Ranking with Google

A good site does not always mean good layout, navigability and loading speed. In order for a site to be excellent, indeed it must contain the above stated qualities but it also needs to be easily found and accessed by the general public. And what better way to put your site at the disposal of billions of people over the Internet, if not by ranking at the top of the available search engines, especially their crowned king, Google.

The following rules are sometimes common for all search engines, but I will try to concentrate on the best and most popular search engine, namely Google. In order to understand Google better, let’s look at a small history of the famous company.
Google’s first appearance on the rough “war-theater” of search engines was in November 1997, when it entered in direct competition with the “big boys” of that time, Lycos, AltaVista and HotBot. Over the next few years, the popularity meter favors Google more and more, especially for it’s quick search methods and amazing technology. After gaining the position of providing secondary results to Yahoo from Inktomi in 2000, Google had a fast-paced ascent. Nowadays, Google searches through over 8 billion pages and serves 70 million searches everyday. Think it’s tough having a web page at the top of Google in these circumstances? Well it is, but if you follow the guides provided in this article you’re bound to have phenomenal success making your site popular.

Search Engine Ranking – General Tips
Following, are some general SEO tips that usually work for all search engines. Most of them include HTML editing, so it would be best if you knew the basics of HTML before trying to optimize your site.
Text versus images – because of the headache text and font causes for websites (because of the different browsers that have different fonts, MAC and PC differences, monitor sizes, etc.), a lot of web-designers fall in the trap of using images containing the text instead of pure formatted text inside the HTML code. Although it may provide a quick solution to layout problems, this practice causes two other major disadvantages, namely increased sized and the inability of search engines to look through your site (search engines look inside the HTML code for text, they cannot scan pictures). Therefore, it’s always better to work a little harder on finding the right text size and font, rather than using images.
Titles – whenever going through a page, search engines look at its title first, so make sure the page’s title contains the keywords people will most likely look for when searching. For example if your site is for a travel company, make sure you have words like “travel”, “vacation”, “holiday”, etc. Designers have a tendency to title their pages in an extremely simple and inefficient manner, like Homepage, Contact, Shop, etc. Titles should contain whole sentences with a high keyword density, giving the search engine more “tips” on finding your site. To insert a title to a web page, edit the HTML with any editor (Notepad would do), and place the title between the title tags in the head of the web page. In general, I have a strong bias against SEO companies, because they tend to build terrible looking web pages with absolutely no order and only play with the HTML keywords. To, the best SEO is fixing up and targeting keywords. You can also pay Google for marketing, but that’s just like putting at your local grocery store (and you get more people seeing your flyers in the grocery store), meaning that it’s great for people to see your name, but they won’t be in lights and you won’t get a huge return. Make sure that Google is updating the data that you edited on your site.

Keywords – Keywords are clues that search engines process and then rank your site according to keyword density. Keywords should be used both inside the site and in the head section of the HTML code. To place keywords in the code, you need to insert the following tag inside the site’s section: . For example, if you have built a site for a company that sells cars, you should place common words like “car”, “ABS”, “TDI”, “4WD”, “car prices”, “low car prices”, “Mercedes”, “Audi”, etc. Also, seeing how you can place as many keywords as you like, you should place misspelled words in the Meta tag, in case the person searching misspelled. For the above example, you could add “Mercedece”, “Audy”, etc. It might sound funny but you have no idea how many people misspell their searches and if you are able to think ahead on how people misspell words, you are bound to be the only (or one of the few) site owner that has a link on Google for those words, therefore dramatically increasing the chance for your site to get accessed.

The words in the Meta tags do not show up on a site. Also try to use the correct keywords in a high density throughout your site. The more instances of a keyword a search engine finds while scanning your site, the better the rank. If your page is optimized for the right keywords, the number of total visitors can double or triple. This comes as a complementary measure to take, besides a good internal and external linking structure, in order to improve the chances of your site being found on Google. Many websites fail exactly in this field, as their keywords don’t intersect with the searches of their potential visitors. The text within the body of your page – the visible text contained between the tag and the tag, should be roughly somewhere between 300 and 500 words, in which your key phrase should be used a couple of times and keywords should have a density of about 5% of the text.

Invisible misspelled keywords (not recommended, but it’s a widely used method – take notice that it could be dangerous to use cloaking text techniques, as some search engines may flag, or even ban your site for this) – Another tricky way to use misspelled keywords on your site, is to put all the wrong variants of your keywords in a couple of rows somewhere on your site, where it’s not likely to be seen at all (above the disclaimer, or somewhere at the top, just above the header), and change their color to the exact color of the background (if you have a picture as the background, you can’t use this method). The problem would be that if a visitor selects that text by mistake, he would see a few rows off misspelled words on your site, which undoubtedly gives a minus to your professional image. For example, I’m going to write a piece of white text here, try to select it: &133; this doesn’t look very nice, doesn’t it?. Now, depending on the browser you use, those words were highlighted and you can see their content, or they are permanently hidden and you can’t see what I wrote, it seems like you just selected blanks. For those curious readers that can’t see it, I wrote “: &133; this doesn’t look very nice, doesn’t it?..”. Again I do not recommend using this technique as it might be risky, but it’s as important to know what you SHOULDN’T do, as it is to know what you SHOULD do, sometimes.

Headers – Search Engines (and Google especially) take headers into consideration when ranking your site. The header tags go from

to

and are used to more easily split your website’s text into fragments. The biggest size is for

, decreasing to smaller headers when using the following tags, until

which is the smallest. You have a higher chance of rating higher if you use your site’s keywords or key phrases inside headers, especially the first two header tags

and

.
Meta Robot tags – a rarely used meta tag (or at least you can rarely find information about it in articles like this one), this meta tag “tells” a specific robot to index your page, somewhat increasing the probability and speed at which you will get indexed. Since adding it involves little additional effort, you might as well do it while you add the other tags. The tag shows a search engine the way to index your page and follow the links on it. The tag looks like this: . In case you want to do the opposite and not let search bots crawl your site, replace “index” with “noindex”, or if you don’t want to let them follow your links, replace “follow” with “nofollow”.
Other HTML SEO tricks – There are a few more HTML tricks that send your site up the ranks. Using frames and pop-ups increase your rating on many search engines. The code for these HTML objects is quite long and complicated to explain here (as it is not the purpose of the article), but you can easily create framesets and pop-ups using a web-design program like Macromedia DreamWeaver or Microsoft FrontPage. Another tip would be the use of “alt” tags on images. The “alt” tag is the text you see sometimes when holding your mouse over a picture (most of the times a description of the picture). To use the tag, find the image source of a picture (e.g.:. This should make a small box, containing the “picture description” line, appear over the image if you hover the mouse above it. Search engines also look for these alt lines to configure your rank.

