Tag Archives: google

CTTS Upgraded, Jetpacked, and Roboted

Posted on 23.03.2011 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Mise à jour de WordPress. Installation de Jetpack et de Robots Meta. Comme toujours, faites signe en cas de comportement inhabituel du site!

[en]

Sorry for the neologisms in the title. I’ve upgraded CTTS to WordPress 3.1 (you should do it too if you haven’t done it yet, lest you fall prey to hackers as I did earlier this year). While I was at it, I also installed Jetpack, the plugin that brings to WordPress.org blogs goodness from WordPress.com.

I use WordPress.com for almost all my projects, and all my clients. For most of the people I work with, it’s just not worth the hassle to have to deal with upgrades, technical issues, and potential hackings. For CTTS, however, I do depend on plugins like Basic Bilingual which are not (yet?!) a part of the WordPress.com offering. Also, I admit the geek in me likes having her own installation and code to tinker with.

Finally, I installed the Robots Meta plugin. You know me, I’m always a bit wary of the fancy SEO stuff (specially as many people who write about it seem completely obsessed with it, rather than obsessing on doing and saying interesting things). I’m really unimpressed with all the panic over duplicate content for example, especially as it didn’t seem to sound like a huge issue in blogs when I heard Matt Cutts giving us SEO tips in 2007 — I happily cross-post a lot of my writing “elsewhere” back here and I don’t think I’ve suffered unreasonably from it.

Anyway: lately, I’ve read a few analytics/SEO articles that seemed sensible to me and I’m starting to take a tiny (tiny!) bit of interest in the subject.

I’ve been using the Google Sitemap Generator plugin for some time now, and hanging out in my Google Webmaster Central — particularly since my hacking incident.

Also, it was brought to my attention today that there are old articles lying around on CTTS which are ranked very highly for certain searches even though they are really not that relevant anymore. Though I’m loathe to remove them altogether, I could very well remove them from search engine listings — and the Robots Meta plugin allows me to do just that.

So, I’ve taken the plunge and am now only allowing search engines to index my home page (of course) and single article pages, blocking them from date, category and tag archives as well as comment feeds.

We’ll see what happens — I’m a bit worried I may have gone overboard and I wonder what the consequences of those settings can be to other crawlers like BackType and IceRocket. If you have any intel to give me on that topic, I’m happy to take it. I feel a bit like I’ve been giving orders to my robot blocker without really understanding all the consequences.

Google: quelques trucs pratiques

Posted on 23.08.2010 by Stephanie Booth

[en]

I write a weekly column for Les Quotidiennes, which I republish here on CTTS for safekeeping.

[fr]

Chroniques du monde connecté: cet article a été initialement publié dans Les Quotidiennes (voir l’original).

La grande majorité des gens ne savent pas utiliser un moteur de recherche. Enfin, pas efficacement. Le moteur de recherche, c’est la porte d’entrée de l’internet-bibliothèque, et il est à mon avis indispensable aujourd’hui de savoir s’en servir de façon compétente.

La recherche est un art, et comme pour tout art, la maîtriser prend du temps. Quelques conseils, cependant.

prenez un moment pour comprendre comment fonctionne un moteur de recherche: ce n’est pas de la magie — le moteur de recherche prend les mots que vous tapez dans la boîte, et cherche les pages qui les contiennent, en les hiérarchisant à l’aide d’un algorithme complexe
les mots clés ne sont pas des incantations ou des formules magiques; imaginez la page que vous cherchez: quels mots pensez-vous qu’elle contient, et qui pourraient la distinguer d’autres pages qui ne vous intéressent pas?
essayez avec plus de mots clés (recherche précise) mais aussi avec moins de mots-clés
apprenez à combiner les mots clés à l’aide des opérateurs (“AND” entre deux mots impose que les deux soient présents; le signe moins devant un mot indique que vous ne désirez pas que celui-ci figure dans les résultats; mettre une expression entre guillemets l’utilisera telle quelle, en un bloc; etc.)

Souvent, pour trouver la perle rare, il faut ouvrir beaucoup de pages. Les onglets (“tabs”) vont vous venir en aide pour faire rapidement le tour de tous ces résultats.

