Remember when Google was fast and light?

Every time they "improve" they add more Javascript, more this more that. I spend a lot of time on a satellite connection which, apart from low bandwidth has high latency.

this means that it is becoming impossible for me to use more and more Google products.

GMail is the worst. With the latest rollout,  I can no longer send messages over satellite except on the very best of days. I can still read email, though I expect to lose that ability in the next "upgrade". So I have to use the Basic HTML interface now since the latest update.

Even before that, it *hates* high latency. On a high latency connection, you are in this limbo. It sees you as "connected" so it blocks you out of "offline" but yet sees your connection as not working. So if you want the normal interface, you have turn off your netowrk card so it sees no connectivity, restart the browser, do your work offline, then start it back up.

Arrgghhhhh.... just venting.

I'm sure it will be opt-in

Dont whine to me Rumbas! This is what it's like in when you live in rural California (PS this is my *fast* connection - god forbid I'm at home on my satellite connection).

You're in the UK right? I don't know, but

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/05/free-disposable-temporary-phone-number-to-keep-your-phone-number-private/
http://www.inumbr.com/
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/the-pros-and-cons-of-temporary-phone-number-services/3892
http://www.tossabledigits.com/

This whole things is almost funny.

I had an EzineArticles article go livet just as this was happening. I gave it a very unique title that would return zero results before I published it. Now it sits there at #3, along with 42 other results from scraper sites. It's a decent original article and it gets outranked by sites that scrape the first 100 words and then plasters the page with Adsense.

Meanwhile, traffic on my other sites is universally up except for the one that has no real content.

If you had been in one of those buildings, I think you would consider this event a genuine disaster... eeew!

This from the comments of Christ Knight's article on EZA blog

QuoteChris,

Can you explain what you mean in the second to last bullet about the no-follow attribute? Does this mean that the links in the author bio won't be noted by Google and therefore won't help with search engine ranking?

If so, I'm wondering why you would make that change. Those links are a major reason why many of us choose to publish articles here.

Quote
Christopher M. Knight writes:

Susan,

My gut feeling is that those links have carried no real value in at least 2-3 years now.

And in another comment, Christ knight says

QuoteWithout the search engines trusting us and our members' content, there is not much else to talk about since the search engines represent an important HALF of our traffic.

I would have guessed 80-90%

The Sistrix data is amazing - ezinearticles down 90% and Squidoo... untouched. Really, what's the difference?

This line from the ezinarticles blog post blew me away:

QuoteExpect to see our current article rejection rate (40.6%) climb by another ~20%.

I'd hate to see what makes up the 40.6%.

Reminds me of a story as a kid - we were throwing snowballs at cars in the spring when a lot of the ground was just soggy wet with no snow. We hit this one car and the guy gets pissed and pulls into the middle of the yard and gets out of the car and says he'll kill any one of us he can catch, and then hops in the car, does a donut and steps on it and tears up the lawn some more on his way out.

Only problem, we weren't stupid - none of us would be throwing snowballs from our own house. The guy just tore the crap out of the lawn of some entirely innocent family.

Littleman, do you know if it snowed in the Berkeley Hills?

We've been wondering because when we were in Berkeley (1996-2002) it once snowed 18" on the summit of Mt Diablo with a visible accumulation on Grizzly Peak (Berkeley Hills). I think the snow level that time was around 1000 feet or so. Always regretted that I didn't go up there and ski it.

Our storm ended with about 20" though it's still flurrying off and on today.

Sorry Drastic... I missed your question way back on Jan 4... here's a recap so you don't have to go find it

Quote

QuoteDrastic - looking at your exercise plan, I highly recommend Lou Schuler's books
...
I've changed over to more of a deadlifting/squats/Turkish Getups type of workout, which is more along the lines of NROL and what people like Mike Boyle, Mike Robertson, Dan Jon, Stuart McGill and people like that recommend.
...

Bottom line for me:
Switching to those types of workouts for me has made me leaner and stronger, with about half as much time in the gym as I was doing.

You mean, like the physical printed things? That's a, erm, novel concept. ;-) Seriously though, are you saying the books talk about the stuff you're now doing?

Yes, those books talk about that type of exercise. For $25 you can get both New Rules of Lifting and New Rules of Lifting for Abs (which is actually a much broader book than the title suggests and highly recommend it). Actually, I believe so strongly in the value of these books (and others along the same lines, but these are as good as any), that if you think you might be open to it and you tell me where to send it, I'll buy you a copy myself.

Otherwise, aside from NROL, look for books by Mike Boyle (dean of the "functional training" movement), Eric Cressy (if you're looking more to get strong than to get lean), and Pavel who everyone just calls Pavel because his last name is something like Tsatsouline.

Here are some podcasts so you don't have to do somethign so 20th century as go buy a book:

Mike Robertson interviewing:
- Pavel - http://robertsontrainingsystems.com/blog/ep-26-in-the-trenches-with-pavel-tsatsouline/
- Dan Jon - http://robertsontrainingsystems.com/blog/ep-21-in-the-trenches-with-dan-john/

The Fit Cast interview with Dan Jon, Lou Schuler and Alan Aragon
- http://thefitcast.com/episode-200-lou-schuler-alan-aragon-and-dan-john (that site is unresponsive at the moment but you can get it on iTunes - interestingly, a site:thefitcast.com search shows a lot of "tag" pages with the tile "Buy Clomid without a Prescription"... ooops. I should probably let them know.

Quotemake sure you get up out of the desk often is to drink a lot

I use this to remind me:
www.workrave.org

Quote
I had a standup desk for a couple of years.  I used it regularly.  For over a year I'd stand up for 8 hours a day, and then after some time I bought myself a big stool and would sit down for half the day.  To be honest it didn't do me any good.  I was already over weight

I thought I mentioned my experiences with the standup desk, but didn't find it in the thread. I use a standup desk, but having a matching chair is essential. Otherwise, when you get tired, you start to stand funny and it started causing me joint problems.

The benefit of the standup desk is more a matter of changing position. Sