The Drawingboard

To Microsoft's credit

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 12:26 AM

I was discussing a problem in Windows with someone online, and the conversation turned to the fact that the type of problem -- though not this particular manifestation -- stretched all the way back to Windows 3.0, the first usable desktop computer with multitasking.

So, for grins I looked on MS's support website for the fix... MORE ... Read whole article

Tracking expiring and dropping domain names

Monday, February 15, 2010 1:29 PM

This is my most recent big project: DropCatchSell.com, a site for tracking expired and dropped domain names with value.

This is the culmination of much of my recent research into PR, SERP and other ranking systems. The idea is pretty straight forward if you understand the domain name acquisition process... MORE ... Read whole article

GoDaddy finally cleans up its checkout process

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 5:20 PM

GoDaddy has finally gone and done it. At long last, they've fixed a lot of what is wrong with their checkout process.

The #1 thing I now love is there is the option to permanently point all your future registrations toward your name servers -- long overdue, and good riddance to GoDaddy's fugly parking pages... MORE ... Read whole article

Back to basics: clean up your link names

Friday, January 22, 2010 11:44 AM

One of the biggest things search engine providers -- and thereby search engine users (your potential visitors and customers) -- rely up is the quality of the text in your links.

While you don't want to engage in skeevy techniques that amount to Googlebombing, you do want to do your level best to write your links cleanly for the actual thing that page you're linking to is about... MORE ... Read whole article

What the internet will look like in hell

Thursday, January 21, 2010 10:06 AM

Check this out: this is what the internet will look like in hell.

So many things done wrong. The Flash intro (frustrates customers who might just want the phone number). The Flash navigation (makes it hard for Google to index)... MORE ... Read whole article

Early release of expired domains is rare

Monday, January 18, 2010 1:06 PM

The last weekend I started compiling data on how expired domain names are handled. Here are the highlights:

1. While a lot of registrars do hold onto higher quality domains, the percentage of total expired domains that scored well in my analysis (respectable in-bound links, domain uses real English words, etc) that the registrars actually held onto themselves was surprisingly low... MORE ... Read whole article

The PageRank experiment first results

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 11:16 AM

The PageRank experiment I had mentioned in December has already yielded some interesting results.

Let me just say I don't understand the first result at all.

There were three sites used... MORE ... Read whole article

Fixing the FH_DATE_PAST_20XX bug

Monday, January 4, 2010 2:05 PM

Like many folks using a standard LAMP stack system, I've gotten the joy of waking up this Monday to support calls caused by the FH_DATE_PAST_20XX bug.

FH_DATE_PAST_20XX is a bug in SpamAssassin, that scores any sent email from January 1, 2010 or later as spam (approx a 3.0 - 3.8 score, usually on a 5... MORE ... Read whole article

Dear Fedex: enough notices

Thursday, December 31, 2009 1:15 AM

Just a small thought: why does FedEx send a freakin email notice to registered users for every tiny outage they have? I understand the desire of any major company to project that they're on top of things. But, there is a boundary between saying, "Hey, we're here and we know when we screw up" and being overly demonstrative in that effort... MORE ... Read whole article

An experiment in PageRank

Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:25 PM

I'm tired of the great PageRank mystery. Too much voodoo, not enough what to do.

So, I've spread out several domain name purchases with the intent of figuring out what we actually gain by certain inbound links from clearly ranked, legitimate websites.

The first sample is an expired domain, registered, with inbound links from a single legitimate PageRank 3, providing links on all pages... MORE ... Read whole article