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Our Latest Posts About: Web

The Problem With Browser Home Pages

Saturday, May 20, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

It's time we got rid of Browser Home Pages.

If you're reading this from a desktop computer, chances are there's a little "Home" icon somewhere in your browser that takes you to your default "Home Page". Just about every desktop browser has one, and they've been there since the first browsers were developed in the early 90s. Meanwhile, have you ever noticed that the browsers on your mobile devices don't have one? There's a good reason for this. They suck.

For what its worth, there's absolutely no reason for todays browsers to have a Home Page anymore. Desktop browsers should do exactly what mobile browsers do... take you to the last page you opened, nothing more, nothing less.

The problem with Home Pages is that web sites and software programs often exploit browser Home... [More]

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Nobody's #1 On Google

Saturday, April 15, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

Ever since Google changed their Page Rank algorithm in 2009, web sites can no longer claim to be #1 for any given search term.

One of the most misunderstood things about search engines is the way they rank websites in search results. A website's position in search results can make or break their business, so it's always been important to get the best rank you can.

Because of this, many companies spend a lot of time and money trying to improve their rank. The problem is, no matter how they try, there is no longer a SINGLE #1 site for any particular keyword. That's because Google's now uses at least 60 different factors to determine a site's rank, and most of those factors are based on the personal information they've gathered on the person who's searching.

For example, if... [More]

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Ban Fake Download Ads

Sunday, April 2, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

Why does Google allow FAKE download ads?

One of the biggest scams on the Internet is Fake Download Ads, but you never hear anything about it. A "Fake" download ad is the kind of ad that tricks you into downloading a program you weren't looking for, because its placed on the download page for something you were looking for.

For example, if you go to a legitimate site to download a popular open source program like Open Office, or Audacity, more often than not, the "ads" Google runs on those pages are for entirely different programs, and they have oversized "Download" links in them that confuse many visitors into thinking they are the legitimate download buttons they should be clicking to download whatever it was they were looking for.

Google, and the download site are essent... [More]

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Web Page Expiration Dates

Thursday, March 30, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

I hate seeing outdated content in search results.

The web is full of useless, outdated content. There needs to be a way for a web site to specify an expiration date for each page, so that they can be filtered automatically from search results pages.

We know some pages are more timeless than others, but there are a ton of pages for things like Black Friday sales and special events that end up in search results, wasting time and resources.

One solution is to create a standardized way to embed an expiration date into the web page, or site maps so that the search engines can automatically eliminate them from search results.

Don't Name Your Company Until...

Sunday, January 22, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

Coming up with a good name is one of the most important steps in starting a business, but many people overlook one thing...

One of the biggest mistakes I've seen people make when starting a new business is forgetting to search the web to see if somebody else already owns their new company name as a domain. This is a critical mistake that will hurt the startup down the road.

There's nothing worse for a new company than to go through all the effort starting a new business, and finding out that all your effort to try to build a brand name is wasted because another company has the same online identity.

If you want to call yourself True Blue Curtains, and somebody else owns TrueBlueCurtains.Com, then don't even bother forming the company. It's simply not worth the effort becau... [More]

Continue...Don't Name Your Company Until......

Internet Cookies... Explained

Wednesday, January 11, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

What's an Internet Cookie?

As a tech guy, people often ask me about deleting their "Cookies" because they really don't know what they are, and they often think they're harmful.

The simple answer is cookies are harmless text files placed on your computer by a website. They don't contain any programs, so they can't harm you computer. Most of the time, they only store a bunch of random looking numbers that the web site uses to know you were there.

Here's how it works.

As soon as you visit a web site for the first time, the web site asks your browser software if it has a cookie from a previous visit. If not, it generates a unique number and stores it in a Cookie file that your browser saves on your computer. It also keeps track of the number it saved in a database in... [More]

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Newspaper Legal Notices?

Monday, January 2, 2017 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

Why do newspapers still run legal notices?

Last time I checked, we're still in the 21st century, but for some reason just about every newspaper in the country still has a section for Legal Notices. Why the heck don't they just use the Internet for things like that?

Before the Internet, newspapers were an effective way to make legal notices available to anyone who was interested, but there's absolutely no reason for them to continue to be printed today. Just about everyone today has access to the Internet, so it's about time we change local laws that require public notice, so they no longer require newspaper ads.