Google’s PageRank
Ranking high on Google is not all about HTML tricks – you need to create an attractive and useful page, something that people will want to come back to. If other web site administrators like your site they might post links to it on their own pages. All the external links your web page gets are analyzed and computed by Google through a process called PageRank, an innovative search algorithm that processes text information from their web page database a lot faster than other search engines. The higher you page rank, the closer you are to being in the top search results. A good rank can send your page somewhere in the first 50-100 search results shown by the search engine in a particular field. PageRank ranges from 0 t o10, with pages between 7-10 being considered high ranking in Google’s search engine.
Basically, PageRank works like this: using a mathematical formula, it calculates the number of links your site has to other web pages and their importance. It’s like a vote casting process, each link that appears on another site means a good vote and the importance of the vote is determined by the importance of the site that gives it. In Google’s own words (taken from Google’s FAQ):
“Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
Below you will find the actual PageRank formula used by Google to calculate your web page rank. The amount of your PageRank, which you can pass on when you cast a vote (create a link to a different site than yours), is called a damping factor. The damping factor is known to be .85, and this is a little less then the linking pages own PR.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

PR(A) is the PageRank boost your page A will get after being linked from someone else’s site (t1). PR(t1) is

the page rank of the site which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. You should keep in mind that a page’s voting power is just .85 of that page’s actual PR and this gets spread out evenly between the sites it links to. The democratic process of ranking pages that Google uses doesn’t reduce the value of a pages rank when it casts a vote on another page. There is no way of transferring PageRank, so the action of linking to another page won’t diminish your own rank. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to calculate our Page Rank with the above formula, Google offers us an easier method. Your page rank appears in the Google toolbar, where it is constantly refreshed.
You should keep in mind that Google values a link by the ranking of the page it appears on, not the ranking of the site’s home page. A link from a popular home page will increase your own ranking more than a link from the same site’s secondary pages. If you want to see how many links there are to your existing web page, go to www.google.com and type “link” in the search box, followed by your page’s URL. This will give you a better idea where you stand in the Google ranking system. If the inbound links are few in numbers and come from unpopular sites you probably have a zero or very low PageRank rating. Studies have shown that the quality of the link is just as important as the number of incoming links to your site. If you get a link from sites like MSN or Yahoo, your website will grow in Google’s rankings, as you are now linked to very respected sites.

Another technique in finding high quality links is by searching for sites that offer site submissions. You can use the following lines in Google:
“add URL” “your keyword phrase”

Also try replacing, “add URL” with any other of these search phrases:
“add a site”, “add a link”, “submit URL”, “submit link”, “submit an URL”, “submit a link”.
The keyword being used to link to your site also plays a crucial role. When asking a site owner to link to your site make sure that you ask them to link with the keyword that you are optimizing that page for. A high percentage of the #1 web pages on Google result pages used the queried keyword in link texts. Nearly one out of four web pages is a very high number so it looks like Google ranks web pages higher if they contain keywords in their link texts. For example, if the keyword is “electronics”, the following

link text contains the keyword once:
Electronics
Linking, in addition to keyword density, should be the main concern of every webmaster that wants his site in a high Google rank. We will discuss linking options later on in the article.

Googlebots
Googlebots are small programs running on Google’s servers that continuously browse the Internet indexing web sites in Google’s main database. The Googlebots scan the cache of your web page and send the data back to the database. The easiest way to “attract” Googlebots to index your site is if you have a site map. The site map is probably one of the most important pages that the Googlebots can turn to, as the links contained their point back to your own web pages. This creates a trail that Google will use to trace the rest of the links to your site. You can find out if your site was indexed by the Googlebots, with the help of the Google toolbar. Check your Google toolbar to see if your page has been indexed. If the ranking value is zero, you should probably revise your web site’s design so that the Googlebots can find it (eliminate some of the Flash and see if that helps).
Another way to attract search engine bots is to have a small sized website. Keeping your website under 101kb is sure to attract Googlebots, if it’s much larger, there is a chance Googlebots will avoid it, as Google’s cache doesn’t go higher than 101kb. This is, of course, a general guideline, but keeping your site small you have several benefits besides that of easier attracting Googlebots: it will load easier, making it better for human navigation, it will be easier to manage and upload and it will be a lot easier to promote.

Besides the initial Googlebots launched by the search engine a few years ago, it seems Google has begun using another spider in their scanning and indexing of web sites. News of a second Googlebot was discovered by a number of site owners who, while studying their site logs, noticed two Google spiders; with different IP address ranges; visited and scanned their respective sites.
SEO – Linking

As we noticed earlier, the most important factor for getting a higher rank in the PageRank system is to have a complex and dynamic linking process (internal and external). There are several ways of making your link popular and having it appear on other sites:
Paying a specialized company – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Companies are a good option if you are willing to hand out a fair amount of money to rank higher in Google or other search engines, or if you find it to hard to take all the advices in this article into consideration for your site. This option could sometimes be a tricky deal, as SEO is always an unstable terrain and you might not get the desired result.
Link-Exchange -The most simplistic method after paying for the optimization is plain link-exchange. Basically it consists of two webmasters owning different sites, exchanging links and placing the counter-part’s link on their own site, thus increasing their rank reciprocally. You probably won’t have a lot of success if your site has a daily average of 10 visitors and you ask the Yahoo webmaster to exchange links, but it’s always a good thing to start low, exchanging links with similar websites (similar as in content and popularity). In time you will have your link spread in different places over the Internet and you can move up to exchanging links with more serious and popular partners.
Open directory listings – ODLs are special websites that index and sort other sites by category and content. The most important ODL is without a doubt the DMOZ Open Directory Project, where you can register your site for free and it will be checked for content. If the site is approved, it will be indexed in a category (for example “Commerce” or “Web Design”, etc.) where there is a chance someone will find your link and click it, or add it to their site.
All the people working at DMOZ are volunteers and their mission is to sort the good pages from the bad. They present the filtered pages back to the general public, focusing on high quality content for each site they review.

The information collected by DMOZ may be used by thousands of sites, and some of them may link to you. All these links score very low in Google’s PageRank but they are there and their numbers might add up to something that counts.
Post your link everywhere! – Whenever you have the chance, give out your link. If you spend time on a forum, place your link in your signature, if you write an article for a site, place your site’s link when signing it, etc. This is not only a good way to get your site clicked and get it popular, it also raises the chance of your site being linked to another one. Think about it, you’re posting on a forum with 2000 registered people, some of which are bound to have websites of their own or are managing someone else’s website.
Internal linking system – Use a well-balanced internal linking system. You can cross-link your most important pages in your site, so that the Google search engine sees them as relevant. If your website has hundreds of pages, the cross linking system makes it a lot easier for the Googlebots to index your pages quicker. You can also benefit from the use of the increased amount of keywords contained in the text links.

Google Dance
The “Google Dance” is the name given to Google’s updating processes when, for a short amount of time (hours usually) the ranks and the position of your site in the search engine “dance” up and down. The movement in the PageRank system is caused by the impossibility to update the information from over 10 000 servers simultaneously. Therefore, during the process, there is a chance that a lower ranked site was updated before a higher-ranked one, and until the latter will be updated, they will be bound to change places.

Up until 2003, updates were performed once a month, and during a few hours all ranks were distorted severely. Therefore, in order to avoid chaos inside their search engine, Google managed to find a way to continuously update its search engine, not only not causing the severe differences in rank anymore (they still occur today, but at a lower standard) but also making it possible to update more often, as the continuous update prevents any abrupt variations in rank. In case you see your page shift up and down the ranks in small intervals (maybe minutes or hours), you are probably just experiencing a Google Dance.