Faites une première recherche, puis, au lieu de regarder juste les titres des pages trouvés par le moteur de recherche, ouvrez-les toutes en maintenant la touche Ctrl (sur Windows) ou Cmd (sur Mac) enfoncée. Chaque lien s’ouvrira dans un nouvel onglet. Ce n’est peut-être pas très naturel au début, mais persévérez — vous récupérerez amplement le temps ainsi investi dans les semaines à venir.

Faites une deuxième recherche, avec d’autres mots clés. Ouvrez également tous ces liens dans des onglets. Et une troisième, si nécessaire.

Une fois que vous avez épuisé votre inspiration en matière de combinaison de mots clés, ou si vous pensez qu’il y a parmi vous onglets ouverts assez de pages potentiellement intéressantes, allez faire le tour de ce que vous avez débusqué. Ctrl/Cmd+W ferme en principe l’onglet actif: il est donc assez simple d’éliminer rapidement les pages sans intérêt, après un coup d’oeil, et de passer à la suivante.

Parfois, faire le tour des onglets ouverts vous donne d’autres idées de combinaisons de mots clés: Ctrl/Cmd+T ouvre un nouvel onglet dans lequel vous pouvez taper votre nouvelle recherche, et procéder avec elle comme ci-dessus.

Bonnes recherches!

Facebook et le web sans se casser les dents

Posted on 26.05.2010 by Stephanie Booth

[en]

A prezi for a conference I gave to 17-20 year olds in Monthey.

[fr]

Voici le prezi que j’ai utilisé ce matin pour ma conférence à l’attention des élèves de l’ECCG de Monthey.

Facebook et le web sans se casser les dents on Prezi

Le prezi est un peu laconique bien entendu (ce qui était important, c’est ce que je disais) — mais pour ceux qui étaient là, ça vous donne accès aux liens, et pour ceux qui n’y étaient pas… ça vous donne une vague idée!

Je sais, je sais, les jours passent et je ne blogue pas. Ça va revenir ne vous en faites pas, je commence à sortir la tête de l’eau. Je commence.

Google Buzz Privacy Issue: How to Hide People You’re Following on Your Profile

Posted on 11.02.2010 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Google Buzz affiche sur votre profil Google public la liste des personnes que vous suivez. Par défaut, cette liste est composée des personnes avec qui vous chattez régulièrement et que vous e-mailez le plus. Est-ce que vous désirez vraiment que ce type d'information soit visible à tous?

Je parie que non. Heureusement, en éditant votre profil Google (voyez la saisie d'écran dans cet article) vous pouvez cacher ces listes aux yeux du public.

15.02.10: en français, lire cette analyse des problèmes de vie privée au lancement de Google Buzz ainsi que ma chronique à ce sujet chez Les Quotidiennes.

[en]

Yesterday, I got a call from a journalist about Google Buzz. I didn’t have much to say as I hadn’t read up on it and my account was not active yet. A few hours later I got a chance to play with it a few minutes before going out, quite liked it, left it at that.

Today, I’m pretty disturbed. Without going into deep analysis, here is the reason: Google Buzz displays the list of people I’m following (and those who follow me) on my public Google Profile.

Why is this an issue? After all, Twitter as been displaying followers/followees forever.

This is an issue because the default people Google Buzz makes me follow when I activate the service are the people I chat with and e-mail the most.

Chatting and e-mail happen in the private space. It’s nobody’s business who I chat with most, and who I e-mail regularly. I do not want that data exposed.

Buzz, on the other hand, is “public”. It’s Twitter-like. Come to think of it, I’m not sure it belongs anywhere near my inbox. (Wave might, though, but that’s another story.)

This is a nasty messy ugly mixture of public and private, where private information is suddenly made public without us being really aware of it.

Thankfully, there is a way to hide those lists from your Google Profile. Edit your profile and uncheck the “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me” checkbox on the right, as in this screenshot.

I’ll quote from the article I mentioned above, for what Google should have done here:

The whole point is: Google should just ask users: “Do you want to follow these people we’ve suggested you follow based on the fact that you email and chat with them? Warning: This will expose to the public who you email and chat with most.” Google should not let users proceed to using Buzz until they click, “Yes, publish these lists.”

Or simply, make these lists private by default.

Update 14:35: Suw Charman-Anderson has some thoughts on Google Buzz: Not fit for purpose that you also might want to read.

