Well wonder no more! CNet has kindly brought together a list of their highly-rated, totally-free security downloadables on one page. How nice is that?

Whether you’re after a firewall, a virus-checker, or a spyware fighter, you have a number of choices with descriptions and links to user ratings. I, for one, am pleased as punch!

Safe surfing.

Links

CNet’s best security and spyware downloads

When I found out that the Ontario Science Center was creating videos and posting them on YouTube I thought “These are the smartest guys and gals in Science Museums”. Kudos.

They do it right: not worrying too much about production values, just focusing on the coolness factor, they produce and post exactly the type of videos that would do well on YouTube.

Check out their Plasma Ball video here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKMgRQKqDgA

If that were all the cool stuff they were doing it would already be great, but they are a true leader in the integration of the Museum and Web 2.0.

Their Redshift Now website incorporates visitor participation both from home and from within the Museum. My favorite is the stop motion animations folks can do on site and then email to friends and family. The one below is wonderful. An animation someone created for their mother, and the first comment was from “mom”. Like she says, it’s “absolutely wonderful!”

www.redshiftnow.ca/idea/default.aspx?id=2900

All I can say, is Rock On.

Links

More Web 2.0 Links

The Tyranny of X-Point-Oh

www.youtube.com

More Ontario Science Center Links

www.redshiftnow.ca

www.osc.ca

I sat up in bed to try and locate the its origin. The rattle was not inside the house, it was coming from outside. It wasn’t loud enough to be concerning, but now it had gone on for so long, I was intrigued and curious.

My husband, who arrived here a month ago, was awakened, too. He saw my puzzled figure and in a voice that was half reassuring and half exasperated he explained: “Sonja, it’s raining.”

I’m already more a Californian than I thought.

The event went very well and the attendees had many interesting questions and observations; quite a feat considering our session was scheduled early Monday morning, on the fourth day of the conference when everyone’s brain should have been overwrought and underperforming.

You can download the presentation at:
http://www.shmproject.com/astc2006/presentation.ppt

Although I wasn’t there for the whole conference this year, I can tell you that ASTC is one of the more enjoyable conferences, like Museums and the Web. Attendees tend to be more energetic and interested than at larger conferences, and this enthusiasm always makes for sessions and informal hallway discussions that are memorable.

The world, it turns out, does not divide neatly into chipper, over-caffeinated sorority- and fraternity-types on one side, and bungling social-pariahs on the other. It’s not about whether we have social or analytical skills—we all have some amount of both—instead, it’s about what keeps us going, what gives us our zing.

Me, I may enjoy meeting interesting people when I go out, I may love intense conversations, I may even have done a good deal of public performance in my life. I’m still an introvert. For all the time I spend out there with folks, I need space and time to pull back, breathe, and just be, preferably whilst sipping a nice cup of tea, or puttering about the house.

Well, too bad for me.

I just relocated to the Bay Area last week. For a professional, a cross-continent move means one thing above all others: weeks, if not months, of rigorous networking with strangers.

For me, hardcore schmoozing holds as much appeal as a mammography: I know it’s good for me, but I’d rather be doing something else. I can’t get excited about spending hours looking as interested in everyone as a sorority girl at a Kappa Kappa Kappa party when my boob’s in a clamp.

Fortunately, my friend Diane introduced me to her special brand of networking, one that is perfect for introverts like me. She calls it Hot Wings Networking. It’s a really simple concept: let the red-hot schmoozers schmooze, and let the rest of us relax, strike up conversations as they arise naturally, and, when the conversations get really interesting, take the talk over to the nearest hot wings joint. “Good things always happen over hot wings” says Diane. She and her partner have built a successful business over impromptu spicy nibbles.

The fact is that when we’re not forcing interactions, we introverts project a quiet confidence, which is an essential element of successful networking. It’s important to be friendly and open, but there’s no reason to overdo it. Sometimes, just grabbing a bite with a couple of interesting people can be much more effective.

So, if at your next networking event someone invites you to share some wings, that’ll be me, and I already like you.

