The World Internet Summit in Dallas

After reading and talking to a LOT of people, one of the most recurring themes about getting successful in the Internet Marketing arena is the need to network with the right people.

About 4 months ago I bought Tracy Repchuk’s book 31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles. I’m not a newbie to writing websites by any mean, but I’ve never done much about monetizing my sites or traffic. I picked up some great nuggets of information from this book, and when I heard she’d be a featured speaker at the World Internet Summit, I decided I am going to go, and meet her.

Networking and getting a Mentor are so important to success in this field, that it is the next logical step for me. Tracy is speaking on the second day, and if she has any kind of program available, I plan on buying it. (Don’t tell her or she may raise the price!)

I am really excited by the idea of going to this seminar in my own back yard. Hopefully, this is everything I hope it will be.

Google Chrome Adblock plugin

Chrome is fast and clean, but I do miss my adblock plugin. Before adblock, there were other solutions, putting advertisers in host files, for example. Another solution is using a specialized proxy, such as Privoxy.

Privoxy describes itself as “a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data, managing HTTP cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.”

You can have Privoxy installed, up and running in under 5 minutes.

1) First, go get the latest version of Privoxy for Windows and install it.

2) Open up the Google options (the wrench in the top right corner)

In the Internet Properties -> Connections dialog, select Lan Settings:

In the LAN settings dialog - check the “Use a Proxy server for you LAN” checkbox, and click the ADVANCED button.

Enter proxy address of 127.0.0.1 and port 8118 for http and secure, but make sure ftp is clear.

Done! You’ve just made Chrome even faster! This should be illegal!

Google First Page

I’m solid on the first page of Google for my Farkle Rules site and keywords. I’ve managed to crawl up to 6th place, with the coveted “indented” entry in 7th place.

I believe there’s plenty of room to make inroads against those above me, at least 2 are pretty weak. I’d love to somehow place around 4th and 5th, “above the break.”

It looks to be just from Social bookmarking, and a couple of my own sites, particularly Buncorules.com and this site, StevenPratt.com

I still have several suggested techniques from the 30DC challenge to implement, it’ll be great to see if that does the job!

Google Chrome - I’m lovin’ it

I’m using Chrome now. For me it’s like a specialty tool. When I’m working on my SEO effort, building sites, marketing and promoting them, I use Flock. It’s got great built-in feature and lots of Firefox add-ins that support the social bookmarking world to a tee. But suddenly i’ve got that horrific browser interface I’d always denigrated, so much junk cluttering up the screen, there’s little room left for the browsing info.

Enter Chrome. It loads almost instantly. It knows where I probably want to go and loads those pages so fast it’s dangerous to blink. Flash and Java seem to work fine for me. Javascript runs like lightning and, heaven forbid, if I want to go to any sites that I’d rather not let the world know about, incognito browsing is just a click away, and I can hide all traces, without erasing all the history and cache from the stuff that I’m doing for a living.

Browser’s have become bigger and bigger Swiss Army Knives. When the plugins first came in, and we all were wondering which technologies were going to win out, our browsers were still sleek, but a little brittle. Then they grew larger and larger, with more and more features to get lost in. Add a few plugins, and you were suddenly creating a monster, that could take forever to load.

Our Early Browsers

Flock Browser, out of control

 

But sometimes all you want is a knife. For now, I’m playing around with a new, shiny, sharp one!

Yes, Google Chrome does not do everything. I miss some toolbar action, and some of my social plugins. But when all you want to do is surf the web, and not track everything you do, tweet all your sites, build your stumbleupon status, or any of that junk, Chrome browses just fine, thank you.

Google Chrome Javascript Performance

Ok, so I knew the V8 javascript in the new Google Chrome was supposed to be fast, and I noticed that my day to day javascript apps seemed to run faster and sleeker, so I decided to give it a test.

Using the Sunspider Javascript benchmark, I decided to test Google Chrome, Firefox 3.01, and IE 7.0 head to head. 

I used a decidedly underpowered machine, running nothing but the browser, Notetab Pro, and the Windows Task Manager. I had no other browser windows open. My antivirus and firewall were turned off for the occasion.

Chrome chewed through the tests in a respectable 2773.4ms per iteration. The machine only has about a Gig of ram, but the CPU usage on the task manager never seemed to get above 20-25%.

Firefox 3.0 ran a good bit slower, only managing 5173.4ms. The CPU usage still didn’t seem too bad, only occasionally even coming close to 50%.

Internet Explorer was a complete dog. I could have taken a nap. Their dismal performance was 66211.4ms, making G-Chrome 22 times faster. Not 22%, but 22 Times. 2200%. I could see the CPU usage peg 99% and stay there for several seconds at a time. 

I imagine on a faster machine, Internet explorer might only be 9x slower. I come to that number by comparing the performance of several of the subsets that managed to keep from totally using up the entire CPU. 

I expected improved performance, but had to be genuinely surprised by numbers like these. V8 Javascript was 2.5 times faster than Firefox 3.0 and 22 times faster than IE 7.0. Wow.

