Archive for Technical Support
Video Production Tips And Tools For Professional Video Bloggers
Posted by: | CommentsWhich camcorder is best when it comes to making videos for the web? What can you expect from the latest generation of digital camcorders that record on microscopic hard disks or on high-capacity SD memory cards? How good is the quality after you upload their videos to the Web?
While at LeWeb08, this past December, I run into two passionate video bloggers: Nicholas Charbonnier and Teemu Arina. Nicholas has actually a blog fully dedicated to video technologies at TechVideoBlog.com, while Teemu is a new media explorer who likes to explore and test out new ways for communicating and sharing valuable know-how.
I then suggested to them to try out a “collaborative” video interview, in which we would have shot each other simultaneously while sharing in turn some good tips and suggestions about video blogging. They did not need to be convinced and in a matter of seconds we were all ready to shoot while capturing each other answers from different angles.
As I reviewed later on this material, I realized that what our readers may have liked to know more about would have been actually the equipment that each one of us was using during the interview, as to get a little perspective on popular options among video bloggers while being able to also see the results that they produced.
And so, I got back to Teemu and Nicholas and asked them to share with me a bit more of their video shooting setup and the specifics of their video reporter toolkit.
In this video information report you can find both some useful tips for your video production as well as specifics about the camcorder models and brands and other accessories that the three of us typically use when shooting video for the web.
Here all the details:
Video Production Tips and Tools
Duration: 6′
Full English Text Transcription
Intro
Allright, we’re at LeWeb08 here in Paris.
I’m speaking in my microphone, and you have the microphone inside the camera, and we’re doing a collaborative project, the first time in the world: we’re going to speak with three cameras at the same time, and it’s going to be totally crazy.
Here I’m interviewing Robin Good.
First time I saw you was in a live video on Mogulus. You were sitting and you were talking during the iPhone launch, I suppose. It was really good, really funny, and there was this crazy guy from Mogulus, in New York and he was doing live broadcasting and commenting.
What do you think about LeWeb?
You had this… presentation? A really cool presentation…
I’m making a video and putting it on techvideoblog.com, like TechCrunch, but with “videoblog” instead.
Robin Good: Be Invisible
Can I ask you Robin Good, what do you think about video and Internet please? What is your your best secret? What do you suggest people should do with video and Internet?
The thing that I suggest is to make yourself invisible. I think that is one of the best suggestions I’ve learned by doing video.
- Use your camera always in a modality where people are not going to notice that you’re shooting them.
Do not hold it at high level, like you guys are doing right now, but hold it more down when pointing up to people.
- Second thing: Close the f**, hem… close the nice lid where you have the video so the people don’t think you’re shooting because you’re not looking inside.
- Third and last one. Take some black tape and put it on the red light that you may have on your camera. If you don’t have it you’re a lucky guy, and if you do have it, just put some black tape on it, so they never can tell whether you’re shooting or just trying out something.
Teemu Arina: Always Share
Let me ask myself now to Teemu Arina, what is his tip about video production that he wants to share with people that normally doesn’t tell anyone?
I got interested in video production because of you. I was interested in this stuff and I’m giving presentations all the time. Over a hundred presentations last year and still giving them.
I like to share my presentations. My recommendation for everyone who’s speaking at any venue (if it’s five people, 50 people, 500 people, 5000 people, it doesn’t matter), is to put your stuff out there. Record it, and just go on with it.
When you put it on the Internet people will find it. Some of my slide presentations for example, have been featured on SlideShare. They have been seen 25.000 times, and that’s incredible compared to the audience who I gave those things in the first place.
Regarding the equipment, to make it more enjoyable for your friends, refer to MasterNewMedia.org, that’s the best source for information. That was for me. Especially the tip on external microphone input. Thank you Robin.
Nicholas Charbonnier: Go HD
But I have here Nicholas Charbonnier.
Here you’re displaying some nice equipment as well, so how did you get into the video camera stuff, shooting podcast in the first place. What have you learned?
First, I think that we need to change the media. It’s getting boring.., the CNN, you watch one-minute CNN and then it’s three-minute advertising. Come on!
I think people should film more videos in HD and put on YouTube. And I think YouTube should do a lot better work in doing voice recognition and putting subtitles automatically, and now the HD, that’s really… whoa, it’s cool!
I’ve been putting my videos in HD on Internet since 2005 on techvideoblog.com, but most people watch still YouTube because Google is…
…it’s the preference
…yeah. I also put my videos on the other sites. I use Hey!Watch.com (in reality he meant to say Hey!Spread), and it just clones the video and it sends it to 50 different sites at the same time.
I’m just spamming the whole Internet with my videos, so when you search for a guy and I made the video, I’m first search result in the first page. It’s YouTube and all the place. I don’t get any money, but that’s great.
That’s the problem: they should really monetize. We are waiting for the monetization, we have cameras and where’s the money?