Now we know. Once the “point ohs” come out, there’s no stopping them. Web 2.0 may be less than 2 years old, but the big buzz today is Web 3.0.

For those who survive the tyranny by keeping their typing fingers at least one inch away from the bleeding edge, here’s a refresher. Web 2.0 started out as the practice of using technologies such as APIs and Ajax to create web experiences that are more like a desktop application than as a client server system - at least in terms of their speed and responsiveness to the user.

The meaning has evolved to include not just new technologies, but specifically new ways of using the web, or new web-habits. Podcasts, RSS, tagging, all are encompassed in Web 2.0. Fair enough, I say. Where Google Maps may be setting the standard for the swiftness of our web experience, it turns out that blogs, Flickr, and Podcasts are in fact transforming the very types of experiences we seek.

But there it is. That was then. Now, it seems, the rage is Web 3.0. It all started with this article here addressing the Semantic Web, the idea that a new organizational structure for the web ought to be based on concepts that can be interpreted. The idea is to help computers become learning machines, not just pattern matchers and calculators.

The semantic web is not new. It was a hot topic in Boston just a few years ago when the Open Source Content Managment Conference was held at Harvard University. Great idea: introduce ontologies that allow computers to interpret and parse concepts and information, rather than just using them to match specific clumps of data like keywords.

The example is Wikipedia as 3.0 versus Google as 2.0. Wikipedia deals with knowledge. Google deals with word matching.

I’ll buy it. I increasingly use Wikipedia when trying to understand a concept (such as, say, “Web 2.0″). I use Google when I want to find actual things, (say, the site for the Web 2.0 conference.)

Upon locating the Web 2.0 Conference website, you’ll notice, by the way, that you and I aren’t actually invited. Well, you may be, but I’m not. It’s a closed conference, though you can “request an invitation” and they’ll see what they can do about accomodating token riff-raff… I mean ordinary folks like you and me.

I’ve not heard of a Web 3.0 conference yet, but that may just be that none of the invitations have been sent to date.

What the heck. I say we should start Web 4.0. I don’t know what it is yet, but let’s agree on rule number one: everyone’s invited.

Links

Web 3.0

Web 2.0 on Wikipedia

Zeldman’s great article on Web 2.0, misleadingly named Web 3.0

Web 2.0 Conference

Google Maps

Flickr

WordPress Blogs

Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs

Say I have to move a page, but I still want my site to hang together nicely, without serving up 404 errors. Piece of cake, I use redirects: great for the user experience. I know my javascript redirect works for my users. Back a decade ago, I used to use meta refresh, too, and that was fine. But it turns out that years of online scams have made search bots very suspicious (if you’ll excuse the anthropomorphization) of meta refresh redirects and any other scripted redirect. That can only be bad news for my placement in the search results.

Well, it turns out, someone named Steven Hargrove has already figured it out. Written for those of us who have a compulsive need to modify our websites and don’t want to lose our coveted spots on Google, How to redirect a web page, the smart way shows you how to use 301 redirects and your .htaccess file so that any redirects you implement won’t stump the bots.

Three cheers for Steven. And for my web-rummaging husband.

By the way, the post is full of developer-speak, code, and other geekishness. If you don’t speek geek, just send the link to your intern. They’ll fix the code for you.

Seeing as how I don’t have an intern, I’m off to go do that update by hand.

Links

How to redirect a web page, the smart way

Steven Hargrove’s Home Page

We’ve been on-and-off planes and in airports for the last 24 hours. Sleep has been more of a goal than an accomplishment. Stepping off the plane in New Zealand (6 AM Local Time, Personal Time…anybody’s guess), our first stop is the rental car agency. Half-an-hour later, we’re on the road. The wrong side of the road. The learning begins.

You can read the post and as an extra bonus, you get to see pictures of some cows we shared the road with on the South Island.

Complex, engaging characters; narrative arcs that put Tolstoy and Balzac to shame; language that blends the expressive eloquence of the period with raw vulgarity. (Who knew the land of acronyms, contractions, and diminutives had such a rich linguistic past?) All that, and displays of business negotiation that (minus the integral beatings and murders) are levels above what Donald and Martha care to dish out every week on the Apprentice.