Google’s Own SEO Advice
Here are some quotes from the Google Guidelines found on the search engine’s website (www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html), regarding what you should do and what you shouldn’t do if you want to rank higher on Google’s PageRank.
“Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link” – this helps Googlebots index your page more easily. Not only that, but it gives readers a cleaner way of navigating. So by respecting this rule, you hit two targets with one shot.
“Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages” – again an advice that is useful both for human browsers of your page and for spider bots. The sitemap is a necessity for every major site around, since some can be so complex that visitors literally loose themselves on the site. It’s also the first place a spider bot looks, making it a valuable asset in the ranking process.
“Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content” – the importance of clear text is major for any site that handles a good amount of visitors. If you make your visitors loose interest by using spamming methods, un-organized text, etc. you risk dropping in the ranks, as visitor numbers are also calculated in the ranking system. The general rule for any site is that if the visitors like it and find it useful the search engine will do that too.
“Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it” – The relevancy of the keywords you use is crucial, so take some time to put together a list of what you think relates to your site.

“Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images” – We showed the importance of using text over images in the “General Tips” chapter. In some cases it seems almost critical to use an image rather than a text (for banners or site headers for example). You can however do a small trick that let’s you have a cool image as a banner and have the company name or other text, outside the image. If you have a pre-made banner with your company name inside, try to edit the picture and remove the text, than make a small table in the website (where the header used to be) of the exact same width and height the new empty banner has. Then place the empty banner as the background of the table and you can write whatever text you need over it. Just make sure the text is in the same position as it was before you removed it from the image. This works perfectly for keeping the same site design as you initially wanted and using text for the spider bots at the same time.

“Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate”. Don’t mislead the Googlebots and provide them with accurate descriptions of your page. Google doesn’t like to be tricked, so it’s a good advice to play by the rules in order to avoid being flagged, or worse, being banned. The “misleading” rule applies not only to Title and Alt tags, but also to accurate keywords, keyword spamming, invisible java text with misleading information, etc.

“Check for broken links and correct HTML”. Not only that in the visitor’s eyes, a broken link is a signal of negligence, but Googlebots or other crawler type bots can get mislead when indexing a page with broken links.

“If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a ‘?’ character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small”. – The quote speaks for itself. Try to reduce dynamic code as much as you can.
“Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)”. – Again, this advice refers to the Googlebots’ ability to quickly index a page. If a page is too complex or has an unorganized structure, not only it will take a lot more time for the bots to crawl through the site, they might sometimes have problems, getting stuck between links.

“Avoid hidden text or hidden links and don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects” – like I already stated above, Google hates to be tricked or mislead. The use of java cloaking or invisible text columns (with irrelevant information, used just to obtain a higher rank or to get more visitors to the site) is strictly forbidden by Google, using this techniques at a large scale, might even get your site banned from Google’s search engine (meaning your site will never show up on Google, no matter what your PageRank score would be).

“Don’t load pages with irrelevant words” – same as above; using irrelevant text and keywords or key phrases only to trick visitors to come to your site is combated by Google. The strictest measures regarding this matter apply to pornography sites, which use irrelevant words to attract viewers to their page, possibly attracting children.
“Don’t create multiple pages with substantially duplicate content”. Google sees this as another form of spamming. Don’t worry if you copy a few paragraphs and insert them to another link if that makes sense, just don’t duplicate whole pages for the sake of having more internal links and more keywords.
“Avoid doorwa pages created just for search engines, or other cookie cutter approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content” – another “DON’T” on Google’s list. Doorway pages break pretty much all the above rules, being pages flooded with keywords, irrelevant texts, cloaked text, duplicate content, etc.

“Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header” – This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since it has last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.

“Google may respond negatively to misleading practices like tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known web site” – well this rule could not only upset Google, but local or international authorities too…Misspelling of well-known sites or brands, is common on the Internet, so you can see web-sites marketing “PLIMA” sneakers, “Raebok” tennis rackets and the examples could go on and on. Misleading logos or banners are also common. The best example I found regarding this matter, was of a search engine named “Gogle”, which claimed to be the world’s most popular search engine (I didn’t include the link, for your own protection, as the site was crawling with Trojan viruses).

Thanks for reading.

All Hallows Even

Though the majority of the world observes Halloween in one way shape or form, there are still many that do not. There are some that believe it is the holiday of the devil. Though, they may have a point, since everyone dresses up and many times in demonic costumes, I would like to go through all the different ways that people observe it and why.

In the states, people celebrate it because it’s a great reason to dress up and get free candy. In the states, we try to keep it simple. It’s simply an opportunity to dress up while parents and older siblings take them all over town. There is no real meaning for it, at least for the average American, but there are those that believe in it’s classical meaning. And we also have those that do tricks on that night, but it’s all apart of the holiday and nobody truly wants to hurt the other person.

Let’s talk a little bit about the history and meaning for a little bit.

What is Halloween?

Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while “some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)”, derived from the Old Irish Samuin meaning “summer’s end”. Samhain was the first and by far the most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Irish calendar and, falling on the last day of Autumn, it was a time for stock-taking and preparation for the cold winter months ahead. There was also a sense that this was the time of year when the physical and supernatural worlds were closest and magical things could happen. To ward off these spirits, the Irish built huge, symbolically regenerative bonfires and invoked the help of the gods through animal and perhaps even human sacrifice.

Halloween is also thought to have been heavily influenced by the Christian holy days of All Saints’ Day (also known as Hallowmas, All Hallows, Hallowtide) and All Souls’ Day. Falling on November 1st and 2nd respectively, collectively they were a time for honoring the Saints and praying for the recently departed who had yet to reach heaven. By the end of the 12th century they had become days of holy obligation across Europe and involved such traditions as ringing bells for the souls in purgatory and “souling”, the custom of baking bread or soul cakes for “all crysten [christened] souls”.
In Britain the rituals of Hallowtide and Halloween came under attack during the Reformation as Protestants denounced purgatory as a “popish” doctrine incompatible with the notion of predestination.[4] In addition the increasing popularity of Guy Fawkes Night from 1605 on saw Halloween become eclipsed in Britain with the notable exception of Scotland. Here, and in Ireland, they had been celebrating Samhain and Halloween since the early Middle Ages, and it is believed the Kirk took a more pragmatic approach towards Halloween, viewing it as important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities and thus ensuring its survival in the country.
North American almanacs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century give no indication that Halloween was recognized as a holiday. The Puritans of New England, for example, maintained strong opposition to the holiday[8] and it was not until the mass Irish and Scottish immigration during the 19th century that the holiday was introduced to the continent in earnest. Initially confined to the immigrant communities during the mid-nineteenth century, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and by the first decade of the twentieth century it was being celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial and religious backgrounds.

The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even (“evening”), that is, the night before All Hallows Day.[10] Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556.

Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. For instance, the carving of jack-o’-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory.[11] The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween,[12][13] but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips.[12] The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837[14] and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.[15]
The imagery of Halloween is derived from many sources, including national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein and Dracula), and classic horror films (such as Frankenstein and The Mummy).[16] Among the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne in 1780, who made note of pranks at Halloween; “What fearfu’ pranks ensue!”, as well as the supernatural associated with the night, “Bogies” (ghosts), influencing Robert Burns’ Halloween 1785.[17] Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks, and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween.
Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, the occult, or mythical monsters.[18] Black and orange are the holiday’s traditional colors.

Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, “Trick or treat?” The word “trick” refers to a (mostly idle) “threat” to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. In some parts of Scotland children still go guising. In this custom the child performs some sort of trick, i.e. sings a song or tells a ghost story, to earn their treats.
The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls’ Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain,[5] although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.[19] Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of “puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas.”[20]
In Scotland and Ireland, Guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a traditional Halloween custom, and is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money.[13] The practice of Guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children going “guising” around the neighborhood.[21]
American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book length history of the holiday in the U.S; The Book of Hallowe’en (1919), and references souling in the chapter “Hallowe’en in America”;

The taste in Hallowe’en festivities now is to study old traditions, and hold a Scotch party, using Burn’s poem Hallowe’en as a guide; or to go a-souling as the English used. In short, no custom that was once honored at Hallowe’en is out of fashion now.

In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; “Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Hallowe’en customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries”.[23]
While the first reference to “guising” in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.[24]
The earliest known use in print of the term “trick or treat” appears in 1927, from Blackie, Alberta, Canada:
Hallowe’en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word “trick or treat” to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.[25]
The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating.[26] The editor of a collection of over 3,000 vintage Halloween postcards writes, “There are cards which mention the custom [of trick-or-treating] or show children in costumes at the doors, but as far as we can tell they were printed later than the 1920s and more than likely even the 1930s. Tricksters of various sorts are shown on the early postcards, but not the means of appeasing them”.[27] Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the first U.S. appearances of the term in 1934,[28] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.

Halloween is not celebrated in all countries and regions of the world, and among those that do the traditions and importance of the celebration vary significantly. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include children dressing up in costume going “guising”, holding parties, while other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays.[41][42] Mass transatlantic immigration in the 19th century popularized Halloween in North America, and celebration in the United States and Canada has had a significant impact on how the event is observed in other nations. This larger North American influence, particularly in iconic and commercial elements, has extended to places such as South America, Australia,[43] New Zealand,[44] continental Europe, Japan, and other parts of East Asia.

Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the Anglican Church, some dioceses have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions of All Saints’ Day,[46][47] while some other Protestants celebrate the holiday as Reformation Day, a day to remember the Protestant Reformation.[48][49] Father Gabriele Amorth, a Vatican-appointed exorcist in Rome, has said, “if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that.”[50] In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a “Saint Fest” on the holiday.[51] Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free.
Many Christians ascribe no negative significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular holiday devoted to celebrating “imaginary spooks” and handing out candy. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners’ heritage.[52] In the Roman Catholic Church, Halloween is viewed as having a Christian connection,[53] and Halloween celebrations are common in Catholic parochial schools throughout North America and in Ireland.
Some Christians feel concerned about Halloween, and reject the holiday because they feel it trivializes – or celebrates – paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs.[54] A response among some fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches in recent years has been the use of “Hell houses”, themed pamphlets, or comic-style tracts such as those created by Jack T. Chick in order to make use of Halloween’s popularity as an opportunity for evangelism.[51] Some consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith[55] believing it to have originated as a pagan “Festival of the Dead”.

Celtic Neopagans consider the season a holy time of year.[56] Celtic Reconstructionists, and others who maintain ancestral customs, make offerings to the gods and the ancestors.

Death has a bad image, very depressing, but that would be a bad argument for this day because just about anyone involved is enjoying themselves. Actually, in many Latin cultures, Halloween is thought of as a holy day where you respect those that died. In other words, it’s like going to a family members grave (if you ever even went back after the funeral) and drop a flower or polished stone, but as you can see, when it comes to Latin countries they have more respect for each other as we do and I mean Latin countries, not Americanized Latin.

Also, like any other special day, we have special foods that we prepare:

Barmbrack (Ireland)
Bonfire toffee (Great Britain)
Candy apples/toffee apples (Great Britain & Ireland)
Candy corn, candy pumpkins (North America)
Caramel apples
Caramel corn
Colcannon (Ireland)
Novelty candy shaped like skulls, pumpkins, bats, worms, etc.
Pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread
Roasted pumpkin seeds
Roasted sweet corn
Soul cakes

Do any of those sound demonic? Actually, most if not all of the foods have fiber…wat….so the day of the dead is actually one of our healthiest days? That ironic, ain’t it?

For the most part, it’s all about having fun because you only live once. So if someone you know is saying how demonic they are, respect what they say, but explain to them it depends on the cultures and in most things, American culture has no other meaning that for the fun of it. It’s a touch thing when religion comes into play, I mean it would be easier to accept someone saying that they don’t get it or they just don’t want to, but when they say it’s from Satin, well, we have to respect what they say because in some cultures (satin worshipers), they may have a point, but we also have the obligation to stand up and say, hey, that’s not the only way to look at it, let’s sit down for 8 hours and talk about this.

Happy Halloween! Be safe and have fun. Thanks for reading!

How to survive during a power outage

Okay, so maybe the title of this post is a little too drastic, as if we will really die if we lose power. Though this would be a rational thing to say, it actually is quite difficult to go about your average day without power, especially internet. Many people take online courses and do business from home during the weekend, so though they wouldn’t really lose their life, they would be drastically inconvenienced.

So what can you do during a blackout? The best method is by having a gas powered generator, but these could cost thousands of dollars and lots of time to maintain, even if you don’t use it. Besides, if you are environmentally sensitive, this would probably something you want to avoid. Some might think that a surge protector or a battery backup is enough. WRONG! First off, a surge protector doesn’t really do anything with power, other than giving you extra outlets, and possibly causing a socket to blow. A battery backup does do some good. It gives about 5-10 minutes (depending on what kind you get) to save and shutdown everything safely, but after ten minutes, the battery backup gets shut off as well.

Other than a generator, you could make sure that everything is charged up. Make sure your cell phone is charged, laptop, and iPods/iPads. The most important of these is actually the cell phone because if in case of an emergency you have to call someone, but your battery died, guess what-things just got twice as worse. Make sure you have plenty of batteries for those flashlights because the best thing to do for entertainment is probably to have conversations or read a book next to a flashlight.

You can never have enough batteries in times like these, but make sure you keep them in the fridge until the time comes.

As for the food, try to find some large coolers, find/make plenty of ice and pack as much of the food as possible. Power outages tend to happen more during the colder weathers like winter (due to trees falling down from the heavy snow), so you could even put wrapped up food outside in a cooler/box.

What about other sources of energy? Okay, let’s look at some.

Solar power: This might seem like a great idea, but what about during the night? I don’t know much about solar power energy, but I do believe you would need something to convert that solar to usable energy, meaning you would need some type of generator. I actually have a personal bias against solar power, mostly because it doesn’t really seem like a viable option for an alternative, especially since you have to invest lots of money in the beginning(millions of dollars) and there’s only a small chance of it paying off in the end.

Wind power: This to me sounds more logical because it’s easier to convert wind/water into usable energy. Also, it’s a little cheaper, but you still have to invest some money. Something has to be understand, if you want to use any alternate for power, you will be investing a large sum of money with no guarantee of getting it back. The reason why I say that this sounds more logical to me is because it’s easier to convert and there’s a greater chance of getting wind at night than light.

Water power: This to me sounds like it would be a grand idea because water is one of the most natural sources of energy. The question comes when you want to recycle the H2O along with how much of the water would you need at once to obtain any significant amount of power from it. Also, much like with solar power, you need something to convert the water into usable energy.

Gas power: As I mentioned earlier, generators cost lots of money and maintenance, therefore wouldn’t be a great alternative if you don’t have the money, nor the time.

Okay, so for the average person, an alternative source of energy isn’t really an option, although, that is actually the method to survive, while keeping some accommodations of your average routine.

