Microsoft’s Analytics Offering (Gatineau) Goes Beta

August 31, 2007 at 2:43 pm · Filed under Web Applications, Analytics, Beta

Joshua Allen blogged on the MIX07 web site this morning about Gatineau, Microsoft’s web analytics offering, going beta. Microsoft is touting its ability to apply its own demographic information to your web traffic data. From Josh’s post:

In addition to all of the standard analytics features, Gatineau can correlate your web traffic data with our massive database of demographic information. This allows you to slice your logs based on gender, age and other characteristics of your visitors. The service is free.

Read the whole post on the Visit Mix web site, or go directly to the Gatineau beta sign up.

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.NET SEO - view state question to the Google gods

August 29, 2007 at 2:52 pm · Filed under Online Marketing, Programming

We’ve been wrestling with some SEO questions about web sites created with Microsoft .NET. Specifically, does ASP.NET view state effect Google’s crawling and indexing of a web site?

What’s view state? Web sites created with Microsoft’s ASP.NET which leverage view state (by default all .NET web sites utilize view state) place a hidden field in a form named (you guessed it) viewstate (or more correctly ‘__VIEWSTATE’) which retains values of control elements on a page between reposts.

Depending upon how it view state is used on a .NET page, view state can be a short string, or, it can be a long string. It can also be a VERY long string. So, what’s the concern?

The ‘__VIEWSTATE’ variable is placed high up on the page, inside the BODY tag, and above all text-content. From what is known about Google’s crawling activity, Google only consumes the first 100k of a web page (at least until it has established some level of trust or respect for the page). Therefore, one could argue that viewstate has the ability to truncate the real content on a large page.

It’s also arguable that pushing the content further down the page will be frowned upon (in general) by Google. Here are a few example .NET web pages exhibiting view state of varying lengths (visit a page, view the source, and find ‘VIEWSTATE’):

Terralever - Contact Us Page (and example of a relatively small view state)
Ensynch - Request Info Page (an example of a medium to large view state)
Cambridge Properties - List Page (an example of a fairly large view state)

Can anyone point me to a Google authority with a clear answer?

There’s a few articles that mention (and address) the problem below. What I’m trying to determine if it is in fact a problem.References:

WebProNews.com

…And the value of this field can continue on for a long time. I’ve seen cases where the viewstate is over 100k or more. The problem this has with search engines is many times a search engine will rank your page based on where a keyword occurs in the document. For example, say you’re searching on ASP.NET and you first have 100k of viewstate and then your keyword appears within the HTML document. This could affect how your page ranks for that keyword since many search algorithms base relavancy on where the keyword appears or how close to the top of the document it appears.

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen

I was working on some ASP.NET hacks and wanted to move the ViewState to the bottom of the page in order to get Google to pay more attention to my page and less to the wad of Base64′ed ViewState.

UPDATE: 9 September 2007
At the time of placing this post, I had reached out to Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor) who is a Google Evangelist. He did reply, but unfortunately let me know that he did not have an answer. He suggested the Google Webmaster Forums as Google engineers would come across the question. I submitted the viewstate question there but unfortunately haven’t received any feedback from anyone with an authoritative answer.

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Archie Bunker: M$ die hard or Apple fanboy?

August 28, 2007 at 11:06 pm · Filed under Hardware

There seems to be an incredible amount of polarity in tech discussions as of late-especially with that darling of tech topics to take a hardline stance with: Microsoft vs. Apple. The polarized completely love one and hate the other like a cold war enemy. This is good vs. evil.

Those voices seem louder than ever as of late. You may have heard them. Sentences usually start or end with something along these lines: “Apple is irrelevant,” “M$ is evil,” “F’ing Apple Fanboyz,” or “Windoze sux.”

Truth be known, both companies make products that are excellent. And, both make products which are lackluster. It largely depends upon the needs of the individual. One more thing—hold on to your chair—neither company is angelic, nor is either in cahoots with the devil.

Of course, we’ll never really know what Archie Bunker’s stance would have been for sure. On the computer my first instinct is to say that he and Edith would have a Celeron PC. But, who knows, maybe, just maybe after playing with Meathead’s iPod he’d head down to the Apple store and at least consider the options.

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Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 Beta 2 - Upgrade to be free

August 27, 2007 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Hardware, Beta, Applications

On my last stop at the official Parallels Desktop for Mac blog I saw a new post regarding another update to Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0. The latest beta build, 5120, is being called Beta 2 (you guessed it, it’s the second one), and like its predecessor, it is a free download to anyone with a valid 3.0 key. The free doesn’t stop there either. Straight from the blog posting:

With all of the new improvements we’re introducing (Coherence with minimize and Expose support, new Shared Folders and more), this is shaping up to be one of the best updates ever. The best part? It’s COMPLETELY FREE to all Parallels Desktop 3.0 users!  

Great news! And, the Beta 2 build brings more new functionality to the table. Some New Features in Parallels Desktop 3.0 Beta 2 - Build 5120:

• Visually, windows minimized to the dock now have the same transitions and behavior as windows minimized with Mac’s OS X
• You can now share folders much more seamlessly between OS X and Windows running under Parallels Desktop. In fact, you can set them up to mirror each other. Your Documents folder on the Mac is your Documents on the PC. It can be enabled for the Desktop, too! Before you ask-no, there are not two copies of the files being mirrored! Both the Mac and PC will be accessing the same file!

If you’re ready to buy the public release of the 3.0 version (or download the free trial version) as opposed to this beta version, visit the Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 page on their web site. For more details on this Beta 2 build, read the entire post on the Official Parallels Desktop Virtualization blog. There is also a link to download the beta in that article.

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Live from Red Bull Flugtag Texas 2007

August 25, 2007 at 1:35 pm · Filed under Events

Flugtag’s first U.S. night flight in Austin! The Flick’r set below includes pictures of team crafts and the setup at Auditorium Shores. I’ll be posting more pictures throughout the day and night! If you’re coming to the event and need more information, visit the Red Bull Flugtag USA web site!

These Flugtag pictures are a few of a larger Flick’r set of Flugtag Texas 2007 pictures.

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