SEO and linking website pages

In order to get a high page ranking with Google, it is important to link your websites pages correctly.

There are two concepts Mesh linking and Hierarchical linking.

Mesh linking connects every page on the site to every other page. This allows the user to get to any part of the site from any page to which they are currently on. This method won’t help increase your pagerank with Google.

Hierarchical linking creates a top level page (most often the index.html). This page has the most to/from links. Google assigns the index as a higher page rank, thus giving your site a higher PageRank.

Review of linking practices

Use text based links, in a Hierarchical design.

Place keywords in the links

Link less-important pages back to the index.html (don’t link them from the index.html)

Less important pages include:

Copyright page

Terms and conditions

Privacy

About Us

Contact Us

Order form pages

Links pages

Testimonials

How to get your website recognized by Google or Yahoo

What’s a Spider?

Search engines send “spiders” that crawl the web. This information is recorded from your website and indexed in a large database. Google’s main spider is called “Googlebot”. You can check your website’s server log and find out when Google’s spider has visited your site.

Upload your website during the construction process

It is important to upload your website to the server as soon as possible. Google doesn’t index new sites right away. It usually takes at least 6 months before the site gets a high page rank. Therefore it is important to upload your home page and an outline of your final site during the construction process.

How to find out which keywords best describe your website

Make sure your website’s content is relevant to the keywords entered in Google. During the design process, decide which keywords best describe your website and your business. If you were offering photography services, focus on words that you target market would enter in a Google search engine.

It is better to be specific and understand your target audience. Who is your market? What demographic do they represent? What keyword would they enter when using a search engine?

Keyword Discovery is a website that can tell you the search phrases people use to find products and services, as well as the search terms that drive traffic to your competitors.

Now that you have designed your website and uploaded it to a server, how do you receive a high Google page rank?

If you want to receive traffic to your website through search engines such as Google and Yahoo, it is important that your site appears in the top ten. Studies have shown that pages that appear in the top ten Google listing receive 80% of search engine traffic. Those that appear below the top twenty receive less than 1%. In other words if, you’re not in the top twenty, search engines, will not send any visitors to your site.

5 things that will help your website obtain a top ranking with Google

The most important way to improve your website page ranking is by using keywords.

1. Keywords used in your Links

Make sure that the links use descriptive words that will reinforce to the search engine spiders the purpose of your page. Once you have discovered that keywords that bring traffic to your site. Use these same words in your page links. Use Vancouver graduation portraits instead of sample work. This informs the search engines that your website is about graduation photography in the Vancouver market.

It is also important that those external websites that link to your site use the same keywords, this helps your page rank improve when someone searches in Google.

2. Keywords used in the page title

Use descriptive and important keywords in your website’s page titles. This will help increase page rank.

3. Keywords in headings.

Your headline titles should include important keywords.

Google determines the importance of a website by the number of external links that connect to your website. PageRank is determined by the number of references (links) that recommend your website. If there are many external sites that refer to you then it is assumed that your site is important and should get a higher page rank. Links to a site are testimonials; people would only link to you if they believe the site is beneficial or relevant.

4. Relevant content will increase page rank.

Try to have at least 200 words of content on each page. This will increase the chance ranking high using different keyword phrases.

5. Update your content often

You should update your website’s content monthly. Google’s page ranking systems prefers sites that are current and that add new information. This alerts the spiders that your site is active and is constantly updated. The highest ranked sites constantly maintain and add to their content. This is important to your visitors, and keeps them returning to your site for new information.

Art meets technology

What is a QR Code?

Quick response codes (QR codes)  are 2-dimensional bar codes. They were developed by  the Japanese company Denso-Wave, in 1994. The original idea was to use the bar code to track manufacturer’s vehicle parts. The advantage of the QR Code was that it could store more data then earlier bar codes. This code can store up to 3K of binary data, or almost 3 thousand AlphaNumeric characters (this entire content of this blog).

The QR codes appear as geometric images, you probably have seen them, and did not know that it was a bar code filled with amazing data.

a QR code for carlspage.ca

The code is read with an optical device, most commonly a camera phone. Using software, the QR code is converted back into text or images and displayed on a screen.

How can you read it?

In order to process a QR Code you need a reader. Most people use their camera phone and download the QR Code reader software.

Or you can download a free reader from Kaywa. It is compatible with many phones.