As for the average person, truly the best option is to be prepared. Buy plenty of supplies(flashlights, batteries, water, canned food, blankets, ice, coolers, charge all devices especially cell phones, blah blah blah). When the time comes be prepared to do what you have to as quickly and smoothly as possible (move food into cooler areas, know where the flashlights are, and know where everything else is).

If internet is an absolute must, for example, you have a term paper due the next day, the library is a great option, but if you have a friendly neighbor, I’m sure if you ask, they’d be more than happy to share. And if neither are possible, talk to the boss or professor, or teacher and they’d understand. If you can’t, you just can’t and any rational person will accept that.

Thank you for reading and remember not to take anything for granted. Always be prepared for the worst.

Quick Sort

////.h
/*

function quicksort(‘array’)
create empty lists ‘less’ and ‘greater’
if length(‘array’) ≤ 1
return ‘array’ // an array of zero or one elements is already sorted
select and remove a right value ‘right’ from ‘array’
for each ‘x’ in ‘array’
if ‘x’ ≤ ‘right’ then append ‘x’ to ‘less’
else append ‘x’ to ‘greater’
return concatenate(quicksort(‘less’), ‘right’, quicksort(‘greater’))
*/

#include
#include
using namespace std;

char *quickSort(char a[],int left,int right);

char *quickSort(char a[],int left,int right){
char pivot=a[(left+right)/2],tmp;
int i=left,j=right;

while (i<=j){
while(a[i]>pivot){
i++;
}
while(a[j] j--;
}
if(i<=j){
tmp=a[i];
a[i]=a[j];
a[j]=tmp;
i++;
j--;
}

}

if(left quickSort(a,left,j);
if(i quickSort(a,i,right);

return a;
}

////.cpp

#include "quicksort.h"

int main ()
{
int max,again=1;

while(again==1){

cout<<"Number of characters: ";
cin>>max;

char a[max];
string result;

cout<<"Enter letters\n";
for(int i=0;i cout<<"Enter character"< cin>>a[i];
}

cout<<"Before the sort: ";
for(int i=0;i cout< }

result=quickSort(a,0,max);

cout<<"\nAfter the sort: ";
for(int i=max-1;i>=0;i–){
cout< }

cout< cin>>again;
}
return 0;
}

Hope that helps!

Merge Sort

////.h
#include
#include
using namespace std;

char *mergeSort(char letters[], char temp[], int array_size);
char *mSort(char letters[], char temp[], int left, int right);
char *merge(char letters[], char temp[], int left, int mid, int right);

char *mergeSort(char letters[], char temp[], int array_size)
{
return mSort( letters, temp, 0, array_size – 1);
}

char *mSort(char letters[], char temp[], int left, int right)
{
int mid;

if (right > left)
{
mid = (right + left) / 2;
mSort( letters, temp, left, mid);
mSort( letters, temp, (mid+1), right);

merge( letters, temp, left, (mid+1), right);
}

return letters;
}

char *merge(char letters[], char temp[], int left, int mid, int right)
{
int i, leftEnd, elements, tmpPos;

leftEnd = (mid – 1);
tmpPos = left;
elements = (right – left + 1);

while ((left <= leftEnd) && (mid <= right))
{
if ( letters[left] <= letters[mid])
{
temp[tmpPos] = letters[left];
tmpPos += 1;
left += 1;
}
else
{
temp[tmpPos] = letters[mid];
tmpPos += 1;
mid += 1;
}
}

while (left <= leftEnd)
{
temp[tmpPos] = letters[left];
left += 1;
tmpPos += 1;
}
while (mid <= right)
{
temp[tmpPos] = letters[mid];
mid += 1;
tmpPos += 1;
}

for (i=0; i < elements; i++)
{
letters[right] = temp[right];
right -= 1;
}

return temp;
}

////.cpp
#include "mergeSort.h"

int main()
{
int max,again=1;

while(again==1){
cout<<"Word size: ";
cin>>max;

char arrayOne[max];
char arrayTwo[max];
string result;

cout<<"Enter word to sort: ";

//Enter character array
for(int i=0;i cout<<"Letter"< cin>>arrayOne[i];
}

//Before the sort
cout<<"Before the sort: ";
for(int i=0;i cout< cout<

//Sort
result=mergeSort(arrayOne, arrayTwo, max);

//After the sort

cout<<"After the sort: ";
for(int i=0;i cout< cout<

cout<<"1-Again 2-Close: ";
cin>>again;
}

cout< return 0;
}

Jailbreak

In this post I will go over some things about jail breaking as well as explaining the difference between jailbreak and unlock.

What:

First off, what exactly is “jailbreaking”? In simple words, jailbreak is essentially taking off the factory locks preventing you from obtaining third party applications and unlocking to use another carrier. Jailbreak is not just for iPhones, but in most cases, when speaking about a jailbreaked phone, it tends to be an Apple iPhone.

Why:

Why should you jailbreak? There are two main reasons why you would jailbreak, as mentioned above-to obtain third party applications (applications that are from another source other than the Apple App Store) and to unlock for another carrier. Keep in mind that just because you jailbroke your phone and you are on a different carrier, you still need to unlock. Jailbreak therefore is more just for third party applications, but in order to unlock, you need a third party applications, which I will talk about later on.

What are the benefits? The benefits are that you can access third party applications that tend to be free and in many cases better than their equivalent in the App Store. Also, you have the ability to use another carrier since Apple the iPhone is locked into AT&T. Keep in mind that it depends on the version of the IOS as well as the version of the baseband(BIOS). Plus, it gives the more advanced users access to the system files that could allow them to change a number of things to their liking via SSH (OpenSSH).

Any reasons not to? Of course, being that technology isn’t perfect, there are cons to jailbreaking. The first one is that it voids the warranty, meaning if you jailbreak, you can no longer bring it into Apple and get a free fix. This does not mean that they won’t fix it, but there is a chance that they will take the jailbreak off (that you can always redo, but depending on if they updating the IOS, this may have changed the baseband to a version that is not yet UNLOCK ABLE). It also does tend to slow down the operating system, but unless you have a trained eye in systems, you won’t notice it as quickly. Always make your own builds to avoid bad builds from others.

Is it legal?
”
Federal regulators lifted a cloud of uncertainty when they announced it was lawful to hack or “jailbreak” an iPhone, declaring Monday there was “no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model.”

Jailbreaking is hacking the phone’s OS to allow consumers to run any app on the phone they choose, including applications not authorized by Apple.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked regulators 19 months ago to add jailbreaking to a list of explicit exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions.

At stake for Apple is the very closed business model the company has enjoyed since 2007, when the iPhone debuted. Apple says it’s unlawful to jailbreak, (.pdf) but has not taken legal action against the millions who have jailbroken their phones and used the underground app store Cydia.

Apple maintains that its closed marketplace is what made the success of the iPhone possible, and sold more than three billion apps. Apple also told regulators that the nation’s cellphone networks could suffer “potentially catastrophic” cyberattacks by iPhone-wielding hackers at home and abroad (.pdf) if iPhone owners are permitted to legally jailbreak their shiny wireless devices.

Every three years, the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office entertain proposed exemptions to the DMCA, passed in 1998. The act forbids circumventing encryption technology to copy or modify copyrighted works. In this instance, Apple claimed the DMCA protects the copyrighted encryption built into the bootloader that starts up the iPhone OS operating system.