It makes me forget I’m still waiting for the next season of Battlestar Galactica.

SEO has a mixed record, with some unscrupulous companies continually trying to abuse the system. For the most part, however, there are simple, ethical ways to improve your ratings that won’t put your ranking or reputation at risk.

Search engines are in the business of serving the most relevant content for any given search string. The best way to improve your ranking is to have a good site, with good, up to date content. The question is, where to start?

Step 1 – Improve Your Code

Make sure your site is professional. A site with good code will be interpreted by the search engines as more credible. Whether your site is PHP, plain HTML, or XHTML with lots of great CSS, make sure your syntax is accurate, and your the use of your tags and attributes are current.

While you’re at it, ensure the site design is equally credible and professional. This may not be a huge factor for the search engines today, but it’s just a matter of time. Besides, your visitors will appreciate it.

Step 2 – Mind Your <head>

There are two types of tags to optimize in your <head> tag: the <title> tag and the <meta> tags.

If you’ve got a site about growing magnolias in the Northeast, make sure your title says something like <title>Growing Magnolias in the Northeast</title>, not, say, <title>1968 Mustang</title>, and don’t leave the title tag blank. This is one of the key elements that tells the search engine “that’s what this site is about.” The title will be compared to other content on your site. If the search engines think your site is inconsistent, you won’t get high rankings.

The page title is also important because it’s what people see in their bookmark list. If a visitor bookmarks your site, but on their favorites list, your site comes up as “1968 Mustang”, they won’t know that’s the bookmark for the great magnolia site, and they’ll never use that bookmark again. You’ll have lost that visitor forever.

As for the meta tags, there are 2 types tags that may help your page ranking. One of them is they “keywords” tag, in which you include, you guessed it, keywords. The other is the “description” tag, in which you can include a sentence or two describing your site.

For a site on growing magnolias, the syntax is as follows (note the commas between the terms):

<meta name="keywords" content="magnolia, northeast, growing, gardening">

<meta name="description" content="Tips on growing magnolias in the northeastern United States.">

Don’t be tempted to over-pack your keywords and descriptions. Some people abused the meta-tagging system in the past, so search-bots look for meta tags that are overstuffed, or filled with unrelated content, and will negatively score pages accordingly.

Step 3 – Update Your Content

The uniqueness of your content, as well as the frequency of updates will be evaluated by the search engine algorithm to determine the quality of your site. So don’t let your site linger for three years without updating it. Every once in awhile, look at your site, are there new ideas you could incoroporate? A few useful tips that you didn’t have time to enter before?

Get rid of dead links, too. A big part of updating your content is making sure that your expired links are removed in a timely fashion. Links that lead to non-existent pages (”404″) are indicative of a site that’s not being maintained, and will negatively impact your search engine rating. It’s also frustrating for your users.

Step 4 – Use Text Rather Than Images

Now, you don’t have get rid of images altogether. Appropriate use of images is a great idea. And in some cases, the whole idea behind the site is for it to be visual and graphical, and you just won’t be able to get around that.

However, in most cases, it’s a good idea to use text as much as you can for your navigation and main content, and to use images only where you have to. That’s both good for your site’s usability, AND it means the search engine will be able to validate your content. Where you do have to use image tags, make sure to include “alt” descriptions within the <img> tag, so that there’s a textual reference that can be understood by users and search engines when the image can’t be parsed.

Syntax should be:
<img src="myimage.gif" alt="Magnolia Tree in Bloom" width=80 height=100>

Step 5 – Get Links To Your Site

A significant factor in whether you get a top-ranking in the big search engines, specifically Google, is how many people link to you. Now, if you’re thinking of going out and registering 20 domains that have nothing but links to your domain, don’t bother. Unless the sites that provide links to your website are credible, those links will be almost meaningless. Google rates not just the number of links you have, but how popular and reputable (and high ranking) the linking sites, themselves, are. Which leads us to the next point:

Step 6 – Got Buzz?

