where technology is simplified
How To’s
Use Wii Controllers To Navigate Virtual Earth
Dec 29th
Are you one of the lucky ones to get a Wii this Christmas? Then stop playing Wii Tennis, Golf, Bowling and try flying through Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D using your Wii remote. Brian Peek from MSDN blogs shows how you can take advantage of this feature. From his blog …
WiiEarth — Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth
Normally this control is loaded via the web browser and allows interaction with a keyboard, mouse, and Xbox 360 controller. In this article, we will take the Virtual Earth control out of the web browser, use it in a WinForms application, and control it with a Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote).
Video: Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth
Source: MSDN Blog
How I Outranked Google
Dec 20th
At the end of the day Google is an artificial engine based on a search algorithm. This algorithm gets tweaked and perfected by Google engineers every so often. But that can never eliminate the human element. Several SEO’s, both blackhat and whitehat have techniques which give you better search results for specific terms. Google takes various measures to counter these nefarious methods to return genuine results that the user is most likely interested in. You can use this fact to your advantage and in fact this is how I managed to outrank Google for the search terms “google toolbar beta version 5″.
Search Results Proof
Don’t believe me? I got proof. If you don’t believe the picture then try out the search for yourself – search google.
Method To Outrank Google
The ranking was not received by any single method. It is a combination of various things. The page title is search optimized with the Title of the post taking the first few positions with the blog name following it. This gives the search engines exactly what they are looking for right there in the title. If you look closely the all the search terms are present directly in the page title. This gives a huge boost in the search engine rankings. Secondly, the terms “google toolbar” have been used several times in the body of the post. So that the reader is not turned off various combination of the terms were used. Even though the terms were not formatted bold it received the mythical Google juice and ranked above Google itself. These may seem like the same old advice you get from any SEO. But as this example shows you use the “same old” proven techniques to rank well in Google.
How About Yahoo Search
For the same search terms I am ranking number 3 on Yahoo search. This goes to show you do not have to tweak your site for the various search engines – rank well in one and you will automatically rank well in others. Check out the screenshot and see that my post about Google toolbar is only preceded by the Google toolbar site.
How Can You Repeat This Feat?
If you use the right combination of keywords with the appropriate keyword density then you can have such results for your posts. Over the next few weeks I will show you step-by-step how to increase ranking, viewers and comments on your blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed today so that you don’t miss out. One thing to note is that you should always write for your readers and not for search engines.
Google Search Now Includes Flight Status
Dec 19th
Have you ever arrived at the airport on time to pick up that annoying aunt only to find the flight is delayed for 3 hours? You might have rushed out of a business meeting or didn’t get to finish your lunch or spilled hot Starbucks during your drive and rushed to the airport to find out Flight 555: Status – Delayed. Well those days are over. Google now provides latest flight status data directly in your search results. Simply search for Airline + Flight Number and you will have the current status and delay if any. This feature will make holiday travel a lot easier. Before you leave for the airport or on your way to the airport you can always get the latest status via Google search either on the computer or PDA or even your phone. Travel happy!
Source: Official Google Blog
Google Introduces Video Sitemaps
Dec 18th
No more boring sitemaps for your website. Now you can have video sitemaps thanks to Google Webmaster Tools. The Webmaster Tools team released this new feature on Monday evening and announced it on their blog. But the credit does not only go to the Webmaster Tools team as the Google Video team put in significant effort as you can imagine. Once the video sitemap is published for your site it will become searchable via Google Videos increasing your chance to be found on the internet. Using the video sitemap you can basically link to all the video content on your site with the option of defining the meta data associated to each of them. This will undoubtedly be an asset to video sharing sites and websites which generate a lot of video content. Google gives a snippet of code to show off this feature and giving a helping hand to webmasters everywhere. Check out Google Webmaster Tools blog for the code.
Google describes this feature as …
In our effort to help users search all the world’s public videos, the Google Video team joined the Sitemaps folks to introduce Video Sitemaps—an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search.
Gmail Introduces Keyboard Shortcut Help
Dec 17th
Gmail has a comparatively large list of keyboard shortcuts. These come in handy when dealing with a large volume of email coming in through Gmail. Undoubtedly helpful these shortcuts become a feat of memory to remember. That is a thing of the past now. Gmail now features a useful help feature which will show a list of all the shortcuts inside the same Gmail window as an overlay. All you have to do is press Shift + ? to bring up this help menu. This is a very handy utility that will benefit users who like to use the keyboard shortcuts but don’t like to remember them. But remember before you can use these shortcuts you have to turn on keyboard shortcuts in Gmail settings.
A Closeup Of The Shortcuts
Source: Official Gmail Blog