You can generate you own QR Code. The QR Code above is the link to my portfolio website.

Adobe is offering a QR Code generator that works with the Adobe Air application. It is a desktop version that works online. They are currently working on an offline version, to be released soon.

So now you have a QR Code reader and a code generator. Now you can have fun sending messages to your friends. It is more fun that using invisible ink (ie lemon juice ).

Buy Real World Streets

Now you can play monopoly online, and buy real life streets….

On September 9, 2009 Hasbro games along with Google launch an online world version of the classic Monopoly board game. It allows players to compete against opponents globally. Anyone with internet access can play. The game is free. Instead of buying properties such as Boardwalk and Reading Railroad, players can buy and build on real roadways. Anywhere that Google Maps has plotted is available. You can build on Hollywood Boulevard, the Avenue de Champs Elysées, or your local Main street. The application uses Google Maps and using an overlay applies buildings, skyscrapers and even sewage plants to the game board.

How to play

First go the Monopoly City Streets website. Register for FREE and start playing. Each player starts with $3 million dollars. Search for an available street, and purchase it. You can purchase various streets around the globe, then you can start building. As soon as you have built a structure, you are eligible to receive rent income.

Steps to buying streets:

Search for the street you want to buy.
Click on the street, then click the DEED to confirm your purchase.

Purple streets can be purchased from the bank.
Blue streets are owned by other players.
Red streets are owned by you.

Invest Wisely

To begin you will receive $3 million dollars. The street price varies according to the size. Larger streets are more expensive, but there are more opportunity to build. By adding buildings to your street you increase the value and your rent income increases. There are different buildings that can be built, as you play the game new buildings are available to you.

my first building @ 56th street and Highway 17

Take a Chance

As you play online, Chance cards are randomly issued. Just like the board game, some cards are great and others are not. They have created new cards for the online game. A demolition card allows you to destroy one of your opponents buildings and even your own (to rebuild a better quality building). Some buildings can keep your street safe for an opponents demolition. Other buildings with cause havoc in the neighborhood driving rents downward.

The ultimate goal is to create the largest real estate monopoly

The game started September 9, 2009, but the overwhelming popularity caused the game servers to crash. Unfortunately, players were unable to sign in or even get onto the website. It was decided that Hasbro and Google will relaunch the game. The system will be upgraded in order to handle the great demand. As of September 14, the game is ready to play. Start Building!

Touch screen technology

Touch screen demo at TED conference

Jeff Han’s public demonstration of the multi-touch-screen interface was at the TED 2006 conference. The demo showed how, by touching the screen, the user could interact with the computer. This was one of the highlights at the 2006 conference. Since that unveiling, the interface has become the next advancement since the mouse. From now on the touch interface will become a standard way for a user to interact with a computer.

Over the last three years, users have been introduced to this user interface. Most notibly with Apples iPhone and iTouch consoles. Some of the new functions include how the screen is displayed and how the user can change documents being viewed. By touching the screen object and pinching the thumb and forefinger the screen zooms out. If you do the opposite the screen zooms in, enlarging the object. When you touch the screen with you finger and swipe to the left or right, a new page appears. This is similiar to using a mouse, but now a mouse is no longer needed.

This evolution of how the user interacts with the computer, is becoming more and more seamless.

Evolution of Touch Screen Technology

Touch screen technology was first developed in the late 60′s, but the first public systems were visible by 1972. These were generally point of sale kiosks and later into bank ATMs. The use of infrared transmitters and receivers continued the development of this technology. By this time the best sensors could only one point of contact at a time. With the development of heavy industrial machinery, the touch screen benefits, continued the development of the interface. It was used to interact with machinery with a mouse interface was not practical.

The branches of touchscreen technology

Surface acoustic wave relies on ultrasonic waves for touch detection. When the screen is touched, the change in the ultrasonic wave determines the location of contact. This disadvantage is that outside elements and contaminants will reduce the effectiveness of the interface.

Resistive touch screens use electrically conductive layers to determine the point of contact. Two thin layers separated by a small gap are built into the panel, when the location is pressed the layers are connected sending an electrical current to the controller. The method can support multi-touch systems.