But the Copyright Office concluded that, “while a copyright owner might try to restrict the programs that can be run on a particular operating system, copyright law is not the vehicle for imposition of such restrictions.”

A federal appeals court came to the same conclusion last week in an unrelated dispute about “dongles,” or keys that grant access to software. “The owner’s technological measure must protect the copyrighted material against an infringement of a right that the Copyright Act protects, not from mere use or viewing,” (.pdf) the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case concerning a software licensing flap between MGE UPS Systems and GE Consumer and Industrial.

Jay Freeman, who runs Cydia, said about nine million iPhones have his alternative marketplace installed on their phones. “If there was something on the books that jailbreaking was not exempt, that would be painful,” Freeman said. The Dev-Team, one of the main groups offering free iPhone hacks, declared Monday’s development as “fantastic news.”

Mario Ciabarra, chief technical officer of Rock Your Phone, which sells an application to turn an iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, said the the Copyright Office’s decision is a “big win for consumers and applications developers” and has given the jailbreak community “the legitimacy it deserves.”

Apple told regulators that modifying the iPhone operating system leads to the creation of an infringing derivative work that is protected by copyright law. The Cupertino-based computer maker also claimed that the license on the operating system forbids software modification.

Monday’s decision, (.pdf) which applies to all mobile smart phones and not the iPad, does not require Apple or other handset makers to allow jailbreaking. Instead, it makes it lawful to circumvent controls designed to block jailbreaking.

In an April security bulletin, Apple said “Unauthorized modification of iPhone OS has been a major source of instability, disruption of services, and other issues.”

The EFF contended that the iPhone’s embedded protection system was implemented by Apple as a business decision to prevent competition and is unrelated to copyright interests.

Jailbreaking, the EFF maintained, constitutes fair use of the firmware tied to the operating system.

Regulators agreed, declaring Monday that “the activity of an iPhone owner who modifies his or her iPhone’s firmware/operating system in order to make it interoperable with an application that Apple has not approved, but that the iPhone owner wishes to run on the iPhone, fits comfortably within the four corners of fair use.”

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said Apple won’t change its policy that voids iPhone warranties if a phone has been jailbroken. “It can violate the warranty and cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably,” she said.

”

In short-yes it is, but there is a gap that it is illegal to “own” the software. If anyone ever asks you for
money FOR THE JAILBREAK SOFTWARE, then it’s illegal. They can still technically charge for the service of the jailbreak/unlock.

Unlock:

I mentioned unlock quite a number of times, but never explained the difference. As I mentioned, you jailbreak, right, this allows you to access third party applications. To unlock, you would use one of these third party applications (Ultrasn0w), which would literrally open up the carrier lock within the Apple IOS, allowing you to use another carrier. To be able to unlock, you have to make sure that your baseband and IOS version is unlock-able. If you recently updated to the most recent version that just came out, it may take some time for a jailbreak to come out and some version don’t even have an unlock. With the iPhone 4, there was a defect in the hardware that prevented any unlock, even though there are many jailbreaks out there. To be able to unlock, always use a software packet that builds a custom firmware-PwanageTool tends to be the best.

A custom firmware essentially updates your IOS, but keeps the unlockable version of the baseband.

How:

First, make sure your model, baseband, and IOS version can be jailbroken as well as unlocked for the future.

Next,

There are a number of methods, but the following tends to work the best, in my opinion:

1) Download a copy of the IOS. Just Google it.
2) Download the jailbreak tool from dev-team.org
3) Follow the instructions

Make sure you do not update using the original firmware because this may update your baseband.

Lastly,

This isn’t needed if you are on AT&T, but you want to make sure you have it, install UltraSn0w (that is a zero, not an “o”). Simply search for that in Cydia and install. You may need to reboot the phone, but after that you should be good to go.

Thank you for reading.

The Academy, what happened to you?

In this post, I decided to let some things off of my chest that have been frustrating me (and I’m sure others as well) lately. Let me start by saying this-when I first went to college, I honestly paid no mind to it, but for about a year and a half I’ve been loving it. This might sound ironic, but I am a full supporter of the liberation of the mind, especially what The Academy use to stand for-mentors inspiring pupils to open up their minds and fall in love with thinking. After all, the way that education use to be for teachers/mentors was that the biggest gift a mentor could have is see their pupil spread their mind. I’m not sure what happened, be it the economy or mentors not getting paid, financially speaking, enough to pay their bills, but it seems as if The Academy has lots it’s genuine factor. You might think I’m just saying this as an ignorant student and you have the right to think that way, but first let me explain why I am saying what I’m saying.

My issues fall in the following categories-books that have no useful content, professors who have no interest in teaching (this I will explain in detail later), professors not grading fairly, getting a grade just to move on, but not fully understanding the material, classes that I find no logical purpose, and the material not being given correctly. There of course is much more reasons why The Academy has lost it’s meaning, but these are the only ones I wish to focus on.

Books with no useful content:

This is mostly referring to foreign language course. I also understand that there are certain books that are actually quite good. I also understand that for a foreign language, it’s difficult to write a text book for, but there are still certain things that don’t seem right in this area. Normally, for foreign language course, you get a text book and a work book. What’s the difference? The difference is that the workbook should have activities that help you practice and a textbook should have text that helps you learn the material so that you may practice the correct material. After all, what’s the point of practicing the wrong material? This is one of the biggest issues I have with The Academy now a days. Normally, when trying to inspire someone, that takes them to get good grades and something starts to click after a while that sparks more interest. How can a mentor spark interest if the material isn’t given in a way that the students can learn, thus causing them not to get as good grades as they could? And the thing that should anger every parent and student is the fact that these books aren’t cheap, yet we still need to purchase them. It’s a money trap as well as a shame.

Professors who have no interest in teaching:

This is clearly evident, you can even see it if you are in college now a days. Professors deliberately come late acting as if it’s not a big deal. Then once they’re in the classroom, they show other professors’ slides, barely being able to explain what others are teaching. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because they have so much on their plate or they’re simply lazy. This is a hard thing to explain, but you can see it and when you do, you can clearly notice it.

Getting a grade just to move on:

No child left behind in college? Professors curving so much that they pass, but they have no idea what the class was about? It happens. Now, I have no problem with curving if everyone is doing poorly because that usually means that the material is so advanced that everyone is having difficulty, but if most of the class is getting it, then there should be no excuse. I say this only because every class builds up to the next class. How can you think about going into the next class if you can’t even understand the previous material. It’s like going into pre-calculus prior to knowledge of basic arithmetic.

Why these course:

I understand why we need to take English/writing courses and others of the same, but what I don’t understand is why we would use foreign languages? After all, we would probably just forget about it after a year. The story I enjoy thinking of is about my father. He came from Romania not knowing a word of English, but he worked his butt off to learn the language. English is the primary language of the world, more so the United States. Why should we learn another language? I understand it expands the mind and teaches of different cultures, but I don’t believe that’s what foreign language course try to teach because in most universities, culture is maybe 5% of the course. Most of the course is learning the basic syntax and grammar. I especially don’t understand the point of this as a Computer Science major because we learn at least ten different programming languages, which in my mind would have more use for the coming years since we are living in a digital world. Guess who writes those programs for you to learn that foreign language? Computer Science majors. I honestly don’t mean to offend anyone, but doesn’t it make more sense to learn that country’s culture if you move into that country as opposed to making the new country learning YOUR culture? If you want your culture, stay in your own country. You can’t have your culture and our freedoms at the same time. If you expect to live in our country, you should be expected to cope to the changes of the new country, no?

