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Don't get too close to the pharmacy counter if you have a pacemaker...

And again, you can encourage users to try out Firefox using the techniques I describe in How to detect Internet Explorer. But do it gently!

And I should point out that my site is small potatoes, so it's interesting that I get crawled so much. I only get about 500-600 page impressions on a normal day, although the other day the Firefox release caused my How to detect Firefox page (since reworked as How to detect Internet Explorer to be more politically correct) site to get over 8000 hits. But that's unusual.... if only I could make it a daily event!

Anyhow, I think Google is actively looking for and indexing small sites. Probably makes sense. Economists always say that small businesses as the engines that run the economy, maybe the analogy applies to small websites as well.

And I should point out that my site is small potatoes, so it's interesting that I get crawled so much. I only get about 500-600 page impressions on a normal day, although the other day the Firefox release caused my How to detect Firefox page (since reworked as How to detect Internet Explorer to be more politically correct) site to get over 8000 hits. But that's unusual.... if only I could make it a daily event!

Anyhow, I think Google is actively looking for and indexing small sites. Probably makes sense. Economists always say that small businesses as the engines that run the economy, maybe the analogy applies to small websites as well.

And I should point out that my site is small potatoes, so it's interesting that I get crawled so much. I only get about 500-600 page impressions on a normal day, although the other day the Firefox release caused my How to detect Firefox page (since reworked as How to detect Internet Explorer to be more politically correct) site to get over 8000 hits. But that's unusual.... if only I could make it a daily event!

Anyhow, I think Google is actively looking for and indexing small sites. Probably makes sense. Economists always say that small businesses as the engines that run the economy, maybe the analogy applies to small websites as well.

And I should point out that my site is small potatoes, so it's interesting that I get crawled so much. I only get about 500-600 page impressions on a normal day, although the other day the Firefox release caused my How to detect Firefox page (since reworked as How to detect Internet Explorer to be more politically correct) site to get over 8000 hits. But that's unusual.... if only I could make it a daily event!

Anyhow, I think Google is actively looking for and indexing small sites. Probably makes sense. Economists always say that small businesses as the engines that run the economy, maybe the analogy applies to small websites as well.

Sure, I see crawlers on my site all the time sometimes hitting the same URL over and over again. Do I understand their repetitive behavior? No.

Google gives a partial answer to this on their GoogleBot page:

In general, Googlebot should only download one copy of each file from your site during a given crawl. Occasionally the crawler is stopped and restarted, and it may recrawl pages that it has recently retrieved. These recrawls should happen infrequently.

If they're playing around with new indexing algorithms then I would expect to see more of these multiple hits.

Definitely lots of crawling. From my logs, I see that:

• GoogleBot crawls me extensively daily
• Slurp (Yahoo!) does it daily but only a few pages
• msnbot is like slurp
• Exabot does an extensive one every few days (this is fairly new for me)

And of course I get the occasional random crawl from some other bot I've never heard of. But Google is by far the most consistent and the most extensive.

Absolutely. This is why I always tell people to "think like a librarian" when it comes to finding information in a search engine, whether it be Google or not. That said, I don't know how much is being taught about libraries and library organization these days, so maybe that's a meaningless thing to say.

In response to feedback worried that I'm targeting any non-Firefox browser (I'm not), I've renamed and updated the browser detection page:

How to Detect Internet Explorer

It's amusing to see that the text ads served for the page are now all security-focused...

Just curious, but are you intentionally targeting Mozilla users to convert them to Firefox

No. If you read the How to detect Firefox page, you'll see that I kept the test very simple: just look for the string "Firefox/" in the User-Agent header. Trying to distinguish Mozilla from Firefox takes more work, but it can be done. Perhaps for most people it's more a matter of targeting Internet Explorer users by testing for the "MSIE" string.

Just curious, but are you intentionally targeting Mozilla users to convert them to Firefox

No. If you read the How to detect Firefox page, you'll see that I kept the test very simple: just look for the string "Firefox/" in the User-Agent header. Trying to distinguish Mozilla from Firefox takes more work, but it can be done. Perhaps for most people it's more a matter of targeting Internet Explorer users by testing for the "MSIE" string.

Ugh. It's one thing to put up some text and some links promoting Firefox, it's another to annoy the user with popups and other spam-like tactics. What about users who are forced (by corporate policy, for example) to use IE? Be gentle, please...