Yes, and since this conference it’s all about love, let’s have our cameras make love to each other!
Bye-bye guys!
Video Toolkit Setup
Robin Good
Click on the camcorder to go to the technical specifications page on CNET Reviews
- Camcorder: Canon FS-100
- Lens: Canon
- Additional lens adapter: None
- Recording format: .MOD (= MPEG-2)
- Recording data rate: 9Mbps
- Microphone: External wireless Audio Technica ATR-288W
- Memory: Memory Card Transcend 8GB SDHC
- Additional Comments:
The recording format of the Canon FS series is a little bit of a problem if you do not have any technical video expertise. The Canon FS series records in a strange file format with the extension .MOD. In reality this is just a MPEG-2 file. To make these video files work you simply need to rename them from .MOD to .MPG on a PC, or if you are on a new Mac iMovie 08 will just read them straight as they are with no problem.
Battery time is excellent on the Canon and recharging it is also pretty fast.
Teemu Arina
Click on the camcorder to go to the technical specifications page on CNET Reviews
- Camcorder: Canon Vixia HG-21
- Lens: Canon
- Additional lens adapter: 0.5x wide angle lens (Japanese generic brand) + UV-filter
- Recording format: MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
- Recording data rate: 24Mbps
- Microphone: Directional Stereo Microphone Canon DM-100
- Memory: 120GB Internal HD
- Additional Comments:
I also have two wireless microphones (AudioTechnica ATR288W) for interviews and I use a mini passive 2-channel mixer to record both in stereo, another speaker in left channel and another in right channel, helps a bit in the editing phase.
If I have a fixed set, I will run the audio through a DBX 1066 Compressor and a mixer before entering my camera to make sure that levels are what they are supposed to be, in order to save time in editing (Levelator and what not).
Charbax
Click on the camcorder to go to the technical specifications page on CNET Reviews
- Camcorder: Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1000
- Lens: Sanyo
- Additional lens adapter: Wide-angle Sanyo VPC-L07W
- Recording format: .MP4
- Recording data rate: 9Mbps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
- Microphone: External wireless Azden WM-Pro
- Memory: Memory Card 16GB A-Data SDHC
- Additional Comments:
There is a new better model of camcorder out that does 1080p instead of 1080i – the Sanyo HD1010.
I do not recommend the Azden VW-Pro external wireless microphone, somehow I am getting a lot of interference on it, and I am currently looking for a better quality microphone system, or perhaps I just need to use another input volume setting or something to remove that interference.
The memory card from A-data has SDHC compatibility issues with other of my devices, because it was too cheap when I bought it. But it works fine with the Sanyo HD1000. Though now you can get better Kingston, Transcend, and other brands of 16GB cards.
Compare Video Quality
Robin Good – Canon FS-100
Teemu Arina – Canon Vixia HG-21
Charbax – Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1000
Additional Resources
The Ideal Camcorder For Small Independent Video-Makers: The Canon FS and HF Series – Wow!
How To Convert .MOD Video Files To MPEG-2 On Mac And PCsBest Portable Wireless Microphone Kit For Your Video Production Needs: Robin Recommends
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on February 2, 2009 as “Video Production Tips And Tools For Professional Video Bloggers“.
Net Neutrality: Is The Open Web For Anybody Or Just For Some?
Posted by: | CommentsThe celebrated openness of the Internet in which internet providers are not supposed to give preferential access or treatment to any Internet traffic keeps quietly losing powerful defenders.
Photo credit: Norma Cornes
Internet providers are still free to sell higher-speed traffic and better overall service levels, but letting big companies like Google get an unfair advantage in distributing their content online just because they can afford to pay more, represents a big threat to the democratic and egalitarian approach independent web publishers have been vouching for.
Net neutrality boils down to one basic concept: Don’t make audiences pay for artificially-created scarcity.
That means that Internet providers of all kinds can be still free to sell “bigger pipes” and better overall service levels at higher prices. What should instead not be allowed anymore is for artificial cartels of content and Internet bandwidth providers to gang together and create preferential access routes to their own content by virtue of reserving faster and broader chunks of their bandwidth to their commercial gang partners.
Here is John Blossom reporting on this story:
Net Neutrality Spin: WSJ’s Take on Google’s Caching Plans Draws Fire
by John Blossom
WSJ vs. Google on Net Neutrality
Talk about a bad hair day for WSJ tech journalists.
When The Wall Street Journal ran an article on a Google plan to add “edge caching” servers at key internet service provider facilities, this fairly common practice to accelerate content delivery to audiences via the Web was mangled into a political imbroglio. To wit, their lead:
“The celebrated openness of the Internet – network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic – is quietly losing powerful defenders.
Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.“
Google was quick to correct the WSJ’s outlook, as noted on their public policy blog and in a subsequent AFP story. Their point:
“Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday’s Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.“
Intellectual property guru and net neutrality proponent Lawrence Lessig noted that his take on Google and the political ramifications of this move were a bit off-key in the WSJ article as well:
“The article is an indirect effort to gin up a drama about an alleged shift in Obama’s policies about network neutrality.
What’s the evidence for the shift? That Google allegedly is negotiating for faster service on some network pipes. And that “prominent Internet scholars, some of whom have advised President-elect Barack Obama on technology issues, have softened their views on the subject.”
Who are these “Internet scholars”? Me… I’ve not seen anything during the Obama campaign or from the transition to indicate it has shifted its view about network neutrality at all.“
Is the Open Web a Possible Future Scenario?
With more moving pieces than a Swiss watch in Washington right now, the current political environment surrounding net neutrality and other Web access issues during a transition in Washington’s power brokers is bound to be subject to as much jockeying and bullying as possible.
Today the U.S. Federal Communications Commission canceled a vote on making radio frequencies available that would provide free Internet access as a public utility, bowing to pressures from both industry advocates and politicians.
There’s a big push for open Web access, but plenty of pressure from all points of view keeping things comfortably in neutral for now.
Net Neutrality and related issues such as public Web wireless frequencies seem to boil down to one basic concept: Don’t make audiences pay for artificial scarcity.
Carriers are still free to sell “bigger pipes” and better overall service levels, but artificial cartels based on reserving audience-facing Internet bandwidth for private use will only create more challenges for publishers in the long run.
If you want to have proof that this is so, just take a look at the balkanized state of mobile service carriers that lassoed content providers for many years into deals for distribution on their private networks. What publishers now confront are scattered and overpriced deals for growing but underperforming mobile markets, even as the carriers now reach for ad revenue shares to sweeten their take.
Net Neutrality and Its Implications for Online Publishers
Proprietary mobile breakthroughs such as the iPhone and the Amazon’s Kindle are great for publishers in many ways, but they represent a relatively small share of the potential marketplace for mobile content and ultimately just continue the myth that artificial network scarcity can benefit the publishing industry as a whole.
All these devices do is lock publishers in to proprietary networks that are bound to make it harder to reach their audiences cost-effectively.
The truth is that the fastest-evolving, most cost-effective technology changes are best for publishers, making it imperative to enable an environment in which mobile and Web technology providers are not resting on proprietary laurels that hinder the development of Web and mobile markets for publishers. Without these breakthroughs, the audience reach that content producers need to make mobile networks a highly profitable distribution medium is not likely to materialize.
Let’s keep the future of publishing out of the hands of companies that still can’t tell us whether to dial “1“, an area code or nothing extra to make a phone call to the next town.
Net Neutrality will ensure that there is a cost-effective, rapidly evolving electronic distribution infrastructure that serves publishers best.
Originally written by John Blossom for Shore and first published on December 15, 2008 as “Net Neutrality Spin: WSJ’s Take on Google’s Caching Plans Draws Fire“.
About the author
John Blossom’s career spans more than twenty years of marketing, research, product management and development in advanced information and media venues, including major financial publishers and financial services companies, as well as earlier experience in broadcast media. Mr. Blossom founded Shore Communications Inc. in 1997, specializing in research and advisory services and strategic marketing consulting for publishers and consumers of content services.
Photo credits:
WSJ vs. Google on Net Neutrality – Olga Demchishina
Is the Open Web a Possible Future Scenario? – Alfredo Angeles
Net Neutrality and Its Implications for Online Publishers – Wikimedia Commons
30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers
Posted by: | CommentsIn this article you’ll find more than 30 cool WordPress plugins to customize and tweak the performances of your blog site. Do you want more SEO control, embed videos, or track your RSS feed subscribers? Here’s some good stuff for you.
Photo credit: egal
There are many blogging platform out there and they all do pretty much the same: get you started to publish your own content. But WordPress is by far the favorite one by bloggers. Why? WordPress has an awesome list of plugins to help you personalize your blog and add extra features.
So I decided to start from the list by Ruchir Chawdhry on TechVivo, and extend it with some kind suggestions from Robin Good and MasterNewMedia SEO expert, Matteo Ionescu. The result is a collection of more than 30 plugins for professional web publishing with WordPress, organized in specific categories:
a) Content sharing
b) Spam Fighting
c) SEO
d) Navigation Enhancement
e) Stats
f) WordPress Admin Enhancement
g) Content Embedding
h) Miscellanous
Enjoy!