Capacitive touch screen panels are another development. The panel is a sensor usually made of glass and coated with a transparent conductor. This type of sensor is styled as a capacitor in which the plates are the overlapping creating a grid pattern. Touching the surface of the sensor will affect the electric field alerting the computer that contact on the screen has been made. This touch screen process is used on Apples’ iTouch and iPhone. Other companies are Microsoft, Sony Ericsson, HTC, Palm and others.

Infrared uses LED and photosensor pairs to create a grid of light beams across the display. When a finger touches the screen the light beams are interrupted causing a measured decrease in light at the corresponding photosensors. The output can be used to locate a touch-point coordinate. The disadvantage is this system is the high cost and the interference of signals in outdoor, direct sunlight locations.

Optical Imaging is relatively new. The concept is that at least 2 image sensors are placed at the corners of the screen and infrared backlight are place at the other sides of the screen. When a finger touches this screen a shadow appears and the systems camera defines the area of interest. This method is gaining popularity because of its affordability and versatility.

What is Drupal?




Drupal is an open source, content management system that is a popular way to design and create interactive websites. Part of it’s success is as a result that the system is open source. This means that users can learn to develop and create highly functional websites free of charge. In fact, Drupal developers, all around the world, are invited to develop new and more efficient code modules, which can be shared within the Drupal community.
This code, including the Drupal framework is distributed under the GPL (General Public License). The license allows for developers the change the code as required, but credit must be noted to the original coders. This open source system is largely responsible for the continuous development and upgrades to the Drupal publishing software.

History of Drupal

The start of Drupal has been credited to two University of Antwerp students, Dries Buytaert and Hans Snijder. The original idea started after the two students set up a wireless bridge in order that a small group of friends could share Hans’ ADSL Internet connection. Dries soon developed a small news site with a built in web board, this would allow the group to share messages.
Soon after graduation, Dries wanted a suitable domain name. Dorp.org was the idea (Dorp is the Dutch word for village). However, he misspelled it and their domain name became drop.org. Eventually this name became Drupal, which is the English pronunciation of the Dutch word for drop….”druppel”
Rather than selling the software system to the public, it was offered as Open Source and distributed under the GPL mandate. This allowed talented programmers the opportunity to update the system to make it one of the more popular content management systems available to web developers.

Benefits of Drupal

In order for a successful system to gain popularity in the web development sector, there must be features and benefits that developers require. Here is a summary list of Drupal’s benefits in creating a content management web site.

Drupal pros

Easy deployment
Editing tabs integrated into actual pages
Editing content is simple as well
Very flexible in its configuration
Modules are plentiful, free, and suitable for non-profits
Versioning is available
Many high profile sites use Drupal (e.g.: MTV UK, BBC, the Onion, Nasa, Greenpeace UK, Kleercut )
Multiple levels of categories allowed along with easily integrated tagging system
Human readable URLs which are search engine friendly
1 installation allows you to create and manage multiple websites (very handy when creating campaign sites)
Highly configurable user permissions handling

How to Install Drupal

Another benefit is that Drupal is easy to install. There are four steps.
1. Upload Drupal to your server.
Go to Drupal.org and download the most recent version. Uncompress the file. Then upload the file in the Drupal directory to your (Drupal compatible) web server, using a FTP program.
2. Create a database and database user
Use MySQL to create a database. Using the webservers control panel make a database + a database user. Then add the database user to the database with “all” privileges.
3. Edit the file /sites/default/settings.php to add your database connection information.
You then need to add your database connection settings to the file located at /sites/default/settings.php.
Find the line that says:
$db_url = ‘mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename’;
Fill in your database username, database user’s password, the database name, and the database host (use localhost)
4. Create the database tables using the appropriate .sql file in the /database directory
Navigate to Drupal’s /database directory on the Drupal folder your local computer.
Look for the file called info.php
Upload that info.php file to the root of your Web server and then open it in a browser (e.g., http://www.YOURSITENAME.com/info.php). That page will display information about your PHP and MySQL installation including the MySQL version.
If you are using MySQL 4.0 then you will use the file called database.4.0.mysql.
If you are using MySQL 4.1 then you should use the file called database.4.1.mysql.
Go to your web hosting control panel and find PHPmyAdmin.
Click on the tab that says “Import”
Use the “Browse” button to find the correct database file to upload. PHPmyAdmin will create your database from that file.
Navigate to your new Drupal site (e.g., http://www.YOURSITENAME.com/) and you should see the welcome page.
Follow the directions on that page to create the admin account, and configure your new Drupal site.

