swansonager – what is matt up to?

Today we launched a new feature on Houses.net – the nation’s only distressed property and pre foreclosure mls type site. We’re now utilizing Google Maps StreetView. This allows potential buyers to not only get a feel of the the property that’s for sale, but also provides some great data about the neighborhood in general. Google Maps Streetview is really simple to integrate and the Google Maps team has done a great job with providing easy to access tools to utilize the product. Here’s an example of what a property looks like on Houses.net with the Street View implemented.

Have you ever wanted to edit a webpage directly in your browser? This is an easy trick to change out the latest news on any site and send a screenshot to you friend – haha

In the address bar of your browser type this:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

Now you can click into the webpage and edit the page like any document in your favorite word processor application Enjoy!

We all love Google (ok at least 95% of us), but chances are there has been a time when you wanted to search for something that you remember seeing on a domain – but when you search on Google you have to scroll through hundreds of results to find whatever it was your looking for on that domain.

What if there was an easy way to do just that – enter a domain, and the keywords you wanted to find on that site and get them back. This has always been available using technical search operators on Google but I decided it was time to build a simple interface around it. So I built Better Google, Better Search – http://bgbs.net/.

How can bgbs.net help me?

Here’s a quick example:

The other day I saw something on my facebook feed about the book “The Shack”. I knew that our pastor had spoke about that book last summer but I couldn’t remember where on the site the link might be – using BGBS, I can enter this in the domain name: apostles.org and then enter the keywords: The Shack – in the keywords box. In about 2 seconds I have the link to the exact page on Apostles.org that I wanted to find.

Doing a normal search query on Google would have taken forever to easily find this page but since I already knew the domain and keywords, I used the tool on bgbs.net/ to find the link.

The UI I wrote basically encapsulates the site: operator on any Google search but when you try and explain how to use search operators to non tech folks, you get them confused most of the time. I hope you enjoy bgbs.net – I think you will

Yep, that’s right – you’re favorite (or at least should be favorite browser) just went to version 3.5.

Download Firefox 3.5 for your Mac

Download Firefox 3.5 for your PC

The biggest thing I’ve seen from the start is memory consumption. FF 3.5 appears to be handling memory management wayyyyyyy better than the 3.X versions prior. That reason alone is worth the upgrade.

Here’s some goodness from the FF site:

The Fastest Firefox Yet

Things move quickly online, and we’ve beefed up the engine that runs Firefox to make sure you can keep up: Firefox 3.5 is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3, and ten times as fast as Firefox 2.* As a result, Web applications like email, photo sites and your favorite social networks will feel snappier and more responsive.

Firefox Performance: Fast — Faster — Fastest Results of a SunSpider test on a Windows XP machine
18,148 ms	3,669 ms	1,524 ms!

There are times when I just assume that everyone knows the little tips and tricks that I use when I work on my computer everyday. Sometimes I need to take a step back and do a better job at sharing things with others that I’ve picked up over the past 10 years in the internet industry. One major area that I constantly hear my friends complain about is how slow their computer is running or acting. I’m sure you’ve been there.

I run Windows XP Professional on my Dell XPS M1330 Laptop (not that you really care what type of machine I work on daily, but thought I’d throw it in there). Here are some things I do to ensure that my machine is running fast, quick and snappy on a daily basis.

#1 – Use AVG for FREE Virus Protection

#2- Surf the Web with Firefox

Ditch IE and Surf with Firefox today – it rocks.

#3 – Use Sygate Personal Firewall

I know that AVG Free has a firewall but I personally like Sygate Personal Firewall (I use version 5.5) much better. It’s very good at probing any incoming IP or site that might try to gain access to your machine and will prompt you to either allow or not allow the connection. It’s great and I’ve used it for years now.

Free Download of Sygate Personal Firewall from OldVersion.com

Using a firewall will ensure that any spyware that you might have inadvertently gotten infected with can’t call out to the mothership (i.e the annoying person that infected you with it). On that note if you do have spyware, most of the time a fresh install of XP or whatever Operating System you are using is in order.

Which tools do you use to ensure your machine is running fast?

We all like to bookmark sites that we find interesting or Stumble Upon. What if there was a way you could leverage other’s bookmarks when you are searching on Google?

Enter Xmarks.

Formerly known as FoxMarks, this service is really cool. My favorite feature is the Smarter Search. Take a quick look at how this integrates into Google – Learn more about top sites right on Google

Xmarks will highlight the three top sites in your Google results based on how many people have bookmarked them.
Simply move your mouse over the site info icon to learn more about that site. Xmarks shows you bookmark popularity, average review, related topics and more.
Clicking on GET SITE INFO shows you lots more on Xmarks.com. Discover similar sites, read user reviews, and even write your own.

What Social Bookmarking services are you using these days? We’d love to hear.

If you’ve been on the web for any amount of time, you realize that you can get traffic form a myriad of sources. In general, we want as much traffic as possible, but there are some instances where we might only want to get traffic from a certain set of countries or possibly even exclude entire blocks of countries from accessing your site or blog.

The best way (although not bullet proof by any means) is to block traffic based on an IP Address. How can I do that? you ask…

For site owners running on linux based platforms, there is a great .htaccess hack that will allow you to block ranges of IP Addresses based on the host country. Take a look the service offered by Block a Country for a great and easy tutorial to implementing a host country block for Linux based sites. nihars world has a great summary oh using Block a Country as well you might want to check out.