30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers
Content Sharing
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FeedBurner FeedSmith
The FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin detects all ways to access your feed (e.g. yoursite.com/feed/ or yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php etc) and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally, your comments feed as well.
http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78483&topic=13252
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Sociable
Sociable automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages, and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
Spam Fighting
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Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not, and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s comments admin screen. With the ever increasing amount of spam on the web, you’d be dumb not to get this plugin.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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WP-Spam Free
Fed up of all that comment spam?http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Simple Trackback Validation
The Simple Trackback Validation plugin helps to eliminate trackback spam by performing a simple a simple but effective test on all incoming trackbacks.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-trackback-validation/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
SEO
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All-in-One SEO Pack
The All-in-One SEO Pack is the ultimate SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin out there. It automatically optimizes your blog for search engines, and has several options for the more advanced users.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Google XML Sitemaps Generator
The Google XML Sitemaps Generator plugin generates an XML sitemap of your WordPress blog. Ask, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN support this format. Having an XML sitemap and submitting it to the search engines that support it can really increase your blog’s search engine visibility, especially when it’s new.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Redirection
Redirection is a solution to manage 301 redirects. Very useful if you ever need to change the URL of a post / page, Redirection becomes essential when migrating from another platform.
http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/
Review by Matteo Ionescu
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HeadSpace2
HeadSpace is meta-tag management on steroids. A great alternative to the popular All In One SEO Pack supporting an incredible number of features.
http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/
Review by Matteo Ionescu
Navigation Enhancement
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Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) inserts a list of related posts below each post on your blog, and in your blog’s RSS feed. It’s extremely configurable, and a must-have.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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TweetBacks
TweetBacks allows you to search the popular microblogging service Twitter for tweets that link to your blog posts. These tweets are then displayed under the entries on your blog site so that you and your readers know how many people shared your thoughts.
http://danzarrella.com/wp-tweetbacks-plugin.html
Review by Daniele Bazzano
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SRG Clean Archives
The SRG Clean Archives plugin displays your archive listings in a clean and uniform fashion, that’s search engine and user-friendly, on a dedicated page or in your sidebar. If you’re still manually updating your archives page, stop doing it!
http://www.idunzo.com/projects/clean-archives
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Contact Form 7
Even though there are tens of contact form plugins out there, I’ve always liked Contact Form 7. The problem with most contact form plugins is that either they are too simple or way too complex. Contact Form 7, on the other hand, is extensible yet easy-to-use. It supports Ajax-powered submitting, multiple forms, CAPTCHAS, and Akismet spam filtering.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Democracy
Democracy is a simple but effective way to add polls to your WordPress website and enhance user interaction.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/democracy/
Review by Matteo Ionescu
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Wp PostRatings
With Wp PostRatings you con allow your readers to rate your posts. Written in Ajax, is very light and unobtrusive.
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/
Review by Daniele Bazzano
Statistics
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WordPress.com Stats
WordPress.com Stats is a traffic statistics plugin that shows only the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track – such as page views, referrers, top posts & pages, search engine terms, and clicks – and provides them in a clear and concise interface.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Google Analytics for WordPress
The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin lets you insert the Google Analytics code automatically throughout your blog. It discounts your own visits, automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links, and downloads. It even allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, and track image search queries.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
WordPress Admin Enhancement
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One Click
The One-Click plugin allows you to upload themes and plugins straight to your WordPress blog from the browser. Just upload the zip file, and it’ll automatically unzip the contents and install the plugin for you. Now you never have to use FTP again!
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/one-click-plugin-updater/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Dashboard Widget Manager
Ever felt your dashboard was too cluttered? Then download Dashboard Widget Manager. It allows you to remove unnecessary widgets from your dashboard so it’ll look clean and load faster.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Lighter Menus
Lighter Menus creates drop down menus instead of the regular admin menus for WordPress, so you can browse items in one click. It’s fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, and comes with some sleek icons.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lighter-admin-drop-menus/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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PageMash
Customize the order of your pages, manage their parent structure, and hide them, all using PageMash. It features an Ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface, and is a great tool to re-arrange the order of your pages quickly.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Manageable
Manageable allows inline editing of the date, title, categories, tags, status, and more of both posts and pages without ever having to leave the “Manageable” admin section. No need to load each post or page individually. Simply double-click anywhere in the post or page row and when you’re done, press enter.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/manageable/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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Role Manager
Role Manager is a solution to handle user levels and allow deep customization of individual permissions. Very useful if you manage a multi-user blog!
http://redalt.com/Resources/Plugins/Role+Manager
Review by Matteo Ionescu
Content Embedding Utilities
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Embedit
Embedit is a very light plugin (ionly 10 lines of code) which lets you easily embed any HTML code into a WordPress page / post. Works seamlessly across different versions of WordPress.
http://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/embed-html/
Review by Daniele Bazzano
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Samsarin PHP Widget
Very simple but effective way to add custom widgets into sidebars with your PHP / HTML code. Samsarin PHP Widget functionality should be really implemented in WordPress itself!
http://www.samsarin.com/blog/2007/03/10/samsarin-php-widget/
Review by Matteo Ionescu
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Exec-PHP
Exec-PHP lets you execute PHP code in posts, pages, and in the text widgets of your sidebar.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
Miscellaneous
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WP Super Cache
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Digg Effect and the Slashdot Effect. They can cause a server meltdown, and if you’re on shared hosting, get your ass kicked out. To Digg-proof your blog, get WP Super Cache. It reduces the load on your server by generating static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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WordPress Database Backup
You should always backup your WordPress database regularly. However, doing it manually every time can be difficult and time consuming. The WordPress Database Backup plugin lets you easily backup your WordPress database tables. You can even schedule a backup, and it’ll email the file to you every day!
