Search Result Blues

I was looking where a new web site is ranking and was surprised that it was not in the No 1 position when I searched for Boegoeberg 4×4.

I was using FireFox and it showed up in position No 5.

I then switched to Google Chrome and when I search for exactly the same search term “boegoeberg 4×4″ it showed up in the No 1 position as expected.

It would be interesting to know why there is such a difference, both browsers use Google to do the search, why is there a difference in results.

I also tested it with Internet Explorer, but IE uses Bing as default search engine. This setup is totally useless, Boegoeberg 4×4 does not even come up in the top 10 search results in Bing.

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Rename files

Normally when you download photographs from your camera it will have funny numbers and letters as file names.

Changing all the filenames to something sensible can be time consuming.

It don’t have to be if you follow this simple method.

1. First select all the files of which you want to change the names. To select all files in that folder you can press ctrl+A or click on the first file, then press and hold the shift key. Move to the last file which you ant to select and click on it while holding the shift key, that will select all the files in that range. Or if you only want to select certain files, click on the first file, then press and hold the ctrl key, then click on all the other files you would like to select.

Select all the files

2. The right click in the name field of the first file, in the drop down menu select the “rename” functions and give the file a new name. Read more »

Disable SearchIndexer

Since I got my laptop, which runs on Vista Home, I realised that the hard drive light is constantly flicking even when I am not using the laptop (while switched on). It did not bother me much at first but this week I was working on real big files which slowed the computer down dramatically.

So I went to the Task Manager (click ctrl, alt and delete simultaneously to get it) to see what is using so much of memory and processor.

I found a file called “SearchIndexer.exe” to be the culprit. Upon closer investigation I found that this process is not really necessary but it keeps on running and slowing Vista down. All this does is to index the files on your computer so you can find them quicker when you are doing a local search for files on your hard drive. You can turn this off if you want to. You can choose between:

1. Leaving SearchIndexer on and forever have a slow computer or
2. Disabling SearchIndexer and only have a bit slower search facility when you are looking for files on your hard drive, ones or twice per month when you might need it.

There are two ways to disable it.

Read more »

First let’s explain what a link shortener is and why you might need this.

Sometimes you would like to email a link to an article or web site to somebody but then the link is so long that it gets cut off in the email, or it just looks confusing. You can then use a link shortener web site to make the long link shorter. These web sites are very easy to use. Most of them has a field where you can enter the long URL, hit the “shorten” button and it will spit out a shortened version of your long URL.

Here are some uses for this great free service:

1. You can shorten a link:

Look at the link below as an example:

http://www.pietpetoors.com/blog/where-to-start-making-money-on-the-internet/

You can shorten that same URL for free to look like this:

http://simurl.com/jocpal

You can click above links and see that both go to the same page.

2. You can also use it to hide an affiliate link:

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php include

I hope that I won’t confuse too many people with this article.

Please note, if you do not know how to build a web page using basic PHP DO NOT read this article.

This article is NOT for those readers who are using WordPress or Joomla to build there web sites, this is for the guys like me who still use the old fashioned way of doing things. If you need helping building a web site with WordPress (which is much easier for beginners anyway) go to http://www.createyourownwebsite.co.za

For the guys and girls who are still using the old traditional way; I was asked by a friend of mine to help him to orginize his “self made” web site a bit.

I use the technique described below to make it easier for me to maintain my web sites and to help getting all the pages to be uniform.

Where to start

This layout tip will help you to keep your web site more uniform throughout the site.

Read more »

Here is another question I received and I think more people can learn from the answer:

Question

Which software is the easiest and free for me to build my own website.

Answer

Hi
I think in today’s world it is better to use an online editor like WordPress or Joomla
I battle too much with Joomla so I prefer WordPress. Most people think WordPress is for blogs but it is not, you can do a normal site with it as well.

You can download it for free at wordpress.org but you will need a server to upload it to.

That is the method I show my students at www.createyourownwebsite.co.za

If I were to start from scratch now I would not spend my time learning the ins and outs of web design I would rather take something like wordpress or joomla and spend my time on getting quality content for my site.

I currently use Dreamweaver for my web sites which costs about R7,000 for the software and months of frustration to get to know it. Once you know it I guess it is the best option but in the year it takes you to learn the ropes you could have earned thousands from your web site already.

Best regards
Pieter

Question:
We have been using this email address that we got through Polka. We want to cancel this Polka (now Mweb) as they are charging us the R 150.00 for the adsl and this email address. The other company  said theirs include 5 free email addresses. Will I be able to keep my current email address?

Answer:

NO, you won’t be able to keep yur current address because it is a polka addres. It is yourbus@polka.co.za .

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If you have to schedule a meeting or call somebody in another country and you are no sure what time will be best for both parties, then you can use this nifty feature by time and date.

Just go to http://timeanddate.com/

You will see a block similar to the one below. Select the towns in which the different parties are located in. You can enter up to 4 different locations. Then hit the “Show Timetable” button.

Select the different locations

The results will look like the picture below.

The green fields indicate the first half of day when most people are at work (Monday-Friday)

The Yellow fields indicate the second half of day when most people are awake but not necessarily at work

The Red fields indicate the night time or normal sleeping hours

So best time to call is where all fields are green or a mixture between green and yellow.

Results show when is best time to call

There are many institutions which offer software courses and tutorials.

But sometimes you might find that you live too far from the main cities where these courses are presented.

This happened to me when I bought the new DreamWaver CS4 and wanted to get to know it better.

The solutions was to do an online course with online tutorials. Adobe suggested that I use Lynda and I can see why they refer their clients to Lynda. The content of the courses are excellent. It opens a whole new world.

They offer various courses ranging from Phot Shop, Dreamweaver to simple things like Microsoft word, Excel etc. They have something for everybody.

I think the price is also fair. If you look what you would pay for a course then the little monthly fee the charge is nothing.

Check them out at www.lynda.com

The other day I lost some of my files.

This is what happened:

I downloaded a whole lot of pictures from my camera this morning (moved not copied)

On the computer I then previewed them and changed some of them in gimp.

I then created two folders to sort them and sorted them accordingly.

Then I wanted to copy it to the laptop in order to write on CD

For some reason the laptop did not see the new folder (over network) and I then moved the folders to one of the folders on the PC which the laptop could see.

This is where the brown stuff hit the fan.

When I moved it a message popped up saying it could not move one of the folders because it was used by another program (although gimp was already closed)

I then just said OK and thought I will just copy it instead of moving it.

BUT when I went back to my original two folders the one still had all the pictures but the other folder was empty (and still is). So somewhere between moving them and receiving the error message they were lost.

I tried searching for the file names on the whole computer but did not get anything.

Is there anywhere else one can look? I have not rebooted the PC yet so if it does store it in a temp folder or something it must still be here somewhere

The solution:

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A while ago I complained about FireFox which became extremely slow and resource hungry. I then switched to Google Chrome as my default browser. Although Chrome is much faster in standard form it is a bit frustrating working on it since it lacks some basic functionality.

Today I found a cure for the slow and resource hungry FireFox. I implemented the changes and I am glad to report that FireFox is working like the speed of light again and I am using it as my default browser again.

This is what I have done:

Open FireFox and in the address bar type the words about:config and then hit enter.

about:config

Your browser will now display a list of setting which you can change (if you know how to). Note the “filter” box at the top.

Read more »