A new clearinghouse service for Gmail invites is being offered at isnoop.net. The program dubbed as the Gmail Invite Spooler (or Gmailomatic), has been in action since September 13th and already distributed close to 24,000 invites. This works out to well over 3,300 per day since its inception.
Via Aaron Swartz's Google Weblog.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Google's New PageRank Checksum is Cracked
This did not take long. The folks who cracked (and released) the last toolbar checksum are at it again. See the continuing thread at MobileRead Networks.
One of the MobileRead members, traB, has code you can insert on your webpages that will display both toolbar checksum values side by side. Any variations in the two will be easily spotted.
A new member to this forum is reporting differences between the old and new versions of the googlebar. He has these installed on separate computers. This has not been verified by anyone else yet, so I will leave that up in the air for now. If this is true, then that would mean there was a PR update that took place -- nobody would have noticed it unless they have the new version of the toolbar installed.
One of the MobileRead members, traB, has code you can insert on your webpages that will display both toolbar checksum values side by side. Any variations in the two will be easily spotted.
A new member to this forum is reporting differences between the old and new versions of the googlebar. He has these installed on separate computers. This has not been verified by anyone else yet, so I will leave that up in the air for now. If this is true, then that would mean there was a PR update that took place -- nobody would have noticed it unless they have the new version of the toolbar installed.
PageRank Missing from New Google Toolbar?
If you haven't seen the new Google Toolbar image at Google, take a look at what is missing from it. Yep, the PageRank meter is gone.
I am almost positive that it is not missing from the actual toolbar that you can install (I still have the old version). People who have it installed have mentioned it being there. It is just odd that it is missing from the graphic on this page.
Just file this in your wierd stuff about Google folder.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Yahoo Slurp Garbling Mac Encoded Pages
In a recent WebProWorld thread a member was wondering why his site was showing weird hieroglyphic (mostly Chinese) characters in his result abstracts. Searching for his site in Yahoo showed some of the strangest crap that I have ever seen. Another site of his was showing the same strange characters as well.
The one common denominator was the character encoding of the pages, they are text/html;charset=macintosh. This encoding makes the Yahoo Index choke. It chokes the system so bad that when you click on the cache link for any of these pages, it tosses an error for them. The error simply states, "We're sorry, but we could not process your request for the cache of http://www.xxxxx.com/. Please click here to check the current page."
My browser was showing the encoding of these pages as Western European (Mac), which is not a problem for the browser (I am running IE 6). It was not a problem for the Lynx text browser also. It is however a problem for Yahoo Search -- and it is not showing a Western European character set that I am familular with.
The one common denominator was the character encoding of the pages, they are text/html;charset=macintosh. This encoding makes the Yahoo Index choke. It chokes the system so bad that when you click on the cache link for any of these pages, it tosses an error for them. The error simply states, "We're sorry, but we could not process your request for the cache of http://www.xxxxx.com/. Please click here to check the current page."
My browser was showing the encoding of these pages as Western European (Mac), which is not a problem for the browser (I am running IE 6). It was not a problem for the Lynx text browser also. It is however a problem for Yahoo Search -- and it is not showing a Western European character set that I am familular with.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Microsoft Doorway Pages - Caught Spam Handed
Bhartzer over at WebProWorld posted an article that catches Microsoft red handed with the creation of doorway pages. The pages in question involve their Asian portal which redirects you to their Solution Marketplace using a little bit of JavaScript.
The article only cited 4 examples of this activity, but after I checked into it there are close to 600 pages of this section in the Google index. Most of the terms are hitting number one (I just did some random checks, not too extensive). It is not known if there are more divisions at Microsoft.com that are using this same technique.
Flood6, a moderator at WPW ponders
I would imagine that they would filter out the doorway pages and let the other pages that were redirected to stand on their own. Just another method of filtering to add to the list.
Not wanting to get into the whole spam controversy, and whether they will be banned or not banned, I am content to see how those pages will play out in the next week or two after Google picks up on the thread.
I was more interested in how Yahoo was treating it. One interesting thing is that these pages must have a 'no cache' directive, because the results are not showing the link for it. The same holds true over at Yahoo Search as well.
So how is Microsoft fairing on Yahoo? Apparently not too well. Again I did some precursory checks, and they were not even showing up in the top 100 for those terms.
Of course, Yahoo is not carrying nearly as many of these pages as Google is. What else is new? But they are not banning them outright either, Yahoo is showing a mere 70+ pages in total. This is about par for the course IMO.
It is good to see that Yahoo is not playing favorites in the 'where are my pages' game. They seem to be treating Microsoft just like the rest of the website owners who are still waiting for 3 month old pages to be indexed. Perhaps they should sign up for SiteMatch and get their pages indexed to remain competitive in Yahoo Search.
The article only cited 4 examples of this activity, but after I checked into it there are close to 600 pages of this section in the Google index. Most of the terms are hitting number one (I just did some random checks, not too extensive). It is not known if there are more divisions at Microsoft.com that are using this same technique.
Flood6, a moderator at WPW ponders
"Yeah, I'm sure that if google is aware of this, the decision on what to do is being made by someone fairly important at G.
If I were making the decision and there are fewer than 100 MS pages doing this, I would just axe those pages (and the pages they redirect to)."
I would imagine that they would filter out the doorway pages and let the other pages that were redirected to stand on their own. Just another method of filtering to add to the list.
Not wanting to get into the whole spam controversy, and whether they will be banned or not banned, I am content to see how those pages will play out in the next week or two after Google picks up on the thread.
I was more interested in how Yahoo was treating it. One interesting thing is that these pages must have a 'no cache' directive, because the results are not showing the link for it. The same holds true over at Yahoo Search as well.
So how is Microsoft fairing on Yahoo? Apparently not too well. Again I did some precursory checks, and they were not even showing up in the top 100 for those terms.
Of course, Yahoo is not carrying nearly as many of these pages as Google is. What else is new? But they are not banning them outright either, Yahoo is showing a mere 70+ pages in total. This is about par for the course IMO.
It is good to see that Yahoo is not playing favorites in the 'where are my pages' game. They seem to be treating Microsoft just like the rest of the website owners who are still waiting for 3 month old pages to be indexed. Perhaps they should sign up for SiteMatch and get their pages indexed to remain competitive in Yahoo Search.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
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.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
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.
To help you visualize this a little better and to interpret the scale, read the article by Fabien Faceries in the PR Weaver Blog.
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