Yesterday Apple released a new beta version of their web browser, Safari. All I can say about it is WOW. It is faster that the previous versions and faster than Firefox. Not to mention the new view options.
There is this new thing called Top Sites (see below). It is a page that shows you all the recent pages you have viewed, but you can also “pin” your favorite sites on this page. If one of the pages changes since your last view, it will display a star in the corner. This is great if you are an avid blog reader, as my wife is.
Safari 4 Beta Top Sites
Another cool feature is the new history browser. If you have ever used iTunes then you know that you can view your albums by album cover. Well now you can use that same sort of view in Safari to view your browser history. This comes in handy if you went to a site and for got what the address was, but you remember the look of the page.
There are tons more great features, but these are the ones that stood out to me.
This is a beta and there are some bugs, but overall this is a great app. If you haven’t already done so head over to Apple and download it. It’s available for both Windows and Mac.
It’s that time of year again. It’s lent! What is Lent you ask? Let me tell you.
Lent, in some Christian denominations, is the forty-day-long liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter.The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where according to the Bible he endured temptation by Satan.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday. Traditionally there are three practices observed during lent:
This day in age these three practices have evolved and usually consist of:
Easter is a popular celebration and for most the true meaning has long been forgotten. Lent is an antidote for this, it is meant for us to remember the reason that Jesus came to earth and ultimately gave up his life.
By participating in lent we face our humanity and realize that we, like the disciples, would likely have fallen asleep while Jesus prayed in the garden, that we would have likely denied him as he accepted his death sentence.
If you are interested in participating in lent there are a number of things that can be done.
Fasting
If you are interested in fasting below I have given some examples of what you can fast from:
Food: Meats, poultry (eggs too), fats and oils, soft drinks, 2nd helpings, Alcohol, Coffee (try tea or some other low-caffeine drink if you get headaches), dairy (milk and cheese), solid foods (only drink water or juices), Junk foods (chips, snacks, salty food), candy (plus refined sugar in general), and dessert (great for kids–very meaningful!).
Media: TV, movies, computer, email (set an autoresponder), Internet, magazines, radio, the phone (leave your cell phone off when appropriate), handhelds, video games, and other technology ….
Other Things: You may want to fast from certain relationships, or people in general, choosing instead to walk only with God for a period. You may also fast from social events, parties, or clubs, if you regularly go out of your way for that kind of gathering.
Days: Leave it all behind: leave junk food, TV, cars, noise, and all the media and messages of the culture. Pack the very minimum (water, warm clothes, etc.) and find a trail, a mountain, or a beach, and feast on God.
Imitate Jesus, who took whole days to walk alone in the wilderness fasting and praying …. Give God the time and the room that he wants. God wants to fill you up, wants to bless you. If we are constantly pouring other stuff into our heads or stomachs, there will be little room for God.
Prayer
It is suggested that the time that you would usually spend participating in whatever you have fasted from, be spent in prayer and scripture reading.
Giving
You may also decide that this is a time that you would like to start, or increase your giving. This could be giving financially or giving of your time to a charity or church of your preference.
How ever you observe this time of lent it up to you, but remember this is a time to bring you closer to God and to acknowledge and be thankful for the sacrifice that was made on our behalf during the Easter season.
Question
Do you observe Lent? If so, what are you fasting from this year? I’m not sure what I am giving up yet, but I will let you know!
Last summer Google expressed it’s intention to engage in the production of automobiles and invest 5.5 million dollars in the development of new electric cars. This amount was divided between the two companies – Aptera Motors and ActaCell.
Aptera Motors, together with Google is developing a two-seat car, which is equipped with a hybrid or electric motor. A car will be able to accelerate to 140 km/h, «hundreds» reach approximately 10 seconds. Max distance – 160 km. And less than 1 liter of fuel per 100 km. Aptera 2e arrive at the California market in October this year and the cost will be approximately $ 30 thousand dollars.
Last week we I showed you what Keywords were and how to use them in the meta tags and main content of your site. Optimizing the keywords for your site is only half the battle of climbing the rankings in Google.
This we we are going to talk about how to get your site to become the first search result.
There is only one way to make it to the top of the Google standings and that is by making them think you are the coolest kid on the playground. Ultimately ranking in Google, or any other search engine, boils down to a popularity contest. That’s right you have to make it look like you’ve got more friends than the other guy.
So, how do you gain coolness? Coolness is calculated by incoming links to your site.
Coolness is based on the number of friends (links) you have. A single link from a uber cool site, might just make all the difference and propel you to the front of the pack. Â On the other hand it may take thousands of links to make it to the top.Â
The more uber cool links you have the easier it is to move to number one. But if you are getting links from the ‘not so cool’ crowd it will take you much longer.
So to make it to the top you will have to learn how to tell the cool kids from the not so cool kids. The cool kids are #1-10 on the search results for your keyword, the not so cool kids are #11-50. You need  to make Google think that you’re in their circle of friends.Â
There is no easy answer to this question, it all comes down to the keyword you are searching for. For a keyword that is not competitive it might take 2 links to be number one, but for an uber competitive keyword it could take you 100,000 or more links.
