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Blogs ยป Archive for April, 2005
MySQL 5 Closing in on Gold
The MySQL universe gets one of its biggest injections of momentum every year at the annual user’s conference, just ended this past week for 2005.
Sure to please fans of the database, MySQL AB co-founders David Axmark and Monty Widenius announced that the much anticipated version 5 is done from a development perspective and is purely in debug mode at this point.
This release brings the MySQL feature-set to the same competitive level as its peers both proprietary and open source through stored procedures, triggers, views and more. However, we have all rehashed this news more than enough. What remains now is for developers and administrators using MySQL to get busy aiding in getting under the hood and finding and reporting bugs.
Every bit of input is welcome according to MySQL. More than developers who have feature and/or code proposals — they want to quash as any bugs as physically possible before going gold. In reality, this often leads to coveted features as MySQL programmers cleanup bug reports.
To take part, head off to MySQL’s version 5 download zone and grab the latest release. Be forewarned, anything not in production or stable release should absolutely not be installed on a production …
Just What Are We Optimizing Anyway?
With a 3-day weekend coming up, at least here in beautiful Frisco, TX… I’d like to close the week out with an idea that we hammer on relentlessly in my SEO and SEM training classes.
If your SEO efforts are solely dedicated to optimizing for higher rankings or placement on a limited number of search terms, you are missing out on the real opportunity. Instead of optimizing for rankings, why not think about the problem a little differently? What we’re really trying to optimize is our business results.
When you make this change in your thinking, you will start to consider:
- Improving a site’s conversion rate is often more productive than trying to improve the ranking for a specific search term. For most websites, it’s a lot easier to double the conversion rate than it is to double the amount of traffic coming in.
- Writing rich copy with relevant search term modifiers (additional words that are often used by searchers alongside your primary search terms) can provide a big boost to your search engine traffic, as well as conversions.
- Investing resources in improving a site’s conversion rate will deliver more resources for SEO and PPC in the long run, improving a site’s ability to compete …
JBuilder to emulate WebSphere
Borland JBuilder is to join IBM WebSphere in becoming a Java development environment built out of proprietary extensions to the open source Eclipse IDE.
As I reported previously, Borland will be porting some of the unique core features of its JBuilder IDE to Eclipse, essentially making a free and open source version of JBuilder available for the first time. Until today, the question of what happened to JBuilder as a commercial product was up in the air.
According to The Register, Borland will keep selling an extended Enterprise version of JBuilder as a commercial product, but it will also provide commercial support services for the open source JBuilder components, in much the same way as IBM sells its Eclipse-based WebSphere development environment.
Exactly which features will be open source and which features will remain commercial remains to be seen, but I’d expect everything currently available in the free JBuilder 2005 Foundation edition to move to Eclipse and the Developer and Enterprise editions to remain commercial.
In such a scenario, the biggest change would be for current JBuilder users, who would have to adapt to the Eclipse environment. The functional limitations of the free edition would be pretty much the same as they are today.
Consumer Reports’ WebWatch Conference on Search Advertising
U.S. readers will probably recognize “Consumer Reports” more than folks in other countries, but over here they’ve got quite a reputation for unbiased reporting and product testing as well as consumer advocacy.
On June 9, I will be speaking at a conference sponsored by Consumer Reports WebWatch titled
Trust or Consequence: How Failure to Disclose Ad Relationships Threatens to Burst the Search Bubble.
The discussion will center around the idea that search engines risk their credibility for the sake of short term gain, when they fail to fully disclose paid advertising relationships. I won’t go off on a long rant about why in the heck the words “Sponsored Listings” would be displayed in light gray text, because we all know why.
What I do plan to bring to the conference is a bit of perspective from advertisers. As much as searchers may be misled, deceived, or simply confused by what’s shown on the SERPs, what PPC providers don’t disclose to advertisers is just as disturbing in many cases.
How many PPC advertisers think they’re targeting search, when in fact a high percentage of their ad displays and click-throughs come from expired domains (or for a couple hilarious weeks, mistyped domains), pop-ups and pop-unders, adware/scumware, …
Be an equal
When you talk with prospects, do you put yourself on equal footing with them? If you do, without being obnoxious or gimmicky, chances are that you earn their respect and make them more likely to hire you.
