Firefox Preview Release

Firefox has come out of Beta with the Firefox Preview Release. I take that to mean that it is a release candidate and not the official release.

Rumor has it that this preview release breaks the Googlebar that current Firefox users are just now beginning to enjoy. It seems that there are many more that will not work as well. They will have to wait for the extensions to be updated -- which I would imagine will not take too long for some of them.

The notice at Mozilla mentions numerous features that are improved (that is usually a given on updates, isn't it?). Improvements in pop-up blocking and security are listed.

One new addition is Live Bookmarks which help users discover a new dimension to the web by allowing them to create bookmarks that display dynamically updated content such as news headlines. Live Bookmarks let users view RSS feeds.

Via the Band of Gonzos Browser Forum.

Google PageRank Scales (Directory vs. Toolbar)

Have you ever noticed that the Google directory shows PageRank on a different scale than the Google Toolbar. The directory scale has eight units of measurement which represent PR of values 3 through 10. Anything less than a 3 is displayed as a "whitebar".

To help you visualize this a little better and to interpret the scale, read the article by Fabien Faceries in the PR Weaver Blog.

PR Weaver - Backlinks and PageRank analyzer software

PR Weaver is a browser based software which displays Google search results (Google API Key req) with PageRank under each individual search result. These results can be saved as an HTML sheet or in a CSV list.

There are four types of searches that PR Weaver will conduct for you, Search and Backlinks Analyzer as well as advanced versions of these two. The desktop software utilizes your Google API Key and an "embedded" IE browser to take advantage of the Google Toolbar for PageRank analysis -- therefore there is no violation of the Google TOS. Kewl!

The options on the searches are configurable to dig as deep as you want into the search results. Surprisingly, the software retrieves those results very quickly and can be sorted in any fashion that you want.

A very nice touch is that the results will also show the Class III IP addresses of the urls. This is a nice investigative tool that can stand on its own, because it will easily detect if there are inter-server linking going on between sites.

If that is not enough, in the Advanced Backlink Analysis, it includes the anchor text of the backlinks (or Alt Img text) and can ignore internal backlinks if you wish.


I have been using this tool for little over a day now, and I am totally impressed. It is available for free download (I think I left that part out above) at the PR Weaver website.

The Regex Coach - interactive regular expressions

Having problems with regex expressions? Then try this amazing tool The Regex Coach. It is a graphical application for Linux and Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively.

The Regex Coach has the following features:

• It shows whether a regular expression matches a particular target string.
  
• It can also show which parts of the target string correspond to captured register groups or to arbitrary parts of the regular expression.
  
• It can 'walk' through the target string one match at a time.
  
• It can simulate Perl's split and s/// (substitution) operators.
  
• It tries to describe the regular expression in plain English.
  
• It can show a graphical representation of the regular expression's parse tree.
  
• It can single-step through the matching process as performed by the regex engine.
  
• Everything happens in 'real time', i.e. as soon as you make a change somewhere in the application all other parts are instantly updated.

If you want to experiment with some regex expressions using this tool, try the Regular Expression Library. The library has categorized expressions for Email, Uri, numbers, strings, markup code, dates/times, address/phone and more.

Thanks to Mark Cunningham (Mark's Virtual Playground) for his post in the Html-Kit newsgroups on this. Nice find Mark!

Commercial Open Source CRM - SugarSales

Open Source has a new Customer Relationship Management software called SugarSales and it is "sweet". This is a commercial grade Sales and Marketing tool that you more than likely will not see anywhere -- except at SourceForge that is.

SugarSales is designed for Sales and Marketing professionals to keep on top of the key deals in their pipeline. It helps to manage accounts, contacts, opportunities, leads and more. Easily track tasks, phone calls, emails and meetings with your customers. I wouldn't be surprised if it brought them their morning coffee.

The User Interface is very clean and intuitive. The tabbed interface uses minimal clicks as possible to do the job, and there are hot keys everywhere if you prefer using a keyboard. Multiple user-selectable templates (skins) can give you the look and feel like other web apps you may have used.

It will run on Linux or Windows using IIS or Apache Server. MySQL and PHP are required though. Runs on high-end servers or small notebooks/computers. Source code is provided.

Check out the demo at the SugarCRM website.

Gallina: The Gmail Blogging Tool

Here is a fun little php script from Jonathan Hernandez called Gallina which uses your Gmail account to act as a blogging tool. The script connects to your Gmail account using libgmailer from gmail-lite (an Html interface) to connect to your Gmail account.