I think the only reason this hasn't already happened is because newspapers get paid for running the ads. That's pretty stupid

The Two Browser Challenge

Monday, December 26, 2016 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

The web is biased... but not the way you think.

You may not realize it, but most of what you see online is biased, and it's not some vast right or left wing conspiracy. It's a direct result of an algorithm specifically designed to feed you content that you already like.

At the heart of this is a simple premise. Advertisers are willing to pay more money for targeted content. The more targeted it is, the more they're willing to pay for ads, so search engines and social media sites do everything they can to pin down all your likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, this means most of the content you see online is filtered to fit your pre-existing likes and dislikes, so you'll see fewer and fewer items from an opposing side.

An even bigger problem is the snowball effect. Each ti... [More]

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I Hate Juggling Multiple Social Media Accounts

Sunday, December 18, 2016 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

It's a pain in the neck managing multiple social media accounts.

Just about everyone today has at least some presence on social media. For some, it's just a single Facebook account, but more often than not, they also have accounts on a whole bunch of other social media services like Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, Instagram, SnapChat, LinkedIn, Google+, Periscope, and YouTube, to name a few.

In many cases, not only do people have accounts on multiple platforms, but they have multiple accounts on the same platform, for example, I have more than one Twitter account, and 3 YouTube Channels, to name a few.

With all these social media accounts, what I really need is a simple way to post content on multiple accounts at the same time. I realize there are some third party tools out the... [More]

Continue...I Hate Juggling Multiple Social Media Accounts...

The End of Common Media?

Saturday, December 10, 2016 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

We no longer live in a Common Media World.

Hundreds of years ago, news and information was spread through a very small number of media sources. Because of this, entire communities shared fundamentally the same news, at the same time. The news you read each day was identical to the news your friends, family and neighbors read.

Until recently, whenever people talked about things they saw in the media, chances are they all saw the same media. Centuries ago, it was the local newspaper, and in the last century, it was a combination of print, TV and radio, but it was still limited to a small number, so the media was still essentially common. Each morning, the majority of people still heard, read, or saw the same news, at virtually the same time.

This is no longer the case.
... [More]

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How Search Engines Take Advantage of Advertisers

Thursday, September 8, 2016 9:21 PM By Joe Crescenzi

I've got a BEEF with Google and Bing.

Google and Bing make billions of dollars when people click on ads in their search engines. So, if you search for "hotels in Miami", they return a Search Engine Results Page (SERP), which contains a mixture web site listings, and ads from companies who pay to be listed on that page. Fair enough, but what if somebody already knows what site they want to go to, and types the exact domain into the search box?

When somebody enters the exact domain they want into the search box, the fair thing would be for the search engine to bring the visitor directly to the website... NOT a search engine results page.

The reason the search engines don't take the visitor directly to the site they typed in is pure greed. They know that by taking the... [More]

Continue...How Search Engines Take Advantage of Advertisers...

Group Tabs For The Same Site Together

Tuesday, June 14, 2016 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

Sometimes I have dozens of tabs open at the same time. Most of them are from a handful of sites.

Everyone loves tabs. They let you open multiple web pages at the same time, all in one window. The trouble is you eventually have so many tabs open at once that you can't find the one you're looking for.

Wouldn't it be great if you could cut down on the clutter and show only one tab per site? So, every time you open another tab on the same site, it gets grouped together with the other pages from the same site, cutting down the number of tabs on the top. Naturally, if you only have a few sites open, it can still create a separate tab as it does now, but as you open more pages, it would be great if they were grouped together.

So if you're shopping and you have 10 tabs open in... [More]

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Whatever Happened To The Yellow Pages?

Monday, February 22, 2016 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

When was the last time you used the Yellow Pages? Chances are, it's been years because most of us use the web as our primary way to find just about everything. The trouble is, although search engines like Google do a great job when you're looking for something specific, it does a terrible job when you're looking for something generic, like a local plumber or appliance store.

That's because search engines weren't designed for people searching for local businesses by category. So although Google does a good job of finding a specific business when you search for it by name, you can't browse local listings as you would with a traditional Yellow Pages directory.

