Can you guess what you can't see on Google Maps?

We’ve had a lot of conversations in the office about the power of Google and what they might do with it. Google has a great office culture (Google “google office“) and provides many free apps, such as Docs, Analytics, and Maps to drive traffic to their websites. I am still astonished every time I look at the street views on Google Maps and see some of my favorite places.

I recently found this video that made my think that A) Google has a conscience or B) Google is not the most powerful organization in the world. This video shows you 10 spots on Google Maps that you can’t see. Most of them are military and government related, but check it out. There is an entire country that is not shown in detail. Can you guess what it is? You may be right.

Of course, this is a matter of money for the registrars. They predict they can make $30 million a year by selling the .xxx domain names for $60 and they pledge to donate $10 from each sale to a child-protection non-profit. Besides money for someone else, what are the pluses? If the use of the xxx extension was required, it could remove misleading porn websites like WhiteHouse.com from the web and make child protection software more reliable and easier to use. Does the porn industry support this move? That depends on what side of the coin you look at and on what day.

The negatives to the move that I see is it would be a free-for-all on getting the new names. Some of the “best” .com names would not necessarily be given first dibs on the .xxx names so it would be like the Wild West again on the web. Also, can one government actually force all adult content websites to one type of domain name when the web covers the entire planet?

Read more about the topic on USA Today’s website.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

Lucy’s Retired Surfer Bar & Restaurant is a great place to go for a drink and a bite to eat, but how do you know what is today’s special? As part of their branding and communication pieces, Design the Planet developed a weekly email for the restaurant’s two locations to update their customers about what’s going on at Lucy’s, the daily specials, and special promotions. The email is aptly named the Surf’s Up(date).

Not sure what that exactly means. It means more and more people are going to LinkedIn to find employment through via networking and more people are doing business through LinkedIn. This also shows rapid growth for LinkedIn. WebProNews.com stated that the website had announced 55 million members less than two months ago which translates to a 9 percent growth in two months!

Drew Brees on the cover of Sports Illustrated with his wife & son.

The Saints have won the Super Bowl, but that is not the glimpse that I am referring to in this post. As part of the celebration, WWLTV.com posted headlines from newspapers & websites from around the world. Notice, I said headlines from websites. Of the 43 headlines, about one-third of them were from websites. This is a sign of the nearing end for newspapers. Already, a few major newspapers in the United States have moved to an online only format or have folded altogether.

Will the new Kindle & iPad create a new culture of reading newspapers online? How many newspapers do you have clipped out and in scrapbooks or hanging on your walls of your kids? Will this come to an end as the age of newspapers falls.

Below is a sampling of the headlines from both newspapers & websites in WWL’s post. View their website to view all of them.

Google hasn’t released all of the details, and they probably won’t (we still don’t know the exact algorithms Google uses to determine page rank – it’s a closely guarded secret).

I think one thing everyone would agree with is that a fast website is preferable to a slow website. Waiting over one minute for a web page to load is pretty much unacceptable by anyone’s standards. Most web users have gotten used to quick internet connections, and waiting more than ten seconds for a page to load is probably too much for most people to stand.

However, there could be deeper implications for smaller web shops and hosting companies than what might appear at first glance.

On the surface, it seems like a reasonable thing for most web developers to strive for anyway. If your page is that slow, chances are your user experience is going to end up being pretty bad. You probably won’t get many hits, and after a while your views will start to decrease. You really shouldn’t be on the first page of Google anyway. It’s a good idea to keep speed in mind anyway, right?

Of course it is.

Here are the concerns some people are having with this concept hinted at by Google. 

Many small e-commerce sites, web shops, and hosting companies rely heavily on page ranking for their business to succeed. It’s an extremely cost effective way to advertise, and for some tech savvy companies, they can do all of this internally and not spend an extra dime for the increase in business. What happens to these companies when Google starts putting the pages that load faster on the top of the list?

If Google starts implementing this scheme based solely on page load times, Amazon.com or Ebay.com, or any companies with the financial capitol to do so will quickly upgrade their servers, connections, hardware, software, etc. to the newest and fastest technology at their disposal, no matter what the cost. Some big companies might even be able to finance development of new technology to increase speed.