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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OIO Publisher
OIO Publisher is the ultimate ad management plugin. It’s great for those who want to sell ads on their blog by themselves. The great thing about OIO is that it removes all the hassle one gets from self-selling ad space: you only have to approve purchases. OIO Publisher handles everything else. Using OIO, you can sell reviews, links, ads, and even your own products! Heck, it even allows you to create your own affiliate program, so other people can sell your ads and products for you.
Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
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qTranslate
Multilingual support is one of the biggest missing features of WordPress, but with qTransalate you can easily accomplish the task of managing different languages for your blog site.
http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/
Review by Daniele Bazzano
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WP Lytebox
WP Lytebox lets you easily add a lightbox effect when clicking a thumbnail to display the fullsize image.
http://grupenet.com/2007/08/03/wp-lytebox/
Review by Matteo Ionescu
Original list by Ruchir Chawdhry on TechVivo, extended with the contributions of Robin Good and Matteo Ionescu. First published for MasterNewMedia on December 11, 2008 as “30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers“.
Photo credits:
Content Sharing – benseguenia khaled
Spam Fighting – Andrea Danti
SEO – Marco Rullkoetter
Navigation Enhancement – Phecsone
Stats – Janaka Dharmasena
WordPress Admin Enhancement – WordPress
Content Embedding – norebbo
Miscellanous – Vitaliy Tumanyan
Every web publisher knows the “>importance of Google traffic and of avoiding the risks of being penalized. All too often, a sudden traffic drop may be the symptom of a hacking attack to your web site, and until you realize what has exactly happened and what to do to correct it, you may lose lots of traffic and its associated revenues. WordPress in particular, the most popular blogging platform today, is increasingly targeted by spammers and malicious attackers trying to exploit each and every code vulnerability.
Matteo Ionescu and Daniele Bazzano
Are you sure your web site is completely under your control? Spammers and hackers easily add fake web pages and malicious links to your web site without you even knowing it. Then they steal your content and redirect your visitors to bad web neighborhoods. When the Google bot find out all of this, you know your site will not be among the first set of search results anymore.
To better understand how to prevent your web site from suddenly losing its traffic or authority within the Google SERPs, I have asked in these two short videos Matteo Ionescu, Robin Good’s personal SEO advisor, to suggest some basic guidelines to follow to prevent such situations from happening and to protect your content from being used in ways that may damage the credibility and visibility of your web site.
Here the two videos with a full text transcription with all of Matteo’s advice:
Intro by Daniele Bazzano
Sudden Google Traffic Loss: Possible Causes And Remedies
Duration: 4′ 41″
Full English Text Transcription
Intro
Daniele Bazzano: Hello everyone, this is Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and I’m here today with Matteo Ionescu, which is Robin Good’s personal SEO, search engine optimizer.
Hi Matteo, how are you doing?
Matteo Ionescu: Fine Daniele, thank you. How are you?
Daniele Bazzano: I’m doing great, thank you.
Google Traffic Failing Issues
Daniele Bazzano: Matteo, I just contacted you because I wanted to know… What can I do if I see that Google traffic is failing on my site?
Matteo Ionescu: If your Google traffic is going down, I’d suggest to look for all your recent changes in your web site, especially regarding outgoing links.
Maybe you’ve put some links to a bad neighborhood, or maybe there’s a link on your web site to a bad web site and you don’t even know anything about it.
Keep a Good Security Level on Your Web Site
Daniele Bazzano: So, there can be links to bad neighborhoods in my web site that I don’t know anything about? How this could be possible?
Matteo Ionescu: Unfortunately today hacking is very common.
Hackers use some tricks to put links to spam web sites, like using some comment forms or mailing forms, or also using some FTP magic in order to put some web pages that you don’t know anything about on your web site.
So, check your FTP and be careful about keeping a good security level on every aspect of your web site.
Check Your Web Site For Duplicated Or Stolen Content
Matteo Ionescu: Another thing I would suggest to look closely is the web site’s navigation.
If you’ve made some changes to navigation menus, I’d suggest to turn off Javascript and have a look around and check if all pages are still reachable also with Javascript disabled.
Besides this, duplicate content problems can also be critical. if you’ve introduced some new features on your web site, that allow to see content in a different way, be careful not to create too many useless pages or take care of this with a noindex tag.
Also, go on Google and search for your main keywords and your articles’ titles and see if some scraping has been done.
