Did Google just changed its favicon?

Posted by multippt

I’ve just realized that Google changed it’s favicon from capital G to small g. For those of you who do not know what a favicon is, it is that small 16 by 16 pixels icon you sometimes see beside the address bar. I guess that’s probably one of the minor changes that I’ve ever seen happening on the Google homepage.

Nonetheless, it does appear that someone spotted it as well. Kudos to all who managed to spot the change.

I still can’t get accustomed to the new icon. Maybe I’ve been using Google for a very long time and even a small icon change makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Hopefully I could get accustomed to it sooner or later. Honestly, while the new icon looks pretty sleek, the shadow (or gradient?) behind the “g” makes it look ackward. I guess that’s because I’m using IE7 and that the icon appear to be semi-transparent. On Firefox, the icon looks great.

*Note: In order to view the new favicon, you can shortcut the caching process by simply accessing the favicon directly (i.e. google.com/favicon.ico) and refreshing it. Tada, the new Google icon!

Let’s hope Google won’t be turning lowercase anytime soon, otherwise it’ll look pretty odd.

Wordpress 2.5 upload fix

Posted by multippt

Looks like even after extensive testing on Wordpress’s side, one nasty bug managed to slip through, and it’s not the fault of Wordpress either. Apparently, anyone using mod_security on Apache will not be able to upload anything on Wordpress 2.5 or Wordpress 2.5.1. This could be because mod_security doesn’t take a liking towards the Flash uploader Wordpress now uses. This is a big problem for Wordpress, since more than 30% of the Internet uses mod_security (courtesy of Hostgator and numerous other Internet web hosts), which means these uploaders won’t work if you simply install Wordpress and do nothing else after.

The fix?

Simply create or edit your .htaccess using your text editor. Insert the following lines to the file:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

That should switch off security only for your uploader, and chances are your uploader should work fine.

Alternatively, since the entire problem is caused by Flash, you could try disabling the Flash uploader using a plugin that does that.

—

A second glitch is that sometimes the media gallery in Wordpress 2.5 may not be able to insert images. In addition to that, changes to your post might be lost for unknown reasons after doing that. Nonetheless, you can insert the image in another method by copying the URL of the image in the gallery and inserting it via Add Image in the toolbar.

May PageRank update review

Posted by multippt

Looks like the PageRank update is going to be great news for webmasters, since there is an overall increase in PageRank across sites, unlike the previous 3 PageRank updates that have done the opposite. This update has been carried out over several days, so you may want to check out inner pages of your site if you went PageRank hunting on the day of the update.

This update saw more increases than decreases, partly because the main penalty round occurred a week before the update began (probably the first signal that an update was iminent). The penalties involved mainly new sites selling paid links, so it does seem that Google is tightening its stance against paid links. This is not expected since after all, Google gave their official message that nofollow paid links are not allowed and subjected to penalties. The paid link business have gone a lot more quiet (but it doesn’t mean that webmasters are not giving up on paid links though).

Google may have also changed the weightage of links, now giving internal links slightly more power or perhaps all links in general. Probably great news for site owners who have been building links for a while.

May PageRank update

Posted by multippt

Looks like Google decided to update the visible PageRank on the Google toolbar between the 30th of April and the 1st of May. Well, at least it came after much speculation (on Digitalpoint anyway) of PageRank updates following a string of PageRank penalties across sites that were caught selling paid links.

Overall, most sites received an increase in PageRank, while others had the same PageRank, which is good news for most sites on the whole. Of course, it is bad news for guilty site owners who have sold paid links, since Google is being extremely vigilant (and smarter) on what links are considered paid. Penalties are also carried out during the update, but most of it a few days before the PageRank update. This is done so presumably so that you can address the issue, and request for reconsideration, and have the right PageRank in time for the incoming update.

Small Firefox update - 2.0.0.14

Posted by multippt

Mozilla recently released an update for Firefox to fix a potential security threat. This update is available through auto-update.

The update only fixes one flaw in Firefox related to the Javascript “garbage collector” which may cause crashes in Firefox. While this problem has not been exploited for any purposes, Firefox isn’t going to wait till it is. This is not a feature release, so no new features are added.

An interesting note is that this update fixes only one issue, unlike other updates that normally patches several issues at once. In addition, the security flaw was fixed as soon as it was announced (i.e. on the same day). A pretty impressing feat, considering most other browser makers (notably Microsoft) prefer the all-in-one approach, compared to the bit-by-bit approach used by Mozilla.

Google webmasters and analytics update

Posted by multippt

Google has recently updated the backlink count over the past week, so you may see new backlinks registered in the Webmasters Tools page. While a Google update usually comes weeks after this happens, don’t be too happy yet, since Google is growing more and more unpredictable.

Google has also updated Google Analytics. You can now view the traffic charts by week or month rather than by day. This is useful if you want to compare traffic over a long period of time (or calculate how much traffic you have received in a particular month).

Another feature of note is benchmarking. If you are tired of Alexa’s inaccuracies when you compare rival sites, you could give a shot at Google Analytics. Benchmarking pits you against sites that have similar “size” (determined by traffic, with 3 classifications: small, medium, large) to your site. Generally, this statistics help determine if your site’s traffic is above average, or below average. It can also serve as a… benchmark, when setting new goals. Nonetheless, there are some glitches associated with this feature (that’s why it’s in beta), such as some charts being unable to show some info if your site lies to far above or below the benchmark.

A nice feature of benchmark is that you can narrow the sites you want to compare by category. This would help make it a fair comparison since most webmasters prefer comparing their sites to other sites that are similar in genre.

Though, this benchmarking service only gathers information from sites where owners have chosen to opt-in for the benchmarking service.

Note: Apparently, Google accidentally introduced a glitch in its chart. This glitch prevents users from seeing information on a certain day via the Flash chart. It can be temporarily fixed by clicking on the drop-down arrow, click on “Compare to Site”, and then click on “One Metric”.

Wordpress 2.5 released

Posted by multippt

Looks like Wordpress 2.5 went gold earlier than expected. To commemorate the event, Wordpress.org underwent a complete overhaul to match the administration interface in Wordpress. A pretty cool update I must say, since no one expects Wordpress to have a behind-the-scenes planned change for their entire site.

Some features are highlighted as followed:
Administration interface - A complete revamp, so much so that veteran users may need time getting use to it. However, it won’t take long because it is very easy to use.

Revamped Dashboard - The dashboard can be customized as easily as iGoogle (sort of) using Widgets.

File Upload - You can upload several files at once, complete with a progress bar that ensures that your uploads are not stalled.

Image information - If you take photos, Wordpress will attempt to extract information in the photos via information present in EXIF metadata.

Improved search - Search results now include pages as well.

Tag management - You can now edit and delete tags, without the need for plugins.

Password strength - An added safety precaution against weak passwords.

Concurrent editing protection - Prevents several users from editing a post simultaneously.

Plugin update - One click is all it takes to actually update the plugin in place. This depends if the plugin author made their plugins updatable via Wordpress.

Revamped Visual post editor - Made to look similar to Blogger, this editor places several options in convenient to reach places.

Galleries - Wordpress has a built in gallery system that you can use to construct image galleries in your blog.

Password hashing - One step more to protecting your password - making it totally impossible to crack. Cookies are also encrypted as well.

Documentation within Wordpress - A great help to developers, since almost all functions are now documented within the Wordpress install itself.