AdesBlog.com

Google Docs now allows you to create polls. But it’s not so easy or shall I say obvious to create polls in Google Docs. It’s one of those applications that are done from the programmers’ point of view and not the end-users’.

You will have to follow this tutorial to create your first poll. I hope you can remember the steps for your second poll.

I am wondering how difficult would it be to put “Create a poll” link directly in the menu and do the spreadsheet related programming at the backend? Anyway, here is the sample poll I have created below:

Do you use YahooSiteExplorer? If you don’t, you might be missing a lot. Because since I started using it (submitted my blog), Yahoo’s search bot started crawling more pages of my blog at a more frequent rate. As you can see to the right, Yahoo bot (green) crawls a lot more pages than Google and MSN bots.

This crawl rate graph was generated by this plugin.

What is Yahoo Site Explorer?

It is a tool that lets you access the information Yahoo has about a site’s online presence. You can see which sites and subpages are indexed by Yahoo Search, track sites that link into webpage, and view the most popular pages of your site (or any site for that matter).

With Yahoo Site Explorer, now everybody can submit their sites to Yahoo Search Engine for inclusion for free. Remember, before you had to pay to Yahoo if you wanted to include your site faster?

If you submit your site to Site Explorer and authenticate it, you will be able to tell Yahoo which pages to ignore and drop from the search index. This tool also allows you to enter your RSS url, it will automatically track the changes of your blog. (screenshot of Site Explorer below).

How to calculate Crawl Rate

SEOMeter.com has a great tool to calculate your site’s crawl rate. If your blog or site is already popular, SEOMeter might already have some stats for your site. But if it doesn’t, then you will have to add your site first. It took me about 2 weeks to get AdesBlog tracked by SEOMeter.

This is a great, small and free application (standalone exe file) that can check your entire website and show corresponding PageRank for every page. It was developed by SEOJunkie on the request of one of his blog readers.

Recommendations:

I wish the application had a “pause” button. Currently there are only “start” and “quit” buttons on the toolbar (see screenshot above). The problem arises when the website has too many pages, when this happens, there is no way of pausing the program. It goes and goes… only thing is to quit the program.

Also, “export to text file” feature would be great idea. (just a thought SEOJunkie ;) )

P.S Yes AdesBlog is now PR3, *sigh* big-G is really determined to crush me. But my other new project has a PR5 now, it was launched just 4 months ago. So, at least that’s something to be happy about.

via www.riceblogger.com

You can keep track of discussions about your blog on the web through your blog’s dashboard (incoming links) or through trackbacks. But both of these options only show up when there is a link to your blog from other blogs or sites. They won’t show up if someone just mentions your blog’s name and does not link to it.

However there is a way to track those conversations as well, it’s through Google Alerts. Unlike incoming links and trackbacks, Google Alerts can track words that are not linked to your blog. For example, if I track the word “AdesBlog” I would be sent websites that talk about AdesBlog whether the word “AdesBlog” is linked to my blog or not.

Here is how the Google Alerts page looks:

You have the options to be notified “once a day”, “as it happens” and “once a week”. It can search News, Blogs, Videos, Groups and the Web. I personally keep it to Comprehensive.

I also use it to track my other projects and products. As far as the products are concerned, it can really help you to improve your product. Because you will get a lot of information from the discussions about your product. Based on the discussions and suggestions you can improve and develop new features that meets the expectations of your customers. It will also allow you to be closer to your customers, replying to them personally is another good thing you can do with the help of Google Alerts.

Do you use Google Alerts?

If you are like me, have hundreds of filters in your gmail. Then you must be having this usability problem too.

I have lots of filters, some are important and some are just for organizational purposes. Some of the important ones, just because they start with a letter that are at the end of the alphabet (eg. T,S,W etc), they end up being placed at the end of the list.

And every time you want to check your gmail, you need to scroll down, if there is any email inside that filter. I usually apply “skip inbox” feature for all the emails that are placed in special filters.

Current Solution

Currently you can add symbols or numbers before your filter names and they will show up on top of the list. For example if you have Web2.0 as the filter name, normally it will show up at the end of the list, but if you add * Web2.0 or $ Web2.0 then it will climb to the top of the list. Similarly if you can add numbers like 1 Web2.0 to make it appear on top of the list.

Suggested New Feature

Why not introduce small arrows for pushing up and pushing down the filters? You click once on up arrow and the filter goes up by one position, you click once on down arrow and it goes down by one position. Simple yet effective. And most importantly it would make gmail much more usable - user friendly.

Your opinion

Do you have similar problem? If yes, how do you manage it? And in your opinion how best to solve this usability problem?

Ping: gmailblog.blogspot.com (I am gonna ping gmail blog, so that they will take note of this post, hopefully).

Do you use Google Maps to give out your home address? Well, soon you will be able to send your house photos, better yet, you will be able to send it in 3 dimensional panoramic view. And it’s not limited to your house only, you can actually navigate along the street and view the surroundings.

Google’s StreetView is currently available to cities like New York, San Fransisco, Las Vegas, Denver, and Miami. But should be coming to your cities very soon.

Since Google take these digital images of the streets by hand, there are concerns that some people might be captured in the photos, especially in compromising situations. (eg. throwing your rubbish in your pajamas, or worse without pajamas ;) Therefore, Google provides people to report inappropriate images on the StreetView pages.

Report Inappropriate Image
Google takes concerns about its services very seriously. Please use the link below to report concerns about an inappropriate street view.

If the location that you are browsing has photos, the StreetView button will be enabled on Google Maps, as shown in the screenshot to the right. You can see YouTube video about StreetView and how to use it here.

P.S I hope Google won’t come up with HouseRank next ;)