Windows based sites are a bit trickier and you might need to subscribe to a service like the one offered by MaxMind which provides a subscription based model to access City, ZIP, Host Country, State, etc. for each request to your site. Once you have the subscription to the Maxmind service, you can either implement your own database of IPs and update that regularly or you can use their web service based model.

The question I have out there for everyone is this:
If you are using a service like Wordpress.com or Blogger (Blogspot) – how can you block traffic based on Country – is there anyway that can’t be accomplished? I was thinking that possibly you could do a .js include that might redirect the user, but this wouldn’t help for any hotlinked images or if the user had javascript disabled. Any ideas???

It’s usually only after an event that we reflect back on things that we should have done before things went down. Hopefully, this post will encourage you to take action today, before you’re in a pinch to try and recover data, stored passwords, and other data points you’ve saved when browsing the web.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer, I strongly suggest you make the switch right now and get firefox today. It’s much safer and there are a ton of plugins that can help make your life much easier – trust me.

Today’s backup topic (there will be more in the weeks to come) is for your browser – in this case, Firefox and the backup tool of choice is MozBackup.

MozBackup

In about 45 seconds and in just 7 steps, you can backup and password protect your settings and passwords that are saved on your local installation of Firefox – in the case your computer BSODs or has a Kernel Panic and can’t recover, you’ll have your Firefox install back up and running after a simple restore process in about 45 seconds.

Step 1: Welcome to MozBackup

Step 2: Choose to backup or restore a profile

Step 3: Choose the profile you wish to backup

Step 4: Password protect your backup – yes/no

Step 5: Select the components you wish to backup

Step 6: Processing the backup (will take under 45 seconds or less in most cases)

Step 7: Report – backup was successful

And that’s it – trust me, do this once a week and you’ll never be in trouble (from the browser perspective) if your computer crashes or Firefox has any issues. All your stored passwords, history, cookies, etc. will be captured in the backup file. I would suggest emailing a copy of the file to yourself so you have a backup of your MozBackup off site.

I’ll be talking about other suggestions I have for backup options in the weeks to come, so be sure to subscribe to the swansonager feed for future talks about backup strategies. Enjoy and happy backing up!

photo credit: swansonager – Hurricane Gustav waves in Destin, FL

While I am not an elite runner by any means, I do enjoy working out, both running and mountain biking along with a lot of tennis. That being said, we all aspire to be better in whatever our passion might be – SEO, working out, seeing rich people, or whatever it might be for you.

When I was out running 3.2 miles this morning before 7am, I thought of something that I read in runners world a couple months back from an elite marathoner. He said this:

“If I’m working out when my competition is sleeping, then I know come race time, I’ll have the edge on them”

My question for you is this:

What motivates you to keep a step ahead of your competition. Is it working while they are sleeping? Maybe for you it’s automation to make things easier. Whatever the case, what’s your motivation to keep one step ahead of your competition in your niche?

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about some of the top guys and gals in the SEO and Web Engineering space and what makes them successful. I wanted to put together a post that detailed which tools some of the top SEOs and Web Engineers out there use on a daily basis and what tools they absolutely CAN’T live without. Below is list of what some of the top guys and gals are using and what, when asked, they can’t live without.

Special thanks to Aaron, Matt, Shane, Jill and Drew for their input that helped make today’s post possible!

Aaron Wall from SEOBook

• Google’s sktool
• the SEO toolbar
• our competitive research tool and any analytics tool the site is running

Jill Whalen from High Rankings

• Google’s Keyword Research Tool
• Google Analytics
• Firefox (plus all its tons of extensions)

Shane Pike from Ask Shane

• A great code editor: I still use Visual InterDev to this day even though I don’t code in ASP anymore just because I like how the editor works. There is probably a better answer out there, but InterDev still works great for me
• An FTP client: In many cases the command line works just fine, but there are times when I just need an actual application. I use FileZilla because it’s simple and free
• A web stats program: If you’re not measuring, you have no idea whether you’re succeeding. I use Google Analytics because it’s widely accepted and it’s free

Shane’s OS of Choice?

And I’m a PC guy all the way. In 16 years I’ve never had a problem, so I’ve never even thought about switching.

Matt Cutts from Google

• the full Google set – Search, Gmail, Calendar are always open. Chrome is my browser of search. These “Big Four” are with me ~100% of the time.
• non-Google-wise, I like Twitter, especially the standing search functionality.
• non-Google-wise, I keep an eye on Techmeme to see what the news of the day is.

Drew Meyers from Geek Estate Blog

I’m pretty old school with tools, I don’t use too many. Some I use:

• MyBlogLog to see where my traffic is coming from in real time
• Twitter
• SEO status plugin for firefox
• Yahoo site explorer
• Google reader

I’m a windows guy, but planning to switch to a mac when I buy my next computer.

Matthew Swanson from swansonager

• Since I do a lot of text editing, I’ve found Textpad to be an indispensable text editor – it does a lot of functions really, really well. Including “Find in files” that imo, Windows has always lacked in BIG TIME.
• Firefox, plus my favorite plugins: Search Status, Firebug, and Rank Checker from SEOBook
• Domain Tools – one of the best (imo) places to research everything you want to know about any domain
• StatCounter – As much as I LOVE Google Analytics, I still like the simplistic nature of StatCounter – it’s not 100% like GA, but it’s always good to have a second sanity check on your domains for stats, etc..

What are you tools of choice? We’d love to hear.

I’d love to hear what your favorite tools are – leave a comment below and share your absolute “can’t live without tools” with everyone