That’s it! Welcome to Drupal…..

Social Networks advance technology

Technology has always been the carrot that leads development, evolution and progress. Since the development of personal computers, in the 80’s, the speed of this progress has doubled many times. This has progressed to light speeds since the Internet was introduced to the public.

The digital world is definitely a worldwide movement. The Generation Y, those born in the late eighties, have only known a digital world. It is to those that marketing of new technology is geared towards. These new products use the digital youth to promote their sales. The money comes from the parents, who are the sponsors of these new technical toys.

The Internet has spawned new ways of marketing. Networking websites, which at first seemed frivolous, are today an important force. It is the new way of marketing. Today, large groups of people from all around the world, can meet on a website and exchange ideas.

Companies can no longer ignore complaints from customers. A few people chatting on a social website can start a worldwide movement, a just a few days. If a company refuses to deal with a customer’s request or complaint, the negative feedback can destroy a well-known brand.

Modern marketers have learned from the Internet social networks and studied its effects on today’s brands. Television and radio advertising, once the giant of brand marketing, now find their market share dwindling. Companies are finding it hard to justify the massive amounts of money to create advertising campaigns. Smart Brands have discovered that the Internet is much more efficient in reaching a target audience.

This trend will continue, as broadcasting and publishing scramble to adapt to the millennium’s new movement: social networking on the Internet.

Researching New Media Schools

Carl working with video

My volunteer experience at New Media BC taught me that the lower mainland was rich in New Media companies. It is also home to some of the best post education institutions. Many of these specialize in design and the arts. These include Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Langara, Vancouver Art Institute, and Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (VanArts). These schools require an intensive portfolio and are for those studying visual arts. I was interested in learning the concepts of New Media. This includes web development, learning scripting languages (ie. XHTML, CSS, PHP). I had some experience with the Adobe suite programs and was looking for a school that taught programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash.

During my research I found three excellent programs. One at UBC’s downtown campus, another at Capilano University and finally the third at BCIT’s Burnaby campus. All three programs offered an intensive study program featuring the Adobe multimedia programs. Living in South Delta and commuting to North Vancouver seemed too far, especially when using transit. This left two choices: UBC’s program or BCIT’s New Media program. Both programs were excellent and both schools had a high reputation in the work industry. However, BCIT’s course was 12 months and the UBC program was 4 months. I felt that the one year program would provide me with better understanding of the curriculum.

During my research of New Media programs, I interviewed professionals working in the industry. Many were impressed with UBC’s and BCIT’s programs. It was recommended that I study for the full year. I had applied at both institutions. I was accepted to BCIT’s New Media and Web Development Program and began my post education on October 2008.

Changing Careers

This blog will describe my journey from a full time job in the manufacturing field to starting a new career in the exciting New Media field.

My story begins in February 2008. I was working full time in a delta manufacturing plant, when the world wide economy took a downturn. The manufacturing industry was hit hard. Many people, including myself, were laid off from their jobs. After applying to several companies, without luck, I was directed to seek further career counselling.

I enrolled with Project Restart a career planning program. The program uses professional career assessment test to help discover which career field is best for your personality. These tests include Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Career Ability Placement Survey (CAPS), Strong Interest Inventory, and other tests that evaluate your work values and transferable skills. My results indicated that I should pursue a  career a New Media.

I researched companies that work in the New Media field. I soon discovered that Vancouver, BC is one of the leading cities in North America (perhaps worldwide) that is home to New Media companies. Working in the manufacturing industry for the past few years, I had a limited amount of experience with current multimedia software. I had some experience with Photoshop and InDesign; creating newsletters and conference programs for non-profit organizations. Creatively, I with some of my musical friends, designed CD covers with liner notes for local independent musicians.

In order to find work in New Media, I would need to upgrade my skills and begin to network with multimedia organizations. One of my career counsellors recommended that I contact New Media BC. There I met Phil Filiatreault, he is in charge of memberships and programs. As a volunteer with New Media BC, I was introduced to a vast number of multimedia companies. During my time with New Media BC, I was able to volunteer at VidFest 2008. It was a great experience. During the convention, held at The Granville Island Hotel, I began to see the vast scope that is New Media.

My next task was to find a school that teaches the skills that I would require to enter this industry….