Maybe some other web sites are ranking with your keywords, using your stolen content. This can be a serious issue especially if your domain is not too strong.
Pretty much that’s it.
Scraping
Daniele Bazzano: Matteo, you mentioned scraping. What is that exactly? I’ve never heard about it.
Matteo Ionescu: Yeah, content scraping is an old technique which unfortunately is used by spammers which steal text, or content from web sites, and then put it on another domain, on another frame, and try to steal your traffic using your work.
Helpful Resources When Building A Web Site
Daniele Bazzano: I see. There are many things to care about when you build up a web site, but are there any tools that can help me out when building a web site and checking its integrity?
Matteo Ionescu: For sure, there are lots of them. Building a complete list is very hard, also because this is a fast-moving world.
But I’d personally start from Google Webmaster Tools, which can be an excellent tools for diagnosing some kind of problems early.
Regarding the duplicated or stolen content problem, I also suggest Copyscape.com, and to read the most popular SEO blogs, like Matt Cutts‘, which gives good advices on how to build web sites and how to make sure nothing goes wrong.
Daniele Bazzano: Thank you very much Matteo, these sure were great advices.
I think that’s pretty much it, so thank you very much, and talk to you later. Bye, ciao!
Matteo Ionescu: Ciao!
WordPress Site Hacked: What To Do And What To Check
Duration: 4′ 54″
Full English Text Transcription
Intro
Daniele Bazzano: Hello everyone, this is Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and today I’m here with Matteo Ionescu, which is Robin Good’s personal SEO.
Hi, Matteo, how are you?
Matteo Ionescu: Fine, thank you Daniele. How are you?
Daniele Bazzano: I’m doing great, thank you.
How to Prevent Hacker Attacks on WordPress Sites
Daniele Bazzano: Matteo I wanted to ask you today… If I have WordPress installed on my web site, how can I prevent any hacker attacks?
Matteo Ionescu: WordPress hacking has been quite a problem a lot of times, even on famous blogs, like on all open source software.
I suggest to keep your WordPress updated, always to the latest version. Be careful that upgrading WordPress is easy, but you should make sure first that all your plugins are compatible with the new version, or you might experience some problems in some functionalities of your blog.
Another big advice is to try to hide which WordPress version you are using. This is almost easily accomplished with a small plugin which is called WordPress Version Remover. Just install this plugin on the head section of the page. The version will not be shown anymore.
Be careful also to have a closer look to the source code of your blog pages.
See if the WordPress version is shown, even in the footer, because sometimes, some themes call the WordPress version tag in the footer. If this is the case on the footer.php file of your theme, clean the WordPress version part.
What If Your Site Has Already Been Hacked?
Daniele Bazzano: Ok, Matteo, thank you. But I was just thinking… these were advices to prevent hackers to attack my site, but what if hackers have already screwed up my site? What can I do after?
Matteo Ionescu: The best thing would be to replace a backup.
This is why I strongly encourage everybody to install automatic database backup. There are many plugins which can accomplish this task.
And backup your FTP at least once a month. This is a very good practice.
But if you’ve been hacked, and you don’t have a backup, you can try to recover the situation upgrading to the latest version of WordPress, making sure that there are no more backdoors for the hackers like usernames that are not created by you.
If present, remove some malicious strips in folders that are not standard WordPress folders. You can download WordPress again and have a look at the structure of the folders and check that everything matches to your own website.
Then, obviously change the password after upgrading, edit your wp-config.php, and change or create the secret key definition.
Also a good practice on a new log might be to insert random code or random word in the secret key definition, to make life more difficult for hackers.
Pretty much that’s it.
WordPress Plugins
Daniele Bazzano: Thank you Matteo, so you mentioned that using plugins I can accomplish many things on my site.
Would you mind just naming a few that can be useful?
Matteo Ionescu: There are a lot of WordPress backup plugins.
I think there’s a good one which is called WP-DB-Backup. But if you Google for “wordpress database backup“, you’ll find lots of plugins which do this.
Besides that, you can also do it by hand, or using phpmyadmin, which is a very popular interface that you find on most hosting packages.
Daniele Bazzano: Thank you very much Matteo, this was surely useful. I thank you, and I’ll talk to you later. Bye, ciao!
Matteo Ionescu: Ciao!
Originally shot by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 5th as “Traffic Drop? WordPress Site Hacked? What To Do And How To Protect Your Blog From Sudden Disaster“.
Best Online Collaboration Tools 2008 – The Collaborative Map
Posted by: | CommentsThe Best Online Collaboration Tools 2008, Collaborative Map is a live editable map of over 150 of the best free and low-cost online collaboration tools available, picked and selected by passionate users like you and me.