For the smaller companies, however, with servers costing thousands of dollars, the likelihood of smaller companies being able to compete with larger firms becomes harder and harder, and much less likely, nearly impossible.

Of course, none of this is set in stone, and it really all stems from an interview with an employee of Google, albeit very high level employee. Google has yet to release more information about what they plan to do.

It is possible they could base rankings on scores from applications such as Yahoo’s YSlow or Google’s own speed tester. If that is the case, smaller firms would be able to optimize their websites to compete with larger firms.

At Design the Planet we optimize all of our sites using these tools, which help us get quick load times. The problem, eventually, will be that companies with billions of dollars to spend will always be able to out spend smaller companies.

Is it fair they should be out ranked only because of lack of capital to invest in better technology? Is it possible that Google isn’t the gentle giant after all?

More and more, Word Press is being used to help developers find an inexpensive way to help clients update their websites on their own.

Some CMS can cost thousands of dollars, and having a developer or design firm update your site can cost even more over time. With Word Press, a developer can install a CMS and pass the savings on to you.

Word Press has been coming into its own over the past several years, and this past week, they’ve finally been recognized for their hard work.

PACKT Publishing has recognized Word Press for their hard work by awarding them with the Open Source CMS Award for best Open Source CMS and a whopping $4,000.

It’s obvious that Word Press’ popularity is growing. Currently there are 63,026,196 downloads of 7,385 plugins for anything raging from e commerce shopping carts to events lists, to photo galleries, to twitter feeds. There is also a vast support community to help developers and users trouble shoot, and this community will only continue to grow.

Design the Planet can install Word Press on your website with a custom designed skin. We can make it easy for you to manage content and keep your customers informed with the most up to date information. You can even add videos and photos on your own.

So, the next time you hear Word Press, don’t think of blogs, think about how easy it is to update your website on your own.

In the early days of the internet, basically the 1990s, the meta tags helped rank your website higher in the search engines for all of the keywords you listed in the meta tags. Website designers & marketers would stuff keywords, some useful and some fluff, to make their website rank higher. It was easy to saturate the website with keywords, but the search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN (now Bing) quickly caught on and made it less important. Today, meta tags do not rank your website any higher, but they are important still. One of the most important meta tags is the description tag which is used by the search engines for the text just below your website when searched. (See example below)

The meta text also helps position your website correctly. Design the Planet is a New Orleans Graphic Design & Web Design firm that does not work nationally. We use keywords in our meta keywords text including “New Orleans” and “Louisiana”. Design the Planet does not need to appear with someone is searching for Seattle Design or London Website Designers.

In the end, meta tags are important, but not as important as they once were in ranking your website.

My simple answer is that if you are in business you better have a web site – and it should be good – and yes,  you will need to update it or pay someone to update it. It doesn’t have to have a million pages to be good.  Here are just a few of the  reasons for having a website I bring up when I hear the crazy – to me – statement ” We don’t need a website!”

1. Do you have more business then you know what to do with?

2. Are highly qualified employee applicants lining up at your door – and begging to get in?

3. Does your phone ring off the hook? Only to find out that your staff is answering the same question over and over and over – “What time do you close?”

… there are several more, but this is a start – keep reading for the answers

Answers:

1. Most companies are looking for new business and a website will help you reach several market segments you have been unable to reach before. Believe it or not people are searching for your product and service right now on the web. If you want the statistics then contact me and give us a few key words associated with your industry and I”ll tell you how many searches are made per month, per year, regionally, nationally, internationally

2. When you are trying to hire well for your company having a solid, helpful web site with info on employment is powerfully important. You interview them but they interview you. Applicants are smart and they want to know more about the company they are applying to. They want to feel like the company is solid, dependable, probably friendly. Companies with better web sites can hire better from stock clerk to contractor all the way to CFO. We have set up systems so clients can post jobs and take applications online – how much money do you think  that saves?

3. Phone calls from your existing clients are good, but they can take up a lot of time. For lots of our clients we suggest and implement adding more info to their web sites. We can add “How To” manuals, and basic forms to download and
fill out before visiting. Even having simple info like hours of operation on your website can cut down on nuisance phone calls. Don’t you have more important things for your staff to be doing?

And believe it or not I have people who ask why they need a blog – but I guess you might be able to answer that question if you have read this far.