Computer and Web Articles

10/21/05
0 Comments

Google Video Revamped

Several weeks ago I shared with you a fun yet rather addicting new venture of Google’s, Google Earth. This week I’ll share with you another, the recently revamped Google Video.

Google Video proudly touts itself as a way for internet users to quickly search for and watch material from educational videos, user-submitted videos, archived TV programs and more. What’s great is that more and more highly respected contributors have begun submitting their content to Google Video, including CNN, C-SPAN, The Discovery Channel, UNICEF, KQED, HGTV, The Weather Channel, ABC and NBC.

One of the coolest features offered by the newly reworked Google Video is the faster viewing/searching capabilities. When you search for a topic, say “funny cat,” you’re shown nice, big thumbnails of video snippets that allow you to watch 10-second previews of the full videos right there on the search results screen.

In the past, visitors to Google Video had to download a “Google Video Viewer.” Between forcing visitors to download a viewer, the viewer not being usable by Mac users and all the issues visitors were experiencing getting the viewer to work, things were a mess.

Thus, as of a few weeks ago, Google Video dropped the Video Viewer and began to use Flash to display its videos. Smart move. As an added bonus, now that the Google Video Viewer has been dropped, you’re now able to watch videos in a larger viewing area that’s completely resizable to fit your browser window. Cool.

To make your video-viewing experiences ever sweeter, Google has added in volume control, a timeline with slider, and controls for play, pause, move forward and move backward. (I can’t believe they didn’t have these before!)

Upon first visiting http://video.google.com, three random videos are displayed. Sometimes they’re great, many times they’re not. If you’re in the “just-browsing” mood, however, click the “similarly random videos” link for more entertainment. I don’t necessarily guarantee quality entertainment, but it can be quite fun all the same. (In all honestly, I’ve found many of the worst homemade videos I’ve ever seen in my life by clicking on various selections. Keep this in mind!)

Upon my first visit to Google Video, I clicked one of the three random selections and learned how to tie a karate belt (http://tinyurl.com/7p4rv). I’ve kept that tidbit of information tucked away in the back of my head in case it comes in handy someday.

Oh, and if you’d like, you can go ahead and submit your own videos to be added to the ever-expanding Google Video database. Head over to https://upload.video.google.com for all the details.

10/07/05
0 Comments

Q&A Day

Posted in: Q & A

Question: I have a website for my business and do all the things you’ve mentioned in the past (plus more) to increase my search-engine rankings. They’ve gone up a little but I am wondering if maybe I am doing something to hurt my chances at getting better rankings. Are there things I shouldn’t be doing in trying to get better rankings?

Answer: Good question. Tricky, but good. In my experience, and in past research, I’ve found that there are indeed a few factors most search engine optimization consultants agree are bad news.

First, make sure that you are not serving one set of content to your site’s visitors and then a completely different set of content to the search engines. If the search engines detect that there’s a disparity in the content you’re delivering, expect to receive some serious penalties.

Second, no matter how tempting it may be, don’t spam or stuff your keywords. If you have an elephant site about elephants and your elephant content talks about elephants and the word elephants is used 150 times on the elephant homepage of your elephant site, the search engines will most likely be just as upset as your site visitors.

Lastly, keep in mind that if any of your content is somehow deemed “unsafe” for minors, your site may be penalized or wiped completely from normal search results.

Question: Thanks for your last article on saving internet favorites. I was able to follow your steps and successfully save mine. Would you mind explaining how to delete favorites, though? I can’t figure out how to do it, and I’d really like to clean out my list because it’s too cluttered.

Answer: I don’t mind explaining at all; it’s actually frighteningly easy. No memorization, printing out of instructions or headaches required. The easiest way to go about trimming down your favorites list is by using the ever-so-wonderful-and-always-useful right click.

With Internet Explorer open, hit Ctrl + I if your favorites bar isn’t already visible on the left side of your window. You should now be looking at your list of favorite (or maybe no longer your favorite!) websites.

Find a site you’d like to get rid of, put your cursor over the site name, and right click with your mouse. A menu pops open with a list of options. Click delete, and you’re on your way to an updated and organized favorites list.

Question: A while back you told us about a really neat map website. Can you remind me what the address for that site is?

Answer: I actually receive e-mails with this question on a semi-regular basis. So for all of you who were considering asking me about this map website, consider no more and just head over to www.us.map24.com.

Google Video Revamped

Q&A Day

Categories

Buy Me a Cookie?

Related Stuff