Click the map to see the full, public, editable version
That’s right. This collaborative map has been created with the live help of over 100 individuals who have participated with me on November 17th in a unique event: This collaborative map has been created with the live help of over 100 individuals who have participated with me on November 17th in a unique event: Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008. During my session at the conference, which took place fully online…. During my session at the conference, which took place fully online, I decided not to leverage my personal knowledge with collaboration tools to show the best and most useful ones, as I have done so many times in the last two years, but to actually involve the participants (over 150 at the time) into creating a visual map of what THEY thought were the best online collaboration tools out there.
And so I kind of played the visual moderator, by providing them first with a basic set of categories that they could attach tools too, and then by helping in moving tools to their best matching categories and removing technologies and services that were either inappropriate or not belonging to any of the listed groups.
Within a week the map has cleaned itself up while growing considerably. It now lists over 150 live online collaboration tools in 13 different categories. All the tools listed are either free or have affordable rates (included only those who have clearly published such prices on their site).
Now it is here ready for you to use.
Whenever you have a collaboration need you may glance at this map and remember in a second which tools are available which could service your specific need.
Note: A special thank you to Jay Cross, Tony Karrer and George Siemens who have trusted my explorative spirit and have gently allowed me to take a live group into a new real-time learning territory. Seeing a mind-map growing under your very eyes, node by node, thanks to the input of a multitude of many passionate individuals is a mind-opening experience.
What This Map Contains
This collaboration tools map has the objective of bringing together the most useful, free or low-cost technologies available today online. Originally the types of tools included by the participants in this experiment, ranged from real-time instant messaging and video conferencing tools to the main social bookmarking resources and microblogging tools as several participants felt that these too were relevant collaboration technologies.
To limit its breadth and provide more specific usefulness to those who are looking for real-time collaboration solutions, I have later decided to sacrifice microblogging and social bookmarking tools, as I would prefer to gather those together in a separate social media and collaborative publishing group.
The official focus is therefore on real-time or near real-time collaborative technologies in the groups that have been already defined.
The Key Categories
These the online collaboration categories covered in the map with over 150 technologies:
- VoIP – Instant Messaging Tools
- Video Conferencing
- Screen-Sharing, Remote-Control
- Web Conferencing
- Co-browsing
- Web Presenting
- Workgrouping
- File Sharing
- Document Sharing and Wikis
- Collaborative Document Reviewing
- Collaborative Event Scheduling
- Mind-Mapping
- Project Management
How You Can Contribute
You can personally contribute to this collaborative effort by accessing the “public” and open version of the map, and by adding new tools or specific information to the existing nodes. (To edit the map you will need to freely register at www.mindmeister.com, which will take only a few seconds.)
What You Can Add
The best thing you can do is to add relevant new tools to the map. The collaboration tools that fit this map are those that can match the following criteria:
- live collaboration and team-work oriented tools
- free or low-cost solutions only
If you are logged into MindMeister, you can add a URL, or some notes to any “node” appearing on the map. Simply select the node and then click on the relevant icon inside the right column dashboard to edit and add more info.
The Live Map Present Version and Future Updates
Click and drag inside the above map to move and see its different parts and / or use the zoom icons on the bottom left part of the map
This above is the live collaboration tools map as of November 25th 2008. You can still go up and update it and in the future I will be releasing new updates to it.
To be able to edit, add and contribute additional information, you need to freely register and login inside MindMeister.
The map integrates a full revisions history feature and therefore it is easy to spot and remove spammy additions or incorrect information just like you would do in Wikipedia.
Disclosure: I am in no way associated or affiliated to MindMeister.com. I have selected their tool and service among others because it is the one that I feel most comfortable with and the one I find easiest to use for novices.
Originally conceived by Robin Good for LearningTrends2008 and first created in real-time with the participation of over 100 hundred different participating individuals on November 17th 2008.
To check the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, or screen resolutions there are a handful of little known tools which professional webmasters keep secretly inside their toolkits. I have gone out to find out what these are.
Photo credit: BrowserCam edited by Daniele Bazzano
As you probably know, you cannot take for granted how your web site will be displayed when called up on a computer running a different operating system than yours. In fact, there are at least three main issues that affect the way your web pages are displayed on other people screens:
- The browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) and the specific version your viewers use
- The operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) your viewers run on their machines.
- The screen resolution your viewers have set on their monitors.
To make this straight, a page rendered in Firefox 2 on a Windows machine probably won’t look the same when opened again in Firefox 3 on a Mac. This is why as an online publisher you have to go out of your way to make sure your site displays almost identically across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions.
But how can you test such a broad variety of possible combinations? Install all the available browsers and operating systems out there, and then test your web pages at each one of the different screen resolutions your monitor can handle?
If you want to maintain your sanity, don’t even attempt the above. The sheer number of possible combinations you need to test is pretty scary: 15 basic setups that need to be tested at least at three different resolutions makes for positive extended nightmare. Trust me.
In this guide, I have personally hand-picked the best browser compatibility testing tools out there to help you check rapidly your site across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions.