Update 12.02.2010: Google have reacted to the concerns about “following list” privacy and have planned some changes. Suw comments upon them at the bottom of her updated post.

Content Curation: Why I’m Not Your Target Audience

Posted on 31.12.2009 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Je suis trop efficace avec un moteur de recherche pour être très emballée par les divers outils qui visent à organiser la masse de contenu à disposition sur le web, en temps réel ou non.

[en]

In Paris, I had a sudden flash of insight (during a conversation with somebody, as often). Most services designed to help with content curation don’t immediately appeal to me because I’m not their target audience: I’m too good at using search.

I was trying to figure out why, although I liked the idea behind PearlTrees and SmallRivers (I tried them out both briefly), part of me kept thinking they weren’t really adding anything that we couldn’t already do. Well, maybe not that exactly, but I couldn’t really see the point. For example: “PearlTrees, it’s just bookmarking with pretty visual and social stuff, right?” or “SmallRivers, we already have hyperlinks, don’t we?” — I know this is unfair to both services, and they go beyond that, but somehow, for me, it just didn’t seem worth the effort.

And that’s the key bit: not worth the effort. When I need to find something I’ve seen before, I search for it. I understand how a search engine works (well, way more than your average user, let’s say) and am pretty good at using it. I gave up using bookmarks years ago (today, I barely use delicious anymore — just look at my posting frequency there). I stick things in Evernote and Tumblr because I can search for them easily afterwards. I don’t file my e-mail, or even tag it very well in gmail — I just search when I need a mail. I don’t organize files much on my hard drive either, save for some big drawers like “client xyz”, business, personal, admin — and those are horribly messy.

I search for stuff. And to be honest, now that I’ve discovered Google Web History, I’m not sure what else I could ever ask for. It embodies an old old fantasy of mine: being able to restrict a fulltext search to pages I’ve visited in a certain timeframe. “Damn, where did I put this?” becomes a non-issue when you can use Google search over a subset of the web which contains all the pages you’ve ever loaded up in your browser. (Yeah, privacy issues, certainly.)

What about the social dimension of these curation tools? Well, I’m a blogger. I blog. When I want to share, I put stuff in my blog, or Tumblr. I’m actually starting to like PearlTrees for that, because it is a nice way of collecting and ordering links — but really, I’m not the kind of person who has a lot of patience for that kind of activity. Some people spend time keeping their bookmarks, e-mails, or files in order. I don’t — there are way too many more interesting things for me to spend my time on. So I keep things in a mess, and when I need something out of them, I search.

I think I’m just not a content curator, aside from my low-energy activities like tweeting, tumblring, and blogging.

It doesn’t mean there is no need for content curation, of the live stream or more perennial content like “proper” web pages. But just like some people are bloggers and some aren’t, I think some people are curators and some aren’t.

Google Identity Dilemma

Posted on 10.10.2009 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Depuis des années, j'utilise une identité "fantaisiste" pour tous mes services Google. C'est mon identité principale (vous voyez de laquelle je parle si on est en contact). J'aimerais passer à prénom.nom comme identité principale (je la possède aussi) mais tous les services Google sont rattachés à la première, et je ne vois pas vraiment comment m'en sortir. Idées bienvenues!

[en]

When I created a Gmail address all these years ago, I chose a “funny-cute” name that was easy to remember for most of the people I knew. I was on IRC all day back then, and my nickname was bunny(wabbit_), and people knew I was Swiss.

I didn’t really think my Gmail address would become so central to my online identity, you see.

Of course, I also registered firstname.lastname and redirected it onto my main e-mail address and identity.

As years went by, Google added all sorts of services that got tied onto this identity (not to mention the 2.5Gb of archived e-mails and chats). Google Talk, Google Profiles, and recently, Google Sidewiki and Google Wave.

These last weeks, I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t “make the switch” and use my more serious “firstname.lastname” e-mail address as my main identity. Actually, to be honest, I’d like to. But there are obstacles — oh, so many.

First, all my contacts are linked to my current account. All my e-mail is stuck in it. My Feedburner and Google Reader settings are linked to it. My blogger blog is. My calendar. Everywhere I use my Google identity for a third-party service, here we go.