Material not presented correctly:

I’ve had multiple ex-professors even admit to this one. Many times professors are use to the way that they learned, but don’t present the material that coincides with the previous styles. This tends to cause mass chaos for students trying to expand their minds, possibly leading to lack of further interest in that material.

Final thoughts:

You may think that this is just another college student’s rant about how hard college life is, but if you notice, I gave a number of specific issues with observations. If you are a fellow student, maybe you can observe these too. For faculty members, I challenge you to walk about classes, paying close attention to the environment as a whole.

I don’t know what else to say that would be somewhat constructive. I just think that the accreditation should reconsider their qualifications as well as the whole Academy reanalyzing why they are there. I really miss how The Academy use to be-genuine. Truly seeking to liberate the pupils’ minds to inspire them to seek knowledge for themselves.

Thank you for reading!

May the vision continue…

Today I would like to talk about Steve Jobs and what he did for me. I may not know him in any way, but that does not matter because what he did affected the whole world.

First off, what did he do? Steve Jobs, along with Steve Wozniak, had a vision-to make personal computer “better” and simpler. Though it is hard to define “better”, simpler is exactly what they did with personal computing. At the time, it was frustrating to own a computer (luckily we did not use them as much as we do today), but what about even today? With all of Windows crashes and issues, there must be a simpler way to enjoy the web and the rest of the virtual world. Apple did just that. Their interface is a lot cleaner and the navigation of the system is so much simpler. Think of the comparison of reading a book for dumbees vs a quantum physics book. With Apple, it is in plain English, whereas with Microsoft (and to an extent Linux), you have to have some idea of computers. Let me make a note that if any IT consultant tells you that it would be difficult to learn Apple OS, they just do not want to lose your money because I have seen 80 year olds learn Apple OS relatively quickly. I do not want to sound like I am forcing you to own a Mac, because not many have the finances to own one, but I do recommend at least looking into one.

Okay, so how did he make things simpler? With a vision and a knowledge of the technology available to him. My biggest problem with people saying that Bill Gates is the smartest technician is just that. A) The smartest technician will make computing simpler for the rest of their users, not make it frustrating. B) Just so that you all know, Bill Gates stole DOS disks from his old job and compiled them into one disk that does not need to constantly need a floppy disk. In other words, he took the current technology, which for every program needed a disk (as well as constant reboots), and made it so that you do not need a disk, usually (even though for some programs you still need the disk). Also, I do not even have to ask about the frequency of your computer needing to be rebooted. I know it is a lot. So Microsoft is based on DOS, what is Apple based on and how is it different? Steve Jobs understood that Unix, being around for ages, had more time to be perfected and since it was for the most part open-source (free), it was the obvious way to go. Unix is one of the cleanest, stable, and most secure text-based operating systems around. The file system has a clean and logical hierarchy, whereas Windows does not. Because of that fact (and more), the system itself is a lot cleaner. How do they get away with making money off of an open-source system? Unix is text-based, Apple still had to design the graphical user interface (GUI), which they did an amazing job with.

So, what exactly did I learn from Steve Jobs? Money is not everything, making things simpler is what my goal should be, and design is everything. Money is not everything? Yes, to me at least, it is more just paper. To me, knowledge is priceless and I would rather have that than money. What about their high prices? Do you know how much it costs to make a Macbook Pro? Since it is cut out of PURE aluminum, just the manufacturing costs as much as you are paying. Then how do they make so much money? Just goes to show you that people really do want Apple products. Those stating that Apple is the worst company are most likely jealous/uneducated/greedy Microsoft users. Also, since Apple does not care about “genuine” operating systems (when you install an illegal copy of Windows, it tends to disable most of the functionality and gives you a “Not Genuine” message), people do not have to worry about borrowing a friends disk and installing it. Do not get me wrong, I still purchase the software, but Apple has one main goal-that everyone has a computer of their own that is stable and fun to use. Therefore, I am pretty sure they would not really mind if you do something along those lines. Making things simpler-I consider myself quite knowledgeable of computers and systems, so the right thing for me would be to make things simpler. Granted, it would be financially in my benefit to keep gaps in a system, but how would that reflect my work? Those with a knowledge of computers have an obligation to help those with a lower level of knowledge because we are living in an age where most, if not all, of our daily life deals with the digital world. Also, many people did not grow up with computers, either because they could not afford one or because they just were not around. So it is our duty to make things simpler.

The last section I want to focus a lot more on. Design. Companies always want to make things pretty, but they many times end up with a system that crashes (Windows Vista). While other times, they look for systems that have lots of functionality, but the rest of the system does not look good or does not function properly. Steve Jobs lived by this rule (this is my favorite quote), “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Design is EVERYTHING that deals with that system. Basic theory-if you think you spent enough time on the system, check it once more. The more time you spend on it, there is almost always something that you can improve. Steve Jobs, to me, had one goal in mind-making cool things that were simple and worked as they should. After all, if Apple started putting things out that did not function as they should have, how would people think of them? What happened to many Windows users when they got fed up with Windows Vista? Many of them moved over to Mac. Simple? Yes, as I said before, it is the duty of those with knowledge to help those without the knowledge to be able to keep up with average day to day living in the digital world.

Steve Jobs, now gone, did his part. He made the digital world simpler and cooler for the rest of us, even though he struggled with his own health. It was a long hard road for him and now he is free from all of them. I just hope that we can continue his legacy and make him proud by continuing his example. Make systems simpler, stable, and give the user the best experience that you can offer them.

Thank you Steve Jobs for building up the foundation for a simpler computing experience and setting the standards for great system design. May your hard work not be in vain and I hope we can continue your vision.

Thank you for reading.

Google+ VS Facebook

Today, I decided to write a post about possibly the greatest battle of social networks. Despite the fact that Facebook, the father of all social networks, has been out for almost 10 years, I think, needs to find something new, again. Google, the father of all search engines, decided to join the social network community, first by starting out restricted, which isn’t common for social networks and now is gaining in popularity, in such a short time may I add.

What makes a social network successful? Though, there are many ways to answer this and success for social networks can be defined in an infinite number of ways, I think the golden key for ANY social network is the idea that it’s unique. For example, LinkedIn is directed towards business professionals and self-employed people, while MySpace, though it started out much like Facebook, has now grown into something only people in the entertainment industry (music, movies, artists, celebrities) use. What is that social network’s particular niche?

Based on the uniqueness concept, it’s very hard to define what’s so unique about Facebook vs Google+. For this, we have to look at the system overall, since they both attract the general public.

The main thing I like about Google+ is that all of my Google tools are connected. They are all in one place, which is one of the reasons (dare I even say this as an IOS fan) why Google seems like it’s taking over the world. And it should because it’s been around for so long and has enough knowledge of technology as well as of course money to invest in these projects. Personally, I wouldn’t even be a little surprised if Google does take over or become more popular than Facebook, but that’s not really my aim of this post. Let me state my goal by saying that it’s not really about a take over than it is about having a well designed system.

Anyways, the areas I want to focus on are stability, security, ease of use, popularity (or possible growth of popularity), and of course frequency of change.