Cross-platform browser testing tools generally all work in the same way. You provide the URL of the web page you want to test, and then select the operating systems, browsers, and (when available) the specific screen resolutions you want to test your page on.
The browser compatibility testing service you choose will then proceed to take a screenshot of that very page according to the specifics you have chosen (operating system, browser model and version, etc.), so that you can immediately evaluate what are the key issues to be addressed inside your web page HTML code tags.
Here below is a comprehensive list of all the browser compatibility testing tools and services out there as well as a set of key basic criteria I have utilized to compare them:
- Price: Is the service free or does it require the payment of a fee to be used.
- Free Trial: Many services allow a free testing period. Find out who does.
- Browser: Which browsers (and browser versions) are supported by the service.
- OS: Indicates which operating systems are supported in the compatibiliy test.
- Screen resolution: Specifies whether you can test your web page across different screen resolutions.
- Unique characteristics: Discover the key feature that makes every service unique.
To make your analysis and selection task even most effective, here below I have also prepared a comparison table showcasing all of the available cross-platform browser compatibility testing tools, along with a full set of mini-reviews introducing each one.
Here all the details:
Intro by Daniele Bazzano
Cross-Platform Browser Testing Tools Comparison Table
go to the table!
*Please refer to services sites for additional pricing solutions.
Check The Compatibility Of Your Site Across Different Browsers, Operating Systems, And Screen Resolutions
- BrowserCam
BrowserCam allows you to test your site across different browsers, and operating systems. The service works on any browser you can think of running on Windows, Mac, and Linux Fedora Core 9. Testing of different screen resolutions is also allowed. A unique feature of Browsercam is the possibility of testing how your pages are rendered on a Blackberry smart phone running Windows Mobile 5.0. BrowserCam is priced at $19,95 for one day of use, but there additional pricing solutions if you plan to use it for a longer time. Free to try for 24 hours and 200 screen captures.
http://www.browsercam.com/ - Browsershots
Browsershots is perhaps the best free solution to test the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Browsershots compares the layout of your site on almost any browser and OS in the market. You can also test your layout at different screen resolutions. Unique feature is the possibility of testing color depth, as well as Javascript, Flash and Java codes, to see how these parameters may affect the way your site is displayed.
http://browsershots.org/ - Litmus
Litmus is a web-based service that lets you compare the rendering of your site in different browsers and operating systems. Using the Basic (free) version you can run tests on IE7 and Firefox 2. By purchasing one of the additional pricing solutions you can access a wider choice of browsers and operating systems. Litmus offers no trial period nor the possibility to test your site at different screen resolutions. As a unique feature the service allows you to test the layout of your newsletters (only for MS Office 2003 and GMail in the Basic version).
http://litmusapp.com/ - CrossBrowserTesting
CrossBrowserTesting allows you to check the compatibility of your site on a large number of browsers including IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, and some more. Operating systems available for testing are Microsft Windows, Mac OSX 10.5, and Ubuntu 7.10. Cross-BrowserTesting does not offer the option to switch between different screen resolutions, but Javascript and Ajax testing is available. Pricing solutions start from $1 for 5 minutes of testing with no limitations. You can test the service for a free trial period of 5 minutes.
http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/ - Browser Photo
Browser Photo is a web-based solution that takes screenshots of your web pages across different browsers and operating systems for layout-testing purposes. The service works with main browsers on the market (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) running on Windows, Mac and Linux. Browser Photo allows you to test browsers at different screen resolutions as well. No trial period is available. Priced at $15 for a one-time use, Browser Photo offers additional pricing plans to suit your needs.
http://www.netmechanic.com/products/browser-index.shtml - BrowsrCamp
BrowsrCamp is a web-based service that allows you to check the compatibility of your site across different browsers but only on Mac machines. Working on almost all the browsers you can run on OSX, BrowsrCamp also allows you to test your site at different screen resolutions. Starting at $3 for two days of utilize, the service offers additional pricing solutions for longer testing periods. Free testing on Safari 3.12 only.
http://www.browsrcamp.com/ - IE NetRenderer
IE NetRenderer is a free web-based service that lets you compare how a web site is rendered across different versions of Internet Explorer (from 5.5 to 8 Beta 2). Screen-resolution testing is not allowed. An useful and unique feature of IE NetRenderer allows you to compare at a first glance any difference in the way your page is displayed on the screen between IE6 and IE7 .
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/ - Multi-Safari
Multi-Safari is a free browser testing service that allows you to check the rendering of your site across different versions of the Safari. The service is designed to avoid different installations of OSX to test the your site on older releases of the Safari web browser. Multi-Safari does not allow any test on different screen resolutions.
http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/
If you are aware of other browser compatibility testing tools you tried and you think are worth mentioning here, please feel free to use the comment area below.
Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 19th 2008 as “Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools – Sharewood Guide“.