What you want to do is get people talking about your site and linking to you. Make sure your PR initiatives include promoting your site on the web. If you’re used to working with the traditional press, it’s time you get to know the online world. You could buy some Adwords on Google, or MSN, or Yahoo!

Contact relevant or related websites and see if they’ll exchange links with you. Network effectively and ethically. That will help build your buzz and your rank.

Participate in online communities: join bulletin boards, comment on blogs, and start sharing thoughts with folks who are interested in the same ideas as you. Make sure your posts include a signature has a link to your site, so people can check out your site. If they like what they find, they may add a link to your site to their own, or talk about you on their blog. No one’s saying it will be quick, but it is effective.

You could even start a blog, or a bulletin board on your own site, just don’t have unrealistic expectations about the kind of traffic you’ll get. Without a critical mass of a few hundred, or even a few thousand regular users, it can really hard to keep those things going. It also requires varying levels of babysitting, such as moderating, and spam-filtering, but it is an option.

Step 7 – Hosting and Uptime

Another factor search engines look at is where your site is hosted. Is your site served by a credible host with a good track record? Or from a host that serves up questionable sites?

For small businesses this can be a huge headache - how do you know which hosts are any good? With so many hosts relying on commissioned referrals, how can you trust the recommendations you find online? I say stick with well-known, large providers. You may pay a bit more, but at least they’re not a fly by night operation.

Another good reason to use larger providers is that larger companies tend to have distributed operations, which means that they are less likely to go down (this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I’m trying to keep things short). This is good for two reasons. First, it means less downtime for you and your customers, potentially, and second, it increases your credibility with the search engines. If your site keeps going down, it might affect your standing in the search results.

Step 8 – Keep Tabs On Yourself

Do you know how your site is doing? What pages are the most popular? What do your visitors look for on your site? Using web traffic analytics (freeware like Webalizer, or Analog, or more industrial strength solutions like Webtrends, NetTracker and ClickTracks) will help tell you which of your pages get the most traffic, who’s linking to you, and what search terms people used to find your site.

If you find that folks were searching for “1968 Mustang” and ended up on your magnolia site, you may want to check your code for references to Mustangs and replace them with references to magnolias, so that you’re attracting the kind of users who will want to use your site.

Step 9 – Be Old

Okay, it’s not something you can do anything about today, (you were either around five years ago, or you weren’t) so we won’t dwell on it.

Having said that, it is worth knowing that how long your site has been online, and how long the domain has been registered is a powerful factor in search result rankings.

Step 10 – Are You Out There?

In conclusion, and this is a no brainer, make sure you actually submit your site to the top search engines. Visit Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines and type in the name of your site to see if you come up. If you’re not listed on their search engine, go into their submission form and submit your site title and URL.

If you serve a niche community, or are of particular interest to, say, farmers in Hungary, make sure you check out what Hungarian search engines are in existence and submit to them too. You want to make sure your site is listed where your visitors are going to look.

In general, I say don’t bother with the “Submit to 2000 search engines for $299!” If it’s free, go ahead and submit, but generally, those sites just submit to a bunch of search engines that no one uses (I mean, I couldn’t think of 20 search engines off the top of my head, much less 2000).

Parting Thoughts

Ultimately, the search engines want to make sure they highlight good, reputable sites, because that’s what makes them useful to their customers. So, before you’re tempted to use shenanigans to maximize your ratings (stuffing your meta tags, bait and switch your content), bear in mind that the smart folks at Yahoo! and Google who work on search engine algorithms have seen it all before. They’ve been known to remove sites that use questionable methods to improve their ranking; and, frankly, irking Google is probably not a good way to improve your search result rank.

So, put out the best site you can. Go online, and check your rankings once in awhile. See who’s got top ranking on the search strings you want. Look at their site, and, if you can, view their page source code to try to figure out what they’ve done to come out on top. Stay informed and keep your site up to date. That, and the ten steps, should get you on your way. Good luck.

More about Search Engine Optimization

SEO on Wikipedia >

Google’s own resource about SEO >