You're quite right about the Vary header, and I've updated the page (and the header viewer) accordingly, thanks: How to detect Firefox.

You're quite right about the Vary header, and I've updated the page (and the header viewer) accordingly, thanks: How to detect Firefox.

to detect non-Firefox browsers (or at least non-IE)

In case it's not obvious, I meant to say or at least IE.

Now be sure to change your web pages to detect non-Firefox browsers (or at least non-IE) and encourage them to upgrade to Firefox. I've documented the basic technique here: How to detect Firefox and See the headers you're sending.

Now be sure to change your web pages to detect non-Firefox browsers (or at least non-IE) and encourage them to upgrade to Firefox. I've documented the basic technique here: How to detect Firefox and See the headers you're sending.

Now be sure to change your web pages to detect non-Firefox browsers (or at least non-IE) and encourage them to upgrade to Firefox. I've documented the basic technique here: How to detect Firefox and See the headers you're sending.

1. What do you think about Shatner's new album, Has Been?

2. Do you think Shatner is a spokesman for All-Bran

1. What do you think about Shatner's new album, Has Been?

2. Do you think Shatner is a spokesman for All-Bran

Google doesn't index as thoroughly or as often as Yahoo, a search engine that's trying very hard to increase their search capabilities and that includes image searching.

Hmmm... funny, but I have the opposite experience. Google is constantly indexing my site, but Yahoo! just slurps a few. I think the session IDs in the URLs throw it off, so I should fix that. On the other hand, MSN's bot has been pretty good about indexing the site, though not as regularly as Google's. And lately there's been some other bots showing up that I've never seen before -- more proof that the search market is heating up.

There's still lots of room for improvement. You still have to wade through a lot of crap to find what you're looking for if you don't know the exact search terms to use. That's the skill you need to hone for effective searching. Think like a librarian!

Google's servers are probably too busy indexing text to spend much time on images. A couple of weeks ago I started setting up a Vioxx information site and I submitted my URL to Google for indexing, not expecting the pages to show up in the index for quite a while. The GoogleBot made its first appearance one day after my site went live, and it showed up in the index just a couple of days after that. I bet they're just not devoting horsepower to it trying to keep up with the normal text stuff.

You think that's bad, try keeping everything straight with J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) programming. I put the most common ones up on my J2ME section:

J2ME acronym list

You think that's bad, try keeping everything straight with J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) programming. I put the most common ones up on my J2ME section:

J2ME acronym list

If you're an application developer, first consider writing the apps using J2ME. This isn't always possible, I know, but if you can do it in Java then you'll have compatibility across a wide variety of Nokia (and other) devices.

8) Don't dig into the ground
9) Step carefully after it rains
10) Stay away from bait shops
11) ....
12) Profit!

(Sorry, couldn't resist...)

Oh great, my dogs already like to grab the popcorn flying out of the air popper... now they'll be hot to trot for my data as well!

Still, I suppose this will be better than finding bits of shiny plastic in the doggie doo-doo:

Five-year old daughter: Papa, have you seen my toy?
Me, staring at colorful deposit in backyard: Umm, no...

Speaking of Amazon, yesterday they unveiled their new Simple Queuing Service, their latest foray into web services. They're exposing some of their infrastructure in order to let you share data between distributed components. Free for the time being, though limited in terms of how much data you can queue at once.

Of course, someone will probably sue them over this, too.

Given the success of the Spread Firefox campaign, is there an equivalent campaign for Thunderbird in the works?

No. Consumer DVD burners cannot burn the CSS key data required by the studios.

Yeah, but I wish you could. Or somebody could. I mean, when you go to BlockBuster and they're out of the movie you want, why can't they just burn a new copy on the spot for you to rent?

Probably because hard disks capacities are so large and DVD burners are now pretty much standard equipment on PCs. There must be a corresponding increase in movie pirating, critical mass must have been reached.

Me, I wish they had a "burn on demand" (BOD) model where you pay a minimal fee (think rental cost, ideally cheaper) and get to burn a movie on DVD. No case, no extras, just the movie.... I guess video-on-demand is almost the same...

Man, did you ever date yourself with that one.

You want to feel old, talk to some current university students. My wife is a part-time marketing lecturer who finds that the students rely on the Web to find information. (Because, as you know, if it's on the Web then it must be true.) They simply have no concept of a world without the Internet, which makes dealing with pre-Internet business cases very interesting for them as they try to figure out where to get the information they need.

