Google, Craigslist and Digg old websites

It's kind of fun to look back at the early days of some of the popular websites.

Check out how Google looked in the early days.

And Craigslist back in 1998 when it was still called List Foundation. And two years later (2000).

And checkout Digg just a little over a year ago (January 2005).

Ahh, the good old days.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Google, Digg, Craigslist, List Foundation

10 things that will make or break your website

Check out this article from AUBlog.

Great article, but remember there's still no silver bullet. You can have a very successful website that everyone loves but that doesn't mean you can easily replicate that success on another website. Look at Google and how they have not really been able to replicate their success with Google Video (vs. YouTube). Or Microsoft and their foray into Live Expo (vs. Craigslist) and now Live Spaces (vs. MySpace). And looking back does anyone still remember using Yahoo Auctions (vs. Ebay)? Maybe buying a successful site is the answer for some of these folks like Yahoo buying Flickr and NewCorp buying MySpace. Of course you have to buy them early before they're already too popular (sorry Google, Digg is probably going public on its own).

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Google, Microsoft Live Expo, Microsoft Live Spaces, Yahoo Auctions, eBay, Flickr, MySpace, NewsCorp, Digg, AUBlog

No, I will not fix your computer

I'm just kidding. But I thought this blog link was amusing.

I've been the goto guy for family and friends for the past 30 years, ever since I got my first Apple II and that was when I was the only guy in class who had a computer. I would help out my Dad with Visicalc and of course invite my friends over to play games. But I'm used to it and just like the token Doctor in the family always gets the medical questions about our cute nephew who caught a bad rash (even if their specialty is obstetrics rather than pediatrics), it's just how the world works. We also have a lawyer in the family who specializes in criminal law, so we ask him about wills and getting things notarized even though he's probably wondering why we think he's an expert on wills. Fortunately most of my family and friends are pretty respectful of my time so if they know I'm really busy, they'll wait until I'm not too busy rather than spend the $$$. Hey, I don't blame them. I'd rather call our token doctor in the family about my lingering headache.

And you gotta love this T-shirt.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Computer Tech Support

Google Turns 8

Google is 8 years old.

Despite the much talked about Google outage yesterday (Northeast US complains of Google outages) in the Northeast (which turned out to be ISP DNS issues with Comcast users experiencing some of the outage as one of their DNS servers was down) we'd like to revisit an article published in our newsletter last year about All things Google. Google has released more features since then, but it's fun to look back.

Google - more than just search

Most of us use Google for our everyday searching. But did you know that Google offers more than just search? For example, it can be a calculator (type a numerical equation such as 2+2*5 into Google’s search box and it will come back with the correct answer).

Listed below are some of the more useful things that Google can do:

Dictionary - type “define” and the word you want to get the definition for. Example - define computer

Phonebook - to look up phone number, type the first name (or first initial), last name and city (state is optional). Example --- R. Abello Columbia. You can also perform a caller ID lookup by typing in the phone number including the area code.

Quick Facts - for fact-based questions such as population of a country, capital of a country or president of a country. Example - capital of the Philippines

FedEx , UPS and US Postal Service tracking numbers

Maps - enter a street address and Google will return with a link to a map.

Weather - type “weather” and the city, state. Example --- weather Baltimore MD

Language translation - available in German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Go to http://www.google.com/language_tools and you can enter a website you want translated from English or from another language. And you can also enter text and have it translated.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Google, Google 8th Birthday, Google Outage, Comcast

15 websites that changed the world

It's been 15 years since the web came to be and here's a list of 15 notable sites that have changed the world. It would be interesting to see this list again 15 years from now.

[ Reposted from The Hindu ]

1. eBay.com Founded: Pierre Omidyar, 1995, US Users: 168m What is it? Auction and shopping site

2. wikipedia.com Founded: Jimmy Wales, 2001, US Users: 912,000 visits per day What is it? Online encyclopaedia

3. napster.com Founded: Shawn Fanning, 1999, US Users: 500,000 paying subscribers What is it? File sharing site

4. youtube.com Founded: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, 2005, US Users: 100m clips watched a day What is it? Video sharing site

5. blogger.com Founded: Evan Williams, 1999, US Users: 18.5m unique visitors What is it? Weblog publishing system

6. friendsreunited.com Founded: Steve and Julie Pankhurst, 1999, UK Users: 15m What is it? School reunion site

7. drudgereport.com Founded: Matt Drudge, 1994, US Users: 8-10m page views per day What is it? News site

8. myspace.com Founded: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, 2003, US Users: 100m What is it? Social networking site

9. amazon.com Founded: Jeff Bezos, 1994, US Users: More than 35m customers in over 250 countries What is it? Online retailer, primarily of books, CDs and DVDs

10. slashdot.org Founded: Rob Malda, 1997, US Users: 5.5m per month What is it? Technology news website and internet forum

11. salon.com Founded: David Talbot, 1995, US Users: Between 2.5 and 3.5m unique visitors per month What is it? Online magazine and media company.

12. craigslist.org Founded: Craig Newmark, 1995, US Users: 4bn page views per month What is it? A centralised network of online urban communities, featuring free classified advertisements and forums

13. google.com Founded: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998, US Users: A billion search requests per day What is it? Search engine and media corporation

14. yahoo.com Founded: David Filo and JerryYang, 1994, US Users: 400m What is it? Internet portal and media corporation

15. easyjet.com Founded: Stelios Haji-Ioannou, 1995, UK Users: 30m passengers last year What is it?: Budget airline

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, web

Windows XP turns 5

5 years is a long time for an operating system. Some of us even upgrade our computers before they turn 5 years old. Soon it will be time to say goodbye to Windows XP and welcome Windows Vista. A lot of you have expressed your apprehension on jumping over to Windows Vista as soon as it's out. I guess that's a valid concern considering the painful migration to Windows XP most of you experienced. But Microsoft claims they've really been extra careful with Windows Vista and user testing has been going on for quite some time now. There will be bugs, no doubt about that. As a programmer I can tell you that any software this large will have bugs. It's just a law of programming. The more complex the software, the more likely there will be bugs. But there are minor bugs and major bugs. Minor bugs we can live with and often they will never ever get fixed because no one may even notice.