Here are examples:
- I’m sourcing out a product in China and numerous suppliers are bidding. One supplier stood out by insisting on having a prototype (others worked off of pictures). When I resisted, they thanked me for my time. I was impressed, and saw them as a vendor that would take a quality look at my needs. I sent a sample.
- An IT vendor in a bidding process told me the scope of a project was unreasonable, and that he probably couldn’t help me — while other vendors didn’t push back at all. He explained why he thought my scope was unreasonable, and how to solve that problem. He was so compelling I hired him.
- A potential client came to me asking me to help them with a problem. I told them that they weren’t getting to the root cause of their problem, and gave them my judgment about what their real problem was and how to address it. They hired me.
- I …
MySQL Visual Database Migration Tool
Nothing like good timing. I am working on a project with a company right now who has elected to migrate more than 30 Microsoft Access databases of various size and complexity used internally and on the web to MySQL 4.
To my own and all of our good fortunes — MySQL AB today announced the free availability of the MySQL Migration Suite. This GUI toolset will allow for comprehensive migration from Oracle and Access initially (with Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB 2 and others to follow) and is released under the GPL 2 license.
Better yet it is written in Java, meaning one can perform cross-platform database migrations (Unix to Windows, Solaris to Linux and so on). The Suite utilizes time-tested methodologies and a Wizard guide to cover all the basics of migration as well as stored procedures and triggers.
With its handy reporting capabilities, audits and due diligence can be performed on migrations as they are expedited to insure no missing links are passed over.
I am going to do some test migrations in my development environment as taking anything brand new into production can be interesting to say the least. However - this looks to save some serious time and …
Deep Link Ratio - Cool Tool
I’ve known Jim Boykin of We Build Pages for some time now. Jim uses one of my books as training material for new members of his team, and I make constant use of the free tools this team of professionals offers on their web site.
Well, Jim’s team has done it again, with another great tool, the Deep Link Ratio Analyzer. This tool compares the links pointing in to a site, to analyze the effects of “deep links” (links to interior pages) vs. links to the site’s home page.
Thanks to SitePoint co-founder Matt Mickiewicz for the link.
Mac OS X 10.3.9 update breaks Java
Long hailed as the only OS vendor to provide Java built in, Apple stumbled yesterday in the eyes of Java developers with the release of Mac OS X 10.3.9, the latest update to the “Panther” version of the operating system.
The update causes Java to crash with a segmentation fault error whenever it is started. Visiting a website containing a Java applet in Safari 1.3, the new browser version that is a part of the update, will cause the browser to crash.
Oops.
The solution to this problem is to first ensure that you have the Java 1.4.2 Update 2 installed on your system. If you’ve kept up-to-date with your software updates, you will. Next, you need to manually download and (re)install Security Update 2005-002 for Mac OS X.
These steps are detailed in a support article at apple.com.
Tackling iptables
There are several elements to securing a Linux server - however - top on the list should be assembling and implementing a firewall. Fortunately Linux comes bearing the gift of a free and robust firewall in Netfilter/iptables.
My latest column runs through the essentials of configuring a basic firewall to allow for the exploration of how iptables can cater to the web administrator. As with any exercise - this how-to is not all inclusive and consideration should be given to any specific needs and security issues one might have on their own systems and networks.
That said - the firewall built in this article should serve as a good starting point for controlling access to your servers.
Real data from marketing on a shoestring
I just launched an online non-profit aid organization (http://www.actioncorps.org if you are interested), and would like to share with you the lessons in marketing this venture on a shoestring.
First, the initial launch was made with the following marketing efforts:
1. Email to all of my friends, family and colleagues with a crafted email for them to send to their network asking people to sign up.
2. A press release on PRWeb, where I spent about $80 to get the 2-star release.
3. A subsequent press release on Businesswire, where I spent about $160 to do a release to my geographic area, and also to take advantage of hundreds of focused publications that potential volunteers might read (e.g. seniors, philanthropy, education). I like Businesswire historically more than PRWeb, and wanted to test the two to see if the less expensive PRWeb gets results.
4. Local releases to 5 publications where I live, ranging from the local newspaper to my HomeOwner’s Association newsletter.
Here are results:
So far neither PRWeb nor BusinessWire have generated much response (which is to be expected, since PR takes a consistent effort to get momentum). One sign up came from BusinessWire, none from PRWeb. No press inquiries yet.
The emails to my friends …
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