Man, did you ever date yourself with that one.

You want to feel old, talk to some current university students. My wife is a part-time marketing lecturer who finds that the students rely on the Web to find information. (Because, as you know, if it's on the Web then it must be true.) They simply have no concept of a world without the Internet, which makes dealing with pre-Internet business cases very interesting for them as they try to figure out where to get the information they need.

I remember watching someone try voice input on their TRS-80 (this is going waaayyy back)... "One... no... one... no! One! NO! ONE! AAARGGGH!" I know things have improved since then, but I'm not sure how accurate you could make it on such a small computing device. And the problem with voice input on a phone is that it's too easy to throw the phone against a wall after it misinterprets you for the hundredth time :-)

Hmm.... this wasn't the spam reduction I had in mind when I wrote about the Vioxx recall!

Hmm.... this wasn't the spam reduction I had in mind when I wrote about the Vioxx recall!

There's little incentive to withhold information, really, because I doubt there are any real "trade secrets" to worry about. Many tech books are written more as a way of increasing the author's (or his company's) profile in the field. If you're a consultant, it's another way to get leads and to impress potential clients. You don't do it for the money, trust me...

... didn't Keanu Reeves originate the form?

... as the people running behind the truck with their laptops can only get healthier!

Eric
How to masquerade your browser (Hint: Firefox makes it easy)

Nah, the spammers will just find something else to sell, like they did with Vioxx. See the quote by spam king Pone Leray in Vioxx recall reduces worldwide spam

Eric
See the HTTP headers your browser is sending

Nah, the spammers will just find something else to sell, like they did with Vioxx. See the quote by spam king Pone Leray in Vioxx recall reduces worldwide spam

Eric
See the HTTP headers your browser is sending

IBM acquired Cloudscape as a by-product of acquiring Informix. Open sourcing it is one way to get rid of YADB (yet another database) to focus on their bread and butter, DB2. Probably not a bad deal for them in the sense that it generates lots of goodwill in the community at the same time. Not that I'm cynical or anything.

Eric
How to masquerade your browser

Not sure Cloudscape actually qualifies as "lightweight". Current Java-capable handheld devices are still pretty limited in what they can run, in many cases you still have to go down to the C/C++ level to truly get the "pedal to the metal". Over time this will correct itself, of course, but for now the choices for data persistence in Java are very limited. Most people I know end up rolling their own solution on top of MIDP's Record Management System.

Eric
Eric's J2ME Pages

Copyright rules vary greatly from country to country, though lately there's been more harmonization. The general rule is that copyright lasts for X years past the author's death or Y years in absolute terms if the author is in fact a corporation. The values for X and Y vary by country. Even within a country they can vary depending on when the work was created and what copyright legislation was in effect at the time. This makes it extremely difficult to figure out which works are in the public domain or not. Sometimes things ended up in the public domain because they weren't properly declared. But with the Berne convention in force over most of the world, you can't assume that no copyright declaration means that there is no copyright. It's a bit of a mess, and this surely won't be the only lawsuit they'll encounter.

Eric
Reading C Declarations: A Guide for the Mystified

If you don't have that much content and it doesn't change too often, then a CMS isn't absolutely necessary, is it? (My "CMS" is vi and psftp, I guess...)

Although it's always dangerous to generalize, I like to explain the differences between the Treo and the BlackBerry this way:

BlackBerry: email with applications
Treo: applications with email

You can build applications for both platforms, but the BlackBerry is still seen (and being used) primarily as a mobile email device. You can send and read email with the Treo, but you can run many more useful apps on it than on the BB. Which one is better? As usual, it depends on what you need...

Adds a whole new dimension to the commercial, doesn't it?

This is your brain...
This is your brain on drugs...
This is your brain on drugs flying a plane without you...

Nothing new here except that Google has all of a sudden made it easier to look up "private" information that is locally cached. The data is already there for someone who knows what to look at, after all, but now Google's made it easy to access. How is this different from typing something into the address bar of a browser and being presented with an "interesting" list of choices that were stored via the browser's autocomplete functionality?

Eric
Read a bit of Vioxx humor

Given the prevalence of camera phones in Japan, does anyone there try to ban their use in places like washrooms, change rooms, movie theatres, etc? Is it even possible to get a "pure" cellphone (no camera or fancy extras) in Japan these days?

Eric
See what information your browser is sending