Green Robe Industries Link Blog

A tool belt full of search engines

nosilver — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 23:22:49 +0000

As a child, my father would firmly chide if I would bring him the wrong tool. â€œThe right tool for the right jobâ€ he would say. Eventually, I learned my crescents and my box ends from my pipe wrenches and my dykes. Now days, my tool belt is more virtual, and the laundry list of choices I have for any given task grows day by day. Photoshop or Gimp, Dreamweaver or NoteTabâ€¦ I like to think that Iâ€™m doing my dad proud and making the right choices. The one area I could stand some improvement is search engines. I optimize for them, charge clients to document them, pull logs to find out how others use them. But more often than not, when faced with a search dilemma, I Google it. Firefox is partly to blame, the prefetching and handy search box are all too seductive. But I hope with this list that will change. Iâ€™m sorry Dad, it wonâ€™t happen again.

http://www.philb.com/whichengine.htm

The Unofficial Web Applications List

nosilver — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:24:08 +0000

Over the years the interface from which we as humans harness the power of the microprocessor has evolved pretty steadily. From punch card to graphical user interface the progression has gone pretty smoothly, all things considered. Over the years we’ve started to not only access these chips locally, but also network the little suckers together. The progression of the network user interface has had many of the same steps along the way. Just as the command prompt once ruled the desktop, so too did the Telnet once rule the BBS. With the advent of Tim Berners-Lee’s little idea and the explosion of the World Wide Web, the network now has a GUI of it’s own. It’s becoming increasingly irrelevant how much power you have sitting on the desktop, as long as you have the horses to fire up Firefox you can cede the power requirements to the server. This has spawned the age of the web application and with it comes and new paradigm in desktop computing. (On a side note, why was there no mention of the Internet in Bill Gate’s 1995 book The Road Ahead? How, as a geek, could he have been that far out of the loop?) To that end, somebody named Danny has setup The Unofficial Web Applications List. Much like the Start button on Windows, it makes a vain attempt to tell you what you can run. Things that get stumbled across wind up here. But hey, you have to start somewhere.

http://www.webapplist.com

Mod rewrites are evil

nosilver — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 20:02:48 +0000

Mod-rewrites are evil. Not in the â€œI am your FAAATHERâ€ sort of way, but in the â€œumm, what the hell am I doing?â€ sorta way. Nobody understands this stuff. Just hope you get lucky and have a web technology integrator who knows what you are trying to do. However, if you dare to venture into this murky netherworld of Apache mods and .htaccess files you’ll be able to handsomely reward yourself with search engine friendly URLs. (Or the headache that ate Detroit.) If you need a little help along the way check out this forum.

http://www.mod-rewrite.com/

NicheBot

nosilver — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 19:50:23 +0000

We’ve all been there, you spend a certain amount of time working on a specific project or for a specific company and you fall victim to company speak. Your mind becomes so saturated with the marketing jargon that you begin to forget that other people, people outside the company, have a difficult time understanding what you are talking about. When this gets applied to search engine optimization the results can be disastrous. We here at GRI have been brought in on projects where the targeted keywords for a website were definitely not the ones used by their customers. In fact, the majority of the keyword traffic where actually employees making sure they were winning the keyword war… with themselves. It’s good to have a tool to shed a little light on the subject and allow the folks who don’t speak your language to find you. NicheBot does just that. Using a combination of WordTraker Keyword, Overture Keywords, and Google Ranking, NicheBot helps you discover the words that people are using to find you and your competition. Allowing you to more effectively SEO your site.

http://www.nichebot.com/

Bug me not

nosilver — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:50:56 +0000

Youâ€™ve seen the link beforeâ€¦ Youâ€™re checking out an interesting post on Slashdot and you want to read the full article. But you know that clicking that link will require a soul sucking registration that will take hours with many emails back and forth and at least two trips to the doctor for the requisite pound of flesh. Well fear not cyberloafer! There is an answer to your prayers. Bugmenot.com is the aptly named site for a public login that will grant you the keys to intellectual nirvanaâ€¦ before you forget what the article was about in the first place.

http://www.bugmenot.com/

Fontifier

nosilver — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:48:00 +0000

I once said â€œYou can never bee too rich, too handsome, or have too many fonts.â€ Now I know that Iâ€™m a TTF set short. Fontifier bills itself as â€œYour own handwriting on your computer!â€ Rest assured, Iâ€™ll have mine soon.

http://www.fontifier.com/

Amazon Image Hacks

nosilver — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:45:45 +0000

This link is funny. Amazon is an incredible resource. Thereâ€™s no doubt that theyâ€™ve learned well the lessons in the Cluetrain. That being said, it seems that the openness of their operation might need a little tweaking. It seems image manipulation is not limited to Photoshop these days. A whole new subgenera of URL hacking has come of age.

http://aaugh.com/imageabuse.html

Change This

nosilver — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:44:29 +0000

The world is changing very quickly. It is difficult to keep up. But it always has been so. What you need is a roadmap, a way to define where you are and where youâ€™re to go next. ChangeThis comes in much like the Cluetrain Manifesto to do just that. In a creative conversation the rules are being transformed and directions determined in a series of manifestos that help to guide in the frenzied hurtling towards what is to come.

â€œChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. Weâ€™re on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds.â€

http://www.changethis.com/

The Cluetrain Manifesto

nosilver — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:42:08 +0000

Several observations and forces have conspired to reshape out thinking about the way of the world here at Green Robe Industries. None more so than the Cluetrain Manifesto. This single document has turned the direction of our endeavors like no other. So, to that end, it shall be listed here as our first linkblog listing to inform and edify the uninitiated and to honor those who recognize that all the worldâ€™s a conversation.

People of Earthâ€¦

â€œA powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarterâ€”and getting smarter faster than most companies.â€

http://www.cluetrain.com/