So for those of you brave enough to try out Windows Vista, it's coming soon. And if your computer is more than 3 years old and you're thinking of an upgrade, hold on till December and you'll be able to get your new computer with Vista already installed.

For more on this click here to read Rob Pegoraro from the Washington Post sharing his thoughts on Windows XP turning 5.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Rob Pegoraro, Windows XP

digg's swarm is pretty cool

You should check out digg's swarm tool. It's very cool. I'd be curious to see if someone will be interested enough to try extrapolating a mathematical formula from the patterns observed. It's really human behavior & choices being observed in real-time, so it should make for an interesting study.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Digg swarm

Finding news and blogs on the internet

[ this article was published in my summer newsletter ]

A lot of us read the news on the internet. From the Washington Post to the Baltimore Sun, we can easily read up to the minute news from our desks. Most of the major newspapers publish on the web and there are various websites that help in making it easier to read news from various sources.

Newspaper websites (news.google.com, news.yahoo.com)

Google News (news.google.com) and Yahoo News (news.yahoo.com) do a good job of presenting news from various newspaper websites and organizing the headlines by topic. So instead of going to numerous news websites, you can just go to one site and see a snapshot of news coverage from various sources.

In Google News you simply click a headline and you can be reading a story by the New York Times or by the Irish Examiner. It also provides various versions of a headline story from multiple newspaper websites, so you can read more about the story from other sources.

Yahoo News organizes the stories by the news provider so in one click you can see the top stories from cnn.com and in another click you can see the top stories from usatoday.com.

Want to know what others are reading? Google News and Yahoo News have a page that show the most popular stories people are choosing to read from the links off their news sites.

Community driven news (digg.com, reddit.com)

A couple sites are going one step further in allowing us to choose what to publish and what to read. Instead of relying on editors to choose which stories to publish, sites such as Digg.com and Reddit.com allow us to vote on stories we like best.

They also allow us to submit stories we want people to read (and vote on). So news from a small town can possibly reach a much wider audience if people find the story newsworthy (and interesting).

Blogs (technorati.com, blogpulse.com)

Another medium for community driven news are blogs (weblogs). Sites such as technorati.com and blogpulse.com organize links to blogs and also show what topics are currently popular.

Reading blogs can be very informative, fun and insightful. Because anyone can write a blog, the stories often reflect a personal opinion unlike most traditional news stories that have to stay neutral.

Blogs are usually open to comments from readers, so if you agree or disagree (or want to share some additional information), you can add in your two cents.

Happy reading (and blogging)!

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, News & Blogs

Apple store coming soon

The apple store is coming to Columbia MD (opening on the 23rd?). I haven't been to the mall in months so I actually haven't seen the wallboards in front of the store location (someone has posted a picture of the wall boards in another blog I was reading earlier this week).

Here's the posting I put up on ezColumbia earlier --- http://www.ezcolumbia.com/community/query_announcenews.html?group=12&item=284496574508e562

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Apple Store

What was hot in Summer 2006

Ever since I started Percworks in 2003, there was always that one hot computer problem that seemed to happen in the summertime. Why summertime? Beats me. But this summer it was hard drive failures. Last year (2005) it was damage from electrical surges. I don't know which is worse, but those who experienced hard drive failures were not happy campers. Although most of them were able to recover their files but there were some who were not so lucky. And one hard drive we had to send to a data recovery specialist and the bill wasn't pretty.

So if you use your computers fairly well (remember just like a car, we really look at the mileage of the computer vs. how old it is) do your backups on a regular basis and it might be prudent to consider upgrading your hard drive (100 GB hard drives are cheap over at Staples) if it's 3 years or older. When computer manufacturers eventually move to flash drives, these mechanical hard drive crashes will be a thing of the past.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, Tech Support

Switching to VOIP: READ THIS FIRST

Since early 2004 I had been enthusiastically promoting VOIP, especially Vonage services because I was one of the earlier adaptors and the features and the value and the performance was great. But I guess just the growing pains have crept in. For about 6 months now my Vonage services have been spotty and I no longer recommend it to my friends and clients.

In case you don't know, Verizon has this pretty good deal in their Verizon Value Freedom package. For $35 you get unlimited local and long distance in the US. That's only about $10 more than the unlimited plan of Vonage. Of course you don't get the cool features of Vonage and all the web-access stuff, but if you're in the middle of an important phone call and suddenly the other party can't hear a word you're saying, you'll run back to a regular land line in no time.

I still have my Vonage line but I dropped it to their 500 minute plan and if I need to make an important phone call I use my Verizon land line.

I think VOIP is here to stay and over time the quality will become more reliable. But if you're thinking of switching over to VOIP, make sure you're ready for spotty quality and a few headaches every now and then. Think back to when cell phones were new, or even when you had your first AOL account back in the mid-90s ... and be patient when you call or email their tech-support folks ... they're a little busy these days.

Technorati Tags: percworks, ezColumbia, Robin Abello, Columbia Maryland, Technology, Community, VOIP, Vonage

Welcome

Welcome to my percworks blog! Hopefully we can spice things up with occasional reviews and comments on technology and maybe share some useful tips and tricks to the community.