Stability:

How do we define the stability of a social network? Since it’s a website, first of all, we define it by the stability of the site-no broken links and all functionality works as it should. I think Facebook struggles with this, partially due to it’s consistency. For example, recently they changed their interface and now some update functions for personal profiles no longer work properly. This is a big fault since, in my opinion at least, it looks unprofessional if I can’t successfully update my own profile. Google+ has an advantage since it just came out and hasn’t had the need to change up anything on the system. For now, Google+ wins this section hands down.

Next, since it’s also based on a database, there’s also the stability to handle lots of information. This is tough, but I think Google wins this area also since it’s been around for years and it handles EVERYTHING on the web. Sorry Facebook.

Security:

This is a grey area for any social network since all social networks deal with one’s personal information and many social networks tend to give that information to other businesses. This area also includes who can find you on that network. This section is a tie, I feel, because in both you can change your settings (even the same settings), but also there are gaps to consider, even if they’re not obvious. Basic rule of thumb-never put more information than needed. For example, your friends don’t really need to see your address in public, if they’re really friends, they’d know your place already.

Ease of use:

Google+ wins this one hands down as well because since all of your Google tools are in one place, you don’t have to switch from one site to another. Also, since the interface is new, it might take some learning, but so far it’s easy to navigate through Google+. Facebook on the other hand changes constantly, which I have no problem with as long as it doesn’t break any of the functionality and doesn’t change the navigation too much. The problem is that Facebook does just that. After many changes, functionality of the site wasn’t 100% and always the user has to relearn the navigation. This area for Google+ is solely dependent on any changes they make in the future. Google, remember, navigation should be the same and functionality should stay 100%.

Popularity:

Straight out, Facebook wins at first, since it’s been out for longer and has more users. Okay, that’s true, but let’s look at the popularity of the companies themselves first. Google, as a company, has been out since the mid 90′s, whereas Facebook came out in 2004. Google has at least 10 years above Facebook.

Next, let’s look at how long it took each to gain the amount of users they have. Facebook has been around for almost 10 years and has 800 million users. It has been thought that it took Facebook to gain a million users about a year. So on average it takes Facebook a year to gain a million members (which also include pages, but I’m not sure).

Google+ has been around for less than a year and has already 10 million users (according to silicon filter). That’s 10 times as much as Facebook.

Now, let’s look at the time spent on each. Granted, lot’s of productivity has been lost due to Facebook, but that’s because Facebook has applications. Google+ is more professional, with it having apps, but most of them are calendars and we bite analytics. And just as an added note, Facebook doesn’t even make those apps themselves, they have outside companies, flash designers making them. Sorry Facebook, the one area I was rooting for ya, you are still struggling. Also, since Facebook is so popular already, where can it go in the future? My opinion, the decade of Facebook is shortly running out, whereas Google has many opportunities to grow.

Before I start my last topic, I want to clarify something. I have to bias for or against any of these social networks. To be honest, I thought Google+ would only last a few weeks. That’s why I’m writing this post, to spread the word to the world of it’s misconceptions.

Finally, let’s dive into the area of consistent. How frequently does each change their interface and how much do they change it? Granted, Google+ just came out and Facebook has been around for years, this makes Google seem a lot better. But why? Yes, Facebook has been around for almost a whole decade and in order to stay fresh, they change their layout, which again I have no problem with, but it’s the drastic change of the system. That’s one of the main reasons why so many complain about Facebook (along with media-provoked fear of privacy). Yes, a website should change once in a while to stay fresh and new, but they should be less frequent and less drastic as Facebook. If you do plan on making drastic changes, they should ease the user in, not by introducing a brand new look each time. Again, Google, navigation should be the same and functionality should stay 100%. And if you must make a drastic change, try to ease the members in, instead of forcing them into a new system. It also helps to give the user an option to go back to the classic view.

In conclusion, Facebook has had a great run so far, but with something new coming out, many will slowly start moving the the newest thing. Just think about it, MySpace users went over to Facebook, and now many Facebook users are starting to move over to Google. Evolution. It’s the way that things work. As long as an idea for a new social network is unique, users would be more than willing to at least try it out. And if they like it, they will pass it along. Notice what I said though “new” social network. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, as my brother always use to tell me. Google+’s success rest in the hands of the developers and designers, as long as they don’t change too much in the future, slowly but surely, their members list will include many from Facebook.

Thank you for reading.

Options for Windows 8

Today, I wasn’t sure what to post about so apologizes for the very late post.

In this post, I would like to explain your choices for when Windows 8 comes out.

First, you have to understand, as of now, Windows 8 will be a completely different operating system, meaning you would have to learn a brand new interface. If you are still learning current versions, which most likely is the case because we all learn something new each day, this will bring a big burden to you.

Now, you main options are as follows: you can stay on the current version, learn the new interface, downgrade from Windows 8 as soon as you get a new machine, or switch over to Mac.

Stay on the current version:

This option is probably the best and simplest. You wouldn’t have to purchase a new program, which would cost you hundreds of dollars and then you get confused. I think many people would choose this option because they feel that the current version they have is efficient, they know their current version (at least how to navigate), they wouldn’t have to spend money, and they don’t have to worry about losing data due to upgrading their system. Even though in most cases upgrading would not harm your data, there is still a chance that you would because something could get corrupted or your hard disk could give out during the upgrade process.

Learn the new interface:

If you really wanted to upgrade, you could always just learn the new system. Some may choose to do this because they like change and it’s something brand new. This is fine, but I do not recommend it with Windows 8 because chances are you might just downgrade to the last version you have.

Downgrade:

This would most likely be needed if you don’t want to learn the new system and you are planning to get a new machine. It’s important to downgrade prior to moving your data over because then you have to worry about backing up your data, which most likely you already did since you are moving to a newer computer, but it would be kind of redundant to move your data and then downgrade. This would also apply to those situations where the user did upgrade, but didn’t like the new system. Keep in mind you should also backup your data, not just for the downgrade process, but for data-loss prevention.

Switch over to Mac:

My prediction is that more people would switch over to a Mac out of frustration. Of course, some may just downgrade their systems, but I think a few would lose trust in Windows and just move over to Apple OS. Not to sound a little bias, but I honestly believe that Apple would never change the system to something that isn’t recognizable. This is mostly because they know their customers want to know how to navigate and like any good business, they want to keep their clients. I also believe some may choose this option because if they are forced to learn a new system, why not learn a most stable system, which is actually recommended by many respectable IT consultants.

As a recap, Windows 8 will be completely different. It will look and feel like their mobile system, so if you are not familiar with any of their mobile versions, you would want to stay away from this upgrade. You can always downgrade if you get a new machine, but make sure you know the proper ways to do this. You have to make sure you backup all your data and make sure you have all of the installation disks for your programs. If you are not sure what to do, please talk to someone that will give you unbiased advise. Windows is the IT company’s best friend because there are many hardware issues with PC’s as well as general system issues, so businesses would always recommend staying with Windows. If they tell you to stay because you would have to learn a new system, that is true, but it could also mean that they either don’t think you can learn the new system or they just don’t want to lose you business. Some may even recommend that you do upgrade to the new system only to have even more business from you(lessons). Change isn’t always bad, so if you are willing and brave enough to try the new system, go for it, but please make sure you back up your information so that if you choose to downgrade, you can do it safely and smoothly. As an added note, I have nothing against Windows 7 because it’s quite stable and easy to navigate since it’s similar to Windows XP.

Thank you for reading.