Category Archives: Uncategorized

Defining Web 2.0 to CEOs

Webmasterworld’s administrator trillianjedi started a thread where he gives a short and clear definition of “Web 2.0” that you could give to the CEO of your client company :

1. A BS framework enabling your website designer to pursuade you that you need a website redesign because your existing wesbite is “… just so Web 1.0″

2. A “mash-up” of different technologies. Web meets TV meets radio and other media types. See YouTube and Google “podcasting” for examples.

3. Community is King.

4. Push technologies, dynamic HTML and AJAX (yeah, basically all that stuff we started doing in 2001).

5. Lot’s of 3D stuff (OK, I admit I’m scraping the barrel with that one).

While the CEO could argue that fancy stuff such as AJAX or 3D animations already existed before, you really should convince him that “community is king” and that people just love mash-ups.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Java EE 5!

Here’s a programmer who can sing: Roumen and his Java EE 5 song.

I just love the lyrics:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Java EE 5!

One, two, three, four, five
There’s a technology I use day and night
For my application with a web frontend
They told me to use .Net
But I really don´t wanna

So many bugs I fixed last week.
My code is neat and talk is a cheap
I like Glassfish, JSF, persistence API
And as I continue you know they´re gettin´ sweeter

So what can I do I really beg you my Lord
To me codin’ it´s just like a sport
All the bad code from the past, let me dump it
Please set in the trumpet

A little bit of injection in my life
A little bit of persistence by my side
A little bit of NetBeans is all I need
A little bit of EJB’s what I see
A little bit of standards in the sun
A little bit of XML all night long
A little bit web services here I am
A little bit of code makes me real man

This is Java EE 5!

Jump up and down and move your code around
Shake your head to the sound bury bad code under ground
Move one step left and one step right
One to the front and one to the side
Refactor it once and refactor it twice
If it looks like this you’re doin´ it right

A little bit of injection in my life
A little bit of persistence by my side
A little bit of NetBeans is all I need
A little bit of EJB’s is what I see
A little bit of standards in the sun
A little bit of XML all night long
A little bit web services here I am
A little bit of code makes me real man

This is Java EE 5!

Hot hot hot…

I can’t handle this temperature anymore! That would be ok if there was a beach in Paris, or outdoor swimming pools everywhere, but no, stop dreaming Nadir, you’re not in San Diego anymore 🙂

Really, the temperature just became unbearable, it’s ok when it’s hot, but please, only when I’m on holiday! I love hot weather indeed, but not when I have to go to a meeting and use a crowded subway, or while I’m at work and can’t concentrate or when I need to sleep…

It’s just too hot! I guess I should take some vacation.

Starting a new SEO career

Damn, I’ve been very busy this week. On Monday, I started my new job. I’ve been hired by a french SEO company based in Paris called Aposition. I’m glad I found a company that suited my needs and that has the same vision of SEO than me. It’s actually a big company, they have about 40 full time employees, including around 20 full time SEO specialists and consultants. I thought SEO was very shallow in France, I guess I was wrong – at least it’s not the case for this company.
One thing that I’m really excited about is that this company mainly work for big clients, whose sites contain thousands or millions of pages. For example, they have managed or are currently managing the SEO campaigns of half of the CAC 40 companies (40 most significant French public companies).

Therefore, their methods are slightly different from what I’ve been used to. When you manage ecommerce sites with million of product pages, your approach is more statistic and scientific.

This week has been more focused on introducing the firm, their methods, clients, and tools.

I really look forward to fully start managing the SEO campaigns of some of their clients, it should be fun.

Whois.sc no longer exists

I’m a big fan of the SEO Firefox extension called SEOpen. It’s a great tool to check many SEO related information with only one right-click with your mouse. While I was checking a Whois record for a site with this extension, I noticed that the famous whois.sc‘s website doesn’t exist anymore.

It has been replaced by a site called DomainTools.com, owned by the same people from the original whois.sc, but the site now provides more tools related to domain names.

From DomainTools’s site:

Whois’ was a great name for a site but we are now broadening our focus.
We are now a little more tool focused and a lot more domain focused.
Our name change comes from a desire to let you, our visitors,
understand what we do and to more effectively communicate that ‘Domain
Tools’ is a place for every type of diagnostic widget related to domain
names.

While I appreciate the decision to broaden their focus, I find it kind of sad that you know have to register to use their tools, even for the Whois one. I registered today but haven’t received a confirmation email yet…

IBM: Google’s rival for Business Search Technology?

Thanks to Bill Slawski’s posts, I’ve been aware of a few search engine technology related patents published by IBM and also about some really good articles on SEO published on their official website.

The intent of these patents and of these articles aren’t really clear. We know that IBM has been involved in search engine technology, this page gathers all kind of articles regarding IBM and its relation with search engine technology.

More recently, IBM announced that they have been chosen by The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) to develop and online clinical trials portal, that allows patients and physicians to easily find “medical information from more than 88,000 pages of ongoing and completed clinical trial studies worldwide, allowing users to search in German, French, Japanese and Spanish, as well as English.”

The search technology developed by IBM seems very advanced, and uses techniques that no other traditional Internet based search engine is currently using:

The portal uses IBM’s advanced text analytics and content discovery capabilities, extending beyond conventional Internet-based search to help interpret and understand the medical information an individual wants and needs — even if their query contains misspelled words or jargon. For example, patients are sometimes unfamiliar with medical terminology, so the system suggests synonyms for medical conditions and medicines, which helps to correct misspelled words.

IBM’s vision could be to develop search technology for companies that have specific goals and unique requirements. Google also developed products to help businesses search their information, but it doesn’t seem to be something revolutionary.

From what I understand, if a company’s using Google Mini or any other Enterprise products, it’s just a search engine with shallow functions.

On the other side, IBM’s example with their technology that allows multi-criteria search, text analysis, vertical search etc, seems to be able to provide advanced search technology to businesses that need to be very efficient and find the right information.

Yahoo! Answers: real knowledge, entertainment or misleading information?

I was aware of Google Answers where people can go and post any question they want and get an answer for a fee (from $2.00 to $200.00). Their answers are usually pretty smart, being given by people who are usually specialist or well aware of the field the person is asking a question about. Plus if the answer doesn’t satisfy you, the person who replies doesn’t get paid, so he or she’s better off providing a good answer.

Today I heard that Yahoo! provides something similar, called Yahoo! Answers but the system is currently free. That’s probably the reason why there’s a lot of poor quality posts, and it seems that many people go there just for fun, or to make a mock of other people.

I’ve read a few posts and I don’t think it’s the best place to get an answer to your question if it’s something very important to you. I’m not saying that you cannot find good information, I’ve found a very good anwser about SEO but many people seem to post just for fun or to get more points.

A nice list of Firefox extensions

Stephan Spencer published a nice list of his favorite plugins and extensions that he uses with Firefox. If you are a SEO, Webmaster, or just a regular Internet user, you’re just missing out if you’re not using Firefox yet. It’s still by far the most robust browser out there and the number of extensions that make your life easier is just awesome.

There’s just one extension that I would add to Stephan’s list: SEOpen, a tool which allows you to get any SEO related information with just one click, ie. Yahoo! Backlinks, number of pages indexed in Google, and more.