Zepfanman.com (Stylesheets Off Version)
[Tagline] Zepfanman.com: When you can't find it on Google
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I Fancy Google
Nov16 edit: There's a nice Google Cheat Sheet you can print out (thanks to Jake for this link).
Sep15 edit: Blogoscoped given a more useful review.
(Props go to HCD for helping me decide on a not so blasphemous alternative to "I Worship Google")
If you don't already know what Google is, wake up and smell the coffee! Unless you can convince me otherwise, Google is by far the best web search engine out there, and it's only been around for five years; they remind me of 3M because they're such an innovative company. Google Blogoscoped seems to be the most Google obsessed blog (although the page design is really ugly see some constructive criticism in the comment below), but Google itself has a blog now, too. WebmasterWorld is a great forum in general - their search engine section has several Google topics for you to stay current with, as well. Take your time looking through Google Help to see these features and much more:
- Operators: - Use special terms like define: or site: (eg. "loud site:zepfanman.com" finds any occurrence of loud on my website). If you simply type in a word, it will spell-check it, showing Did you mean: if it doesn't find the word; otherwise, you'll see a link to the definition in the top right of the results page. The cache: feature is great if you want to highlight your search terms (cache:zepfanman.com/bibleinf.php bible apocrypha apocryphal).
- Search Features - I already mentioned word definitions. Go to the features page to see how Google can be used as a calculator/converter (half a cup in teaspoons), local directory (pizza nashville), atlas (1 lifeway plaza 37234), USA phone book (george bush 20500 - you can remove yourself from this list if that scares you); search for UPS, FedEx, VIN, area codes, UPC, and other codes; flight check (aa 2057 is the first leg of my business trips to NM)
- Toolbar - People have designed versions for other browsers, but the official IE Google Toolbar is an excellent tool that I use for about 75% of the time that I'm browsing the internet. The new beta Deskbar goes a step further by putting it in your taskbar.
- Google Newsgroups - Discuss issues you have with Google (for example, the View My Stats link in the Folding module has been out of date for months).
Related: Reference Links [Z]
By rockofvictory |
Wed 2004Aug11 19:57 CST
| Links
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Last edited Mon 2005Mar07 23:07
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Trackbacks disabled due to inactivity.
COMMENTS (4)
This is the most amazing blog post in the entire world, mainly because of the title.
#C1 | By: Daniel Wiginton | Wed 2004Aug11 20:10 CST
You say my blog design is ugly; if this is intended to be sincere criticism, you need to be more specific for me to work on something.
#C2 | By: Philipp Lenssen | Wed 2004Sep15 13:59 CST
Certainly fair. I apologize for being so thoughtless, especially since my own site is no masterpiece. While whitespace can be a beautiful thing, I prefer to pack in the goods. I guess I'm not a big fan of your large type - I don't like having to scroll a lot or resize the text in my browser. Also, the mail icons, while easily recognizable, are big and.... ugly (oops, I used that word again). Finally, it's hard to get much further past the home page, for two reasons. I assume you have no categories, but even the monthly archives are not very useful - the big calendars are certainly unique, but the yearly archive page loads take a while. Also, the navigation links on the left don't make much sense to me - I like to know what I'm clicking on before I go there (further info with title= attributes would be helpful). Hope that's not too harsh, even for a revised criticism. I appreciate your blog; this rebuttal has also been helpful to me in thinking about why I've designed my own site the way it is. Also, because of your visit to this humble web presence, you're one of my bloglines now ;-) God bless...
#C3 | By: RockofVictory | Wed 2004Sep15 22:24 CST
Thanks.
Some people like the font size I use, some don't, one thing I can say is that it's the default font size of your browser -- I'm not resizing the main body text in any way. Maybe it will help if browser vendors would ship with smaller fonts, I don't know. I will keep your criticism in the back of my mind but will also think of what someone else said -- (paraphrasing) "finally a blog easy to read, using something else than tiny tiny text".
As for the navigation, you might be right. I should further clarify using some sub-sections (suich as "past articles"), possibly decrease the font here, and also possibly introduce some sections for easy browsing. It's hard to imagine me being a "stranger" to these links as I see them so often. I will work on this.
Thanks again for elaborating!
#C4 | By: Philipp Lenssen | Thu 2004Sep16 02:31 CST
TRACKBACKS (1)
The next step in improving my site with more permanent links is to use mod_rewrite in Apache. Here are a bunch of tutorials, as well as other useful site-building links.
#TB13 |
Title: Next goal: friendly URLs |
Weblog: Zepfanman Blog
Tracked: Tue 2005Apr19 14:54 CST
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