If you would like to figure this out for a specific keyword this is how I do it:
This is not a hard process, but depending on the the number of inlinks to each of your competitors, it could take quite a long time. If you are looking for an automated approach you can head over to SEO Elite  ($167 US) and it will automate this process for you. The other alternative is to contact me and I can do the work for you as well. I won’t cost as much as SEO Elite.
So this is a start to understanding link building, next week we’ll talk about getting sites to link to your site.
This is a spoof!
The Fine Print:
Your probably thought it was smart to buy a foreign import of superior quality, with better mileage and resale value. Maybe you even thought that years of market share loss might prod us into rethinking our process and redesigning our products with better quality in mind. But you forgot one thing: We spend a shitload of money on lobbyists. So now you’re out $25 billion, plus the cost of your Subaru. Maybe next time you’ll buy American like a real man. Either way, we’re cool.
Brad Ruggles has written a great post about raising a Christian Family. Check it out by clicking below.
7 Keys To Raising A Good Christian Family
In this day in age when all you ever hear on TV is that the planet is heating up, the polar bears are going extinct, and that we should watch our carbon foot print, I find it hard to believe that some companies seem to care less.
I ordered a package from the US the other day and it was shipped via FedEx.  The package in question was sent out of Medford, Oregon and was coming to Kelowna, BC Canada. As you may or may not know, Kelowna is north and slightly east of Medford Oregon (see map 1), so the obvious route to take , would  be north and to the east of Medford and come right to Kelowna, but that is not what FedEx did.
In stead Fedex followed the following route.Â
Medford, OR -> Memphis, TN -> Vancouver BC -> Richmond BC -> Vancouver BC -> Kelowna BC.Â
I sure hope that they bought some carbon credits to offset that delivery.
KEYWORDS play an important role in search engine results. Today we are going to discuss where and when we should use keywords on our site.
First, what are KEYWORDS?
On the web, a keyword is a reference to the content and/or the type of meta element included in a given web page‘s HTML code to aid in the page’s indexing. A keyword meta element may include several comma-separated keywords (or keyword phrases, each of which may contain several individual words). Source wikipedia.
Using the right keywords in your title will help produce the results you are looking for. The title is the first thing your searcher will see in the search results.
If your title includes keywords they are looking for they are more likely to click on your link.
How do you use keywords in your title. You need to use the most important keywords in your title. Â For instance, for Simone Wittenberg Photography, we used the KEYWORDS ‘Kelowna Wedding Photographer’.Â
In HTML the title would look like this:
<title>Simone Wittenberg Photography / Kelowna Wedding Photography</title>
The second thing a searcher sees in the search results is your description. Using keywords won’t help in your search engine ranking, but it will give your searcher a better idea of what your site is about or has to offer. The description should be a short explanation of your site and of  your title.
In HTML the description would look like this:
<meta name=”description” content=”Kelowna wedding photographer”>
You can also specify keywords you want to be ranked for by using the <meta> tag in your HTML. This is in addition to the keywords that you have used in your Title and description. (Google doesn’t use these, but Yahoo and MSN do) The Keyword meta tag looks like this:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Kelowna, Wedding, Photographer” />
Each individual term is separated by a comma.
Having keywords in your content is not something that is very important to you reader, but it is important to have because this is what the search engines look for. This does NOT mean that you should only use keywords in the body of your website, but they should be interspersed throughout.Â
It is believe that only 1 in every 20 words should be a keyword. If you use more than this you could be punished by the search engine for keywords stuffing.
Search engines read the HTML code of the pages they are read. In order to make your webpage more SEO friendly, you should use your h1, h2, h3, and h4 tags. There are meanings to each of these tags:
You can also use bold and italic commands to add importance to words in the content of your site.
Another place to use tags is in your images. Â When you add an image to a webpage, you can add <title> and <alt> tags. These are important because search engines cannot see images and rely on these tags to index image content.
This is what I have learned about keywords and I hope that this has been helpful to you. Next week we will look at link-building.
A fellow Blogger wrote about a $5 dollar valentine gift. Well I found a valentine gift for far less than that. How’s $.07 catch you?
Now I know what you’re thinking what van I get for 7 cents? A life.
7 cents is all it costs to help save the life of a pregnant mother or baby in Africa. There are a numer of diseases that run rampant in Africa. Tetnus is one of those diseases. Pampers and UNICEF have teamed up to make a difference .
The Pampers-UNICEF partnership has already provided more than 25 million vaccines to moms and babies in developing countries, where tetanus kills 140,000 infants and 30,000 women each year, according to UNICEF.
There is a cure for tetnus and all it costs is 7 cents. For 7 cents you can buy a life saving needle and help a young African baby’s life or the life of an African mother.
To give the gift of life this valentines go to the UNICEF donate page and make a donation.
And if you are feeling really generous head over to Brad’s page and buy someone water.
Over the past couple of months I have been learning as much as I can about SEO. There is a ton to know and I am still in the process of learning, but what I have learned I am going to share with you. I will share some tricks I have learned and will share links with important information. We’ll talk about link building, keywords, page rank, and more.
Each Friday evening, I am going to try to post on a specific topic on SEO. In the event that I forget one night, don’t worry, I will post on Saturday. Â
If you want to get started and to learn a bit of what I have come across subscribe to my RSS feed and get automatic updates of my posts.