And Google does not allow you to link one Google account to another (sure, you can redirect mail, but that doesn’t solve anything).

So, do you see my problem? If you have any bright ideas, I’m listening. I would really like a solution.

A Few Words About Google Wave

Posted on 04.06.2009 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Google Wave va changer les choses. Dans le creux entre e-mail et messagerie instantanée, Wave pourrait remplacer les deux. J'ai hâte de l'essayer, et hâte d'être dans un monde où on l'utilise.

Premières impressions très intuitives, mais j'ai appris avec les années à leur faire confiance. (A mes intuitions.)

[en]

I wanted to write this post yesterday, to keep up with my good resolutions, but time caught up with me and I had to leave my computer to go and enjoy some time on the lake (we finished 13th, and I had a good windy sailing lesson before that — thanks Dad).

So, as for most of you I guess, Google Wave came up on my Twitter radar these last days. I thought I’d take a quick peek, without spending the whole day on it, so I looked at part of the demo video (the first part, where the actual demo is), and read a few articles (CNET, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb — there are tons of others, but I’m on purpose trying not to be exhaustive in my research… fight that perfectionism!)

In one word? Cool.

I remember many years ago, how taking collaborative notes in SubEthaEdit during the BlogTalk conference in Vienna would every now and then drift into us chatting in the document. (By the way: I’m on the Programme Committee for BlogTalk 2009 which will take place in Jeju, South Korea, on September 1-2. Send in your proposals now!)

I also remember, how many years before that, ICQ introduced “real-time chat” (or whatever they called it), where you could actually see people type when you chatted with them.

And I remember the many many days I’ve spent in endless wiki conversations — I think one of the best ways I can describe Google Wave is to say it’s a very accelerated wiki page with bells and a touch of Facebook.

Google Wave is marrying e-mail and IM, and it’s a good thing. It’s recording the process of the conversation, which makes it easier for outsiders to jump in. It has private, it has public, it has text, it has rich media, it has profiles.

People say it’s a bit hard to get at first, and that, in my opinion, is another indication that it is something really new.

I can’t wait to try it. I get all excited when I think of it. These are my totally uninformed first impressions. Over the years, I’ve come to trust those — Google Wave is going to change things.

Démarrer avec Google Reader

Posted on 10.08.2008 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Getting started with Google Reader, for my French readers.

[en]

Comme ces temps je n’arrête pas d’initier des gens de mon entourage à Google Reader, je me suis dit, allez, hop, quelques instructions par écrit.

Google Reader, c’est un lecteur RSS (ah oui, c’était en 2003 que j’expliquais ça, un peu trop en avance, pour changer) auquel vous avez accès si vous avez un compte GMail (qui n’en a pas?). En bref, ça permet de centraliser en un seul endroit toutes vos lectures de blogs et de nouvelles.

Dans votre GMail, cliquez sur “Reader” en haut à droite. Ça ressemble à ça:

Première chose à faire: ajouter un abonnement.

Définissez (si vous le désirez) un dossier pour votre abonnement. Vous pouvez ainsi séparer vos lectures par centre d’intérêt. C’est utile, car ensuite vous pouvez regarder toutes les “nouveautés” dans une seule catégorie sans vous soucier des autres. Exemples: blogs, mes amis, trucs préférés, nouvelles, horticulture, technique… bref.

Ajoutez autant d’abonnements que vous voulez:

Voilà, c’est aussi facile que ça!

Au prochain épisode, je vous montrerai comment profiter des fonctionnalités “sociales” de Google Reader, et je vous présenterai Feedly, une extension Firefox qui “habille” Google Reader de tout un tas de trucs sympas (sans compter que c’est beaucoup plus agréable à l’oeil).

A bientôt!

Google: “Don’t Mix Languages on the Same Page”

Posted on 09.08.2008 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Dommage, un article sur comment démarrer son site multilingue sur un des blogs officiels de Google donne des conseils que je trouve assez malheureux (genre: "ne mélangez pas plusieurs langues sur une même page").

[en]

I wanted to leave this as a comment on How to Start a Multilingual Site over on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, but unfortunately Blogger is taking a break right now and I can’t post. So, here we go:

“Avoid mixing languages on each page, as this may confuse Googlebot as well as your users.” (Nico, thanks, I’d missed that one)

I’m really disappointed to see this kind of advice handed out. Yes, it confuses Googlebot, but only because it doesn’t (I guess?) take into account lang=”xx” attributes. (Yeah, nobody uses them, but that’s because nobody parses them.)

