks complicated because the image is linked to a page on which just the image is seen so the URL is mentioned twice. I have highlighted in red the URL of the image. Do this for your own image and then copy and paste it into the css background image code mentioned above.

Preview your work before saving and viewing the website. That is it…..

From css background image to Home Page

Page Rank Toolbar

I use the PageRank™ toolbar all the time. I think that it is worth knowing what Google thinks of a website and the PageRank™ is in effect just that.

I use PageRank™ and Alexa ranking combined to assess the success of a site. These are not conclusive, though, far from it. A site can be excellent and have poor PageRank™ and Alexa rankings if, for example, it is new. It can take months and years in fact to get a decent PageRank™. Indeed it seems that some websites have acquired a good PageRank™ (above 3) through simply being around a long time. Just keeping a website going for a long time counts provided the content has some value.

The PageRank™ toolbar comes with the latest Google Toolbar, which, as far as I can tell, is Toolbar 5, at the date of this post. It requires Firefox 2 (the most recent version is, I believe, version 3). I would always recommend the Firefox browser over Internet Explorer. It is known to be better (however some people prefer other browsers – can’t see why though, probably habit). You can download Firefox from here (very easy):

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html

And download the Google Toolbar that contains the PageRank™ tool from this webpage:

http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT5/intl/en-GB/index.html

In addition to seeing a webpage’s PageRank™ in the Toolbar (at the top of the page) Alexa provide some applications that show the PageRank™ as well as their own rankings. The Alexa toolbar is called “Sparky” and can be download from their website from this page:

http://www.alexa.com/toolbar

It shows at the bottom right hand corner of the page as a Google Page Rank & Alexa traffic ranking combined. It also puts a tool in the header tool bar (related links, but I never use it, maybe I should). This I find very useful as it probably gives you all the information that you need to know about the site while visiting it. As far as I am aware, Sparky doesn’t work with Google Chrome at the date of this post. It works with IE though.

In addition to these tools, that show you the Page Rank of the page that you are visiting, Sparky puts the Page Rank underneath the Google search result listing of each website listed. It shows like this:

I have forgotten how I installed this so I am going to stick my neck out and say that when you install Sparky and use Firefox 2 you will get this to show up as well as the other indicators in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

Hope this help with a search for Page Rank Toolbar.

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