Aeronet Bandwidth Speed Test
I Stumbled on this site today: Aeronet Bandwidth Speed Test
I was wireless at work for the results above. How do your results compare?
Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows
According to the Official Google Blog, Google has launched their new web browser to the public. You can read the original post here. It seems that Google has also created a 39 page “comic” that goes with the release. I started to read through it, but it lost my attention… look, something shiny… Anyways, you can view the comic here. If it’s more convenient for you, I’ve saved all the images used in the comic and zipped them up for my readers. You can download that here.
I tested it out today to see if I liked it, but only for a few minutes. It’s weird looking at first, but it seems pretty fast. I opened a few of my pages just to see if they rendered differently and for the most part, they were fine. As a web designer, all I need is another browser that I have to design my pages for. I’m hoping that Chrome renders code the way it should (like Firefox). Just out of curiosity, I also checked the memory usage and needless to say, it was a lot less than my current Firefox session (6,656K compared to that of Firefox using 162,340K).
Here’s a screenshot of this site using Google Chrome:
I would have to say that I’m not switching anytime soon, but it will be interesting to keep up on this and see Google’s progress as they come out with new releases. It will also be interesting to see how the general user responds to the release of Chrome.
Useful Links:
Download Google Chrome
Official Google Blog post about Chrome
Comic Book explaining Chrome
Download the Comic Book images
The Mojave Experiment
Last night, as I was watching a movie, there was an interesting commercial about Windows Vista. They disguised Windows Vista as a new operating system, which was called “Mojave”. The goal was to take XP users and get their opinions on Vista, without them knowing that it was Vista. Does this mean that Vista has a bad reputation? Why else would they need to hide the identity of the OS?
At the end they gave a website address if you wanted more information. Needless to say, I got up and had to check it out. I was immediately greeted by a message saying: “This website has been updated to run on the very latest version of the Microsoft® Silverlight™ (Beta 2) plug-in.”. However I was able to view the Non-Silverlight version by clicking here.
Upon entering the website, I was greeted by a video and the following introduction:
The “Mojave Experiment”
What do people think of Windows Vista when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? To find out, we disguised it as “the next Microsoft Operating System” codenamed, “Mojave” so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do – and decide for themselves.
Primary Results (What’s the “Mojave Project”?)
94% of respondents rated the “new OS” codenamed Windows “Mojave” higher than they initially rated Windows Vista before the demo.
0% of the respondents rated the “new OS” codenamed Windows “Mojave” lower than they initially rated Windows Vista before the demo.
Of the 140 respondents polled (on a scale of 1-10 where 10 was the highest rating):
- The average pre-demo score for Windows Vista was 4.4
- The average post-demo score for the “new OS” codenamed Windows “Mojave” was 8.5
Many respondents said they would have rated the “new OS” code-named Windows “Mojave” higher, but wanted more time to play with it themselves.
You can read more about it and watch all the hidden video on the website:
The Mojave Experiment
Office 2007 MIME types for Apache
When you try to download .docx (Word 2007) files from the Internet, does Internet Explorer want to rename them to .zip files? If you’re looking for an easy fix, stop banging your head against the wall, it’s not you. It’s the server. You should contact the webmaster and ask him or her to add the Office 2007 mime types to the server’s configuration. With Apache running on linux, this is typically in the file /etc/mime.types. Ask them to add the following line:
application/vnd.openxmlformats docx pptx xlsx |
If you can’t get the webmaster to add the mime type, you’ll have to save the file to your computer and rename it to remove the .zip extension, changing it to .docx. Then you’ll be able to open it by double-clicking the icon.
This is explained in more detail here.
Using 301 redirects to avoid duplicate content
It has been brought to my attention that having a website that is accessible with and without the “www.” before the domain name is BAD!!! The reason for this is that search engines will consider this as two seperate sites that have duplicate content. The other problem is that an index.html file would also be seen as seperate page to a search engine. In order to understand this a little better, see the example below:
- http://bfxmedia.com
- http://bfxmedia.com/index.html
- http://www.bfxmedia.com
- http://www.bfxmedia.com/index.html
In the example above, all of those different URLs would have displayed the same page. In order to resolve this problem, use this Redirect Check SEO Tool. After you submit your website for testing, it will run through all the variations of the URL and give you the status code for each one.
To redirect all traffic from http://bfxmedia.com to http://www.bfxmedia.com, you would add the lines below to your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.bfxmedia\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301,L] |
Although, that didn’t work for me because of the way my subdomains are redirected. I had to use this instead:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bfxmedia.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301] |
To redirect http://www.bfxmedia.com/index.html (and all other default page variations) to http://www.bfxmedia.com, you would add the lines below to your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.htm
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.htm$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.shtml
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.shtml$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.asp
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.asp$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.aspx
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.aspx$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.cfm
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.cfm$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.pl
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.pl$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/default\.asp
RewriteRule ^(.*)default.asp$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/default\.htm
RewriteRule ^(.*)default.htm$ http://www.bfxmedia.com/$1 [R=301] |
For the example site bfxmedia.com, I have corrected all the problems and now only one URL displays my “home” page. All the other variations are safely redirected.
Useful Links:
Redirect Check SEO Tool
SEO advice: url canonicalization
Canonical and Duplicate Versions of Content
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