While I was in, playing around, I did check on the Chrome memory usage. I’ve seen people writing numbers claiming minimal CPU usage, but you must remember - each tab is a separate process. Open 4 tabs and check your CPU performance. With 5 tabs (one of them the New-Tab, functioning as a favorites page), I had 7, count them SEVEN, chrome processes running, anywhere from 6.5MB to 37MB, most in the 13MB to 18MB range, for a total of 118.5MB.

If you like to have a half-dozen or more tabs open in your browser, you’ll certainly see the difference with G-Chrome.

Google Chrome Update - Java Plugin

Google Chrome is supposed to accept Java plugin. It currently requires Java 6, Update 10, which is a Beta release and may not be as stable as what you’re used to. You can get it here:

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/ea.jsp

The Google help forum says you should get an option to automatically download the option, but I can confirm that I did not. I downloaded the installer, passed on getting OpenOffice.org installed on my machine, went through about 5 minutes of total download and installation.

Restart G-Chrome, hit my online Farkle Dice Game, and after a few moments for the Applets to be updated, we were off and running.

Flash is a better story. Google Chrome ships with flash. It took me only a couple of moments to pop over to my Family Citadel, Free PC Protection site, to verify Flash worked like a charm.

Ran through a couple of Web2.0 sites with all the bells and whistles. Still no issues.

I’m trying some weird stuff, and still having pretty good luck. I do miss things like my “Stumbleupon” bar, and my flock social links, but I understand this is a different product altogether.  No toolbars, but fast and lean.

Google Chrome Beta - First Impressions

I’ve been following with interest the introduction of the new google browser - called Chrome.

When I saw it show up today for Beta release, I new I’d have to give it a test drive. I’m currently writing this blog using Chrome, instead of Flock, which I’d been using lately.

Getting Chrome

Chrome can be downloaded from http://www.Google.com/chrome/ It’s free, and the initial download is quick. Takes about 16MB.

Installing Chrome

Installing Chrome was just a little bit more trouble. My first install seemed to take forever, and then failed. My Comodo Firewall was blocking the install silently, and neither Comodo nor Chrome indicated any problem until the whole thing had failed. It was easy enough to put Comodo on “Learn” and restart the install, which this time only took a few minutes.

First Impressions

If simple is better, then this program absolutely rocks!

The screen is so clean as to border the ridiculous. Just go to the top line and type where you want to go. Type in an URL, or something close, and off you go. Type in some words, and the Google search patterns start offering suggestions, until you choose one or type your own. Hit enter and you’re off to the familiar Google search.

The “New Tab” is an instant Visual favorites. You favorites sites are shown in little boxes you’re sure to recognize. Just click and go.

The New-Tab also works as an instant bookmarks page. You have a text list of RECENT bookmarks, a visual array of your most visited websites, and an option to pull up the rest of your bookmarks from a button in the top right of the page.

The pages load quickly and cleanly, even after visiting some notoriously painful sites.

I used it to write and manage posts for Wordpress, in ‘visual’ mode, which can cause headaches for lesser browsers, and Chrome passed with flying colors.

It’s hard not to like the simple, clean look, and easy functionality.

Minor Issues

Some things did get me to raise an eyebrow or two.

The download window, reminiscent of Firefox, popped up in a tiny box I almost missed. After expanding the separate window in the top right hand corner. I finally found the download. It was at the bottom of this hidden box. This is the experience you get if the webpage opens a new window before downloading - really ugly.

Under normal circumstances, the download creates an entry at the bottom of the page, and a big blue arrow appears shortly to guide you to seeing this download information:

It shows a status indicator, a history of your downloads, and an icon of the download type. My first instinct is to like it, but we’ll have to see for how long that lasts.

From the favorites page, I hovered over one of the images, and rightclicked to get my context menu. I chose to save image as, and got nowhere. No popup, nothing. That isn’t quite right

Right-clicking on a link does what I expect, open tab in new window/new tab choices, but with the added ‘open in new incognito window’ more about that later. The new tab/new window order is the opposite of Firefox, so I accidentally chose the wrong one several times.

Dynamic Tabs

Now how cool is this? Click a tab and drag it. Change the order of your tabs at will. Pull it off the tab bar and it creates its own window. I’m not sure how truly useful this is, but for cool factor, you’ve got to give it a 10.

Will I be reordering my tabs very often. I think not. But yanking one down and making it’s own windows seems to have a lot of value. I did, once or twice move my mouse while choosing tabs, and the movement at the top of the page caught me off guard.

“Incognito” mode

I mentioned right clicking a link and opening the link in an Incognito window. You can also go up to the little page icon beside the URL/Search string field, and create a new incognito window. You won’t be able to forget you’re in Incognito mode - you window looks decidedly sneaky.

Incognito windows create special URL sessions that are not tracked. Cookies are created, but no history of the event survives once the window is closed. Now THIS one I can see myself using, and I know some people who will be using this one a LOT.

When you first open your incognito window, a little blurb gives you some information about what Incognito is and isn’t.