One reason is that search engines like Google are optimized to find popular web pages, but some businesses don't have a good... [More]

Continue...Whatever Happened To The Yellow Pages?...

Google Should Ban Fake Download Ads

Tuesday, October 6, 2015 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

The web is full of sleaze. Google is no exception.

I hate when I see fraud on the Internet, especially when it comes from trusted sources. At least when you see something suspicious on an obscure site, you think twice before clicking, but I've noticed a growing trend of "Fake Links" and "Fake Download" buttons on some very well known sites, and worst thing is that it's Google's fault for allowing it.

Case in point, I often recommend Open Office to clients who need to create occasional documents and spreadsheets. It's a popular Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office. As soon as you click the download link, it takes you to a page on another well known site that hosts Open Source projects.

The trouble is, the download page has a tiny sentence that says the download w... [More]

Continue...Google Should Ban Fake Download Ads...

Website Info Files. For Better Search Categorization.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

Sometimes search engines make big mistakes.

One of the great things about search engines like Google is how they've managed to index and categorize just about every web page in existence. It's not an easy process. Search robots need to scan every page they can find, then use the words on the page to try to determine what it's about.

For most sites, search engines are pretty accurate, but sometimes they aren't even close.

There are many reasons a search engine will incorrectly categorize a site, but the biggest problem is a lack of clear information on the site itself. For example, if you created a national review site and the search engines saw the address of one of the restaurants you reviewed, they may think that you are a local site, and that the address of the restau... [More]

Continue...Website Info Files. For Better Search Categorization....

Web Page Expiration Dates

Saturday, August 1, 2015 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

There are billions of outdated web pages online.

One of the most frustrating things about the Internet is that it's often hard to know when you're reading something that's outdated. While some content is timeless, some content is not, and there currently is no system to determine when the content you're reading is no longer useful.

I'm not advocating that every web page have an expiration date, but if there was such a system in place, it would allow content providers to designate when any given page should be ignored. By designating that a page has an expiration date of 30 days, it will let the search engines know that they shouldn't display it after that, unless the page owner updates the content, and changes the expiration date.

Some news sites for example release break... [More]

Continue...Web Page Expiration Dates...

Surviving Google's Mobilegeddon - It's not as bad as you think.

Monday, June 1, 2015 1:00 AM By Joe Crescenzi

On April 21, 2015, Google stopped including sites that weren't mobile friendly in search results.

They call it Mobilegeddon,. On that date millions of sites completely vanished from search results made by people using mobile devices. Site owners have gone into a panic because they expected to see massive drops in their traffic, especially since the percentage of mobile traffic continues to rise as traditional desktop usage has dropped.

Do you know what I think? It's a big fuss over absolutely nothing.

You've got to see things the way Google sees them. They index a gazillion web pages and it's there job to make sure people find what they are looking for... and to make sure they can actually read it on the device they are using when they requested it.

For some search... [More]

Continue...Surviving Google's Mobilegeddon - It's not as bad as you think....

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A Bedside Book Projector - Read Books on the Ceiling!

Reinvent The Wheel? YES. There's Always Room For Improvement.

Amazon Echo as an Intercom. Room to Room Communication, Even Across the World.

TV Needs More Shows Like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood... The Seinfeld of Children's TV

Stop using default Security Questions... here's why.

A Car Periscope? Why Not?

Digital String on Your Finger... To Remind You You Left Something Behind...

Use Social Media to Listen To Your Customers, or They'll find Somebody Who Does.

Why Doesn't Apple Offer a FULL SIZED Wireless Keyboard?

How Banks Can Make Checking Accounts More Secure

4 Cell Phone Parental Control Ideas Your Kids are Guaranteed to Hate.

.Podcast Domain TLDs. A Direct Domain For Podcasters.

* Note: The ideas on "Idea of the Day" were posted without any formal research into existing inventions.

In some cases, patents may already exist for these ideas, in other cases, there may not be any existing patents and you are free to develop and explore the viability of developing and patenting the ideas.

The authors make no claim that any of the ideas are safe, practical, or suitable for any particular purpose. You are responsible for the results of trying, developing, patenting or using any of the ideas on this site.

For some people, our ideas are just an interesting read, but our goal is to encourage you to take action. If you see an idea that you like, do something with it... Take action.

- Joe

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