But users? Most people are not pure monolinguals. We need ways to make linguistic barriers online weaker, and not stronger.

I’ve been mixing languages on Climb to the Stars for eight years now, and it hasn’t prevented my readers or my Page Rank from being happy.

I vote for Google learning that the “page” is not the smallest item on the web that is allowed to have its own language attribute, rather than asking people to conform to some kind of artificial absolute monolingualism.

I’ll try an post tomorrow, but at least this is out there. I left a previous comment on the same post earlier today, by the way. (Check out my other multilingual stuff while you’re on the topic.)

Google Groups Pain in the Neck

Posted on 01.05.2008 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Google Groups trouve qu'il n'est pas raisonnable de vouloir ajouter plus d'une dizaine de personnes à la fois à une newsletter nouvellement créée.

[en]

I’ve used Google Groups to set up a newsletter for Going Solo.

Here it is, with added proof (if needed) of my hopeless lack of design sense.

When I set up the group, I did what most normal newsletter creators would do: went through my contacts to invite those who might be interested in joining. I selected 30 or so people to start with.

My action triggered a flag for review, as I might be a potential spammer:

Your request to invite X new members has been flagged for review by our staff.

In order to protect our members from unsolicited email, Google manually reviews invite requests which meet various criteria. Your request will not be reviewed unless you provide us with more information in the form below. Reviews generally take 1 – 2 business days.

Please provide an explanation for where these new members come from and why they would want to be part of your group. Note that Google takes a very dim view of Spam. The people you invite must know you and be expecting your message. If they complain, you will be banned from our service and your group will be deleted.

Great.

Well, I wrote up an explanation, saying I was setting up this newsletter so that people could stay informed about Going Solo (registration is closing soon btw), and that I was going through my address book to let people know about it.

Anything wrong with that, in your opinion? I think not, and Google obviously didn’t think there was anything wrong either, because they let my invitations go through after a few hours.

BUT.

Now, each time I invite even one single person, my request is flagged.

What a pain! I’m going to be inviting people many times a day over the next week, as I dig out e-mail addresses. And obviously, just announcing the existence of the newsletter is not enough to get people to sign up — ever heard of lower the barrier to entry? If I’m creating this newsletter, it’s because I’m finally coming to my senses (!) and realising that not everybody follows Twitter, subscribes to blogs, hangs out on Facebook or upcoming, and that good ol’ e-mail still has some good days before it when it comes to getting information out to people.

I am really annoyed at Google Groups for making this so difficult. Shouldn’t there be a way for me to get the limit “lifted” for my group, by offering proof I’m not a nasty spammer, but a businesswoman (OMG!) who is very much aware that she will very quickly use up her social capital if she spams her network with irrelevant stuff? And therefore, that I actually need to send out invites to a few hundred people?

Also, look at this form:

Don’t you think that “e-mail addresses” field invites a reasonably large number of addresses?

I went through the help, and it wasn’t very encouraging, but I did learn a few useful things:

the “flagging limit” seems to be 10 invites at a time (talk about being unreasonably low for newsletters, bound to trigger TONS of false positives)
you can create a Google Groups account easily even with a non-Gmail address (I think I had grief with this last year when I was struggling with Google Groups not wanting to send e-mail to the client I was setting up the discussion list for)
messages from staff in the relevant threads seem to focus on filling in the fields, which I’ve been doing, of course
I’m not alone in thinking the language Google uses for the warning message is a bit over the top, particularly given the number of false positives their low trigger limit is going to create (and the fact there is no warning that such a limit exists when you fill in the huge field for e-mail addresses to invite)
I’m not alone.
There doesn’t seem to be an official Google Groups blog.

So, please. If you have friends working on Google Groups, please draw their attention to this post and issue. It’s a bloody pain in the neck.

Oh yeah — and please sign up for the newsletter. I’m going to have trouble inviting you — going-solo-news-subscribe@googlegroups.com also works.

Tag Archives: google

Google: quelques trucs pratiques

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Google: “Don’t Mix Languages on the Same Page”

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