I tried it out, and it was interesting to see how the activities in the Incognito windows didn’t show up anywere. I even searched the temp files. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Again - coolness factor: 9 - usefullness factor: the big 10.

Safe Site Indicator

Green mean go. Red means stop.

Go to a page with valid security credentials, and you see a nice green https in front of the URL.

If the site credential are bad, you’ll get a nice warning page, with a bright red background. If you dare to follow through with the link, you’ll get a bright red https with a strike through showing you you’re on your own.

Final Thoughts

I haven’t tried any integration with any browser featurers, there’s no skinning, and of course it’s just Beta. But cool features abound.

It’s Google, and I’m sure there are tons of people eager to customize this to their hearts content. I don’t doubt that browser add-on creators will jump on the bandwagon soon.

I’m going to play with it for a while, and will update my impressions tomorrow evening, after I’ve really pounded on it for a while.

On day 1 of Beta (or so I believe), it works fine, looks clean, and I had no major hiccoughs. Haven’t stress tested it yet, but had fun with all the cool new features. And they are VERY cool. Pretty good first outing Google, kudos.

Google Front Page

Some heartening news. I’m back on google, up on the front page again. I’ve got one of those dual entries where the second entry is indented, and I’m up around numbers 7 and 8. I think I can do better than that, but it’s a great start. Ultimately, I’d like to be in the top four entries for Farkle Rules, and a front page entry for the term Farkle. It’s aggressive but doable. 

I’m going to continue to add great content to the site, all revolving around the game, and will see what kind of progress I’ll make. I’m not going to bust my rear over this. This was meant to be an example, a test, from the very beginning. By the end of the month, the goal is to make a buck, $1.00, online. I had hopes of doing far better than that, but with the niche I picked, and the size of it, it’s hard to monetize it at all.

The Farkle Rules site does go a nice ways towards building my authority in the realm of dice games. With two popular dice game sites, both with very high Google placement, and excellent traffic, the credibility has to continue to grow, and the sites can hopefully feed off each other as well.  I have one more Dice game site in mind for the next month or two, as well.

Front page Google. In two weeks. Gotta love that. Thirty Day Challenge has taught me quite a bit already.

Social Bookmarking Traffic

In the past I’ve been a bit spoiled. With my Bunco site, I’ve got great organic placement, and have had it almost since I created the site. I currently have Authority entries and multiple entries per page for Bunko, Bunco, Bunco Rules, Bunko Rules and many more. When I look at my incoming traffic, even with dozens of great backlinks, more than 90% of my traffic comes from search engines and directories, with a huge percentage of that coming from Google.

With the 30 day Challenge, we of course go out of our way to do SEO, focusing on Google. What is interesting is seeing how the social bookmarking element of the effort to get the word out is really working.

Here’s a very early list of my traffic - site was a week old.

 The social traffic is meant to give us more authority, back links, etc. In my case, it’s giving me all my traffic. And it’s doing it in bursts.

The Stumbleupon.com traffic, all 110 visits came in one day. I guess the early hits came and went and we disappeared deep into the bowels of Stumbleupon.

The direct traffic we can safely ignore - most of that was from my own design work (i haven’t blocked my own IP yet). The Buncorules.com traffic was always thought to be of high value. They are both dice games, can be played in large groups, and I was able to ensure that Farkle Rules was featured prominently on the front page of Bunco Rules. It’s produced a small steady stream since then, and I expect that to go up dramatically now that I have an even better backlink there.

The traffic on this site is actually driving more site to Farkle Rules than I would have expected. I have made no effort to get this site, www.StevenPratt.com, SEO’d or publicized yet. I wanted to wait until I had a lot more value built in. But surprise - surprise, I’m getting a lot more traffic than I would ever have expected. I guess I’m going to have to put analytics on here as well.

Google finally shows up on the list, which is better than I expected, since I only managed to get into the first three pages for about 2 days. I’m confident I’ll be back up front, and it will be nice to see how these numbers work out later, once I’ve been on top for a while.

My Wikipedia entry seems to be doing it’s job as well. Pulling a few people in, who for the most part, stay and look around, which is what we’re looking for.

The Google SEO, turns out to have provided a nice little bump for Yahoo and AOL, neither of which I have put any effort into so far. Maybe I should look into that.  The Digg entry not only didn’t do much, but had a 100% bounce, and miserable on site times.

Nothing earth shattering here, just a little insite into how the traffic is growing for my Micro-niche.

Online Farkle

One of my designers gave me the Java for an online Farkle Game. It looked pretty cool, better than most of the free stuff available.

I tried to find where it came from, since it didn’t have any start page, or information about where it was developed, if it was public domain, or what.

I finally found David at www.Tadmas.com was running an almost identical game, and brought it to his attention.

Looks like somebody scraped it off his site. I was a little sad to find it wasn’t legal, and went ahead with my second choice, but David let me know that even though he’d never distributed the game before, he didn’t mind if I used it and hosted it on my website.

It was awfully generous of him, and gave me one more nice piece of value to add to my site.