Anything that you "star" will be published, unstarred items act as rough drafts. Gmail's labels will categorize your posts and replies to conversations act as "entry comments". The script also uses XML/XSLT for formatting.

Jonathan did have a demo running on his site, but unfortunately it suffered the SlashDot effect and had to be suspended until they calm down a bit over there.

Slashdot does raise the question of third-party scraping tools (such as libgmailer). One Slash-dotter writes, "But this bloggy thing is a very cool feature and Google might well publish a public web-services interface to GMail as well to allow things like this to happen before the end."

Thumbnail Creation Plugin for HTML Kit

For those who use the Html-Kit web authoring software, you will be pleased to know that a new plugin has just arrived.

Looking for a way to create thumbnails of large images? This plugin can generate a custom size thumbnail of the specified GIF, JPEG or PNG image along with the HTML code for opening the original image.


Features:

• Creates a thumbnail of the specified GIF, JPEG or PNG image.
  
• Generates HTML code for displaying the thumbnail and linking it to the larger original image.
  
• Real-time, side-by-side preview of the original image and the thumbnail.
  
• The size of the thumbnail can be customized to be as small as 16x16 or as large as 120x120 pixels.
  
• Thumbnails can be saved as JPEG files or as PNG files (for better image quality).
  
• Code tab for viewing the generated HTML code.
  
• Supports tag formatting preferences under 'Edit | Preferences | Format'.
  
• Displays image dimensions and image file size.
  
• Remembers the location and the size of the resizable wizard window between sessions.

Using the plugin to insert a thumbnail is very simple. Images in the HTML document path (where the HTML file was saved) will be listed on the wizard by default. Pick an image and click 'OK' to save the new thumbnail image in the HTML document path. The 'OK' button will also insert HTML code for displaying the thumbnail and linking it to the original image.

Another great plugin from the Html-kit Support team!

Yahoo Black Hole: From Slurp to the Yahoo Index

I just did a review of the August logs at the Band of Gonzo Forums in regards to the Yahoo Slurp spider and comparing those results with actual pages that made it into the search index. What I found was absolutely disgusting and I could not believe my eyes.

Last month the Slurp spider crawled a total of 1196 pages in total. Out of all those pages, only 17 pages made it into the Index at Yahoo Search. Of those 17 pages, only one was an actual forum topic page.

Logs of other sites that I monitor are showing similar results. A whole lot of crawling, but the pages disappear into a black hole at Yahoo. Some pages get crawled more than one time, yet they still do not make it into the search index.

According to Yahoo's information on inclusion into the index:

When Yahoo! Slurp crawls pages from your site, the pages are not instantly put into the Yahoo! search index. Once crawled, the documents will be considered for inclusion at the next database update. Pages that are indexed will be able to be seen at the conclusion of the update process.

What in the hell does "considered" mean? I know an update just occured, because I can see some pages that they were awfully kind enough to "consider". Of course I answered "no" to the question "Is this enough information?"

Some pages can bear the delay (if at all) in getting into Yahoo's search index. But some pages cannot. Time sensitive pages such as information on current issues (SP2 troubleshooting, virus removal, etc.) need to be fresh in the search index -- the delay makes entry into the index a moot point after 3 or 4 weeks.

I also deal with several commercial sites. New products and their entry into the index involve intense competition in the first few weeks of sales. If you are in there on Day 0 and nobody else is --- well you know where that can hurt you. After the media blitz on the product dies down, then you may be lucky to have one page in the index -- again, what is the point? The traffic is no longer there and you lost out on a lion's share of the blitz.

This raises the question about relevancy at Yahoo Search. It also questions the freshness and the credibility of search as well. What do they deem to be "considerable"? I have read the guidelines at Yahoo and as far as I know, I have not broken any of the rules and those pages go above an beyond their quality requirements. Yet it seems that doorway pages seem to get a free pass thru the black hole and go directly into the index.

I know this is not just a problem here, but all the forums are abuzz with the same stories. Yahoo is broken and they are not moving to fix the situation all too quickly.

I am keeping an eye on the sites in my sector to see if there is a pattern, you can bet your money on that. So far, I have not seen one except that it appears that spam makes it into the index quicker than legit pages do.

Am I suggesting spamming the Yahoo Index? Not yet. I will tell you one thing though, if that is what you have to do to get ahead at Yahoo Search -- you can fill in the rest here. It seems that if you cannot beat them -- join them.

My view on this does not reflect the same views at the BoG Forums. But if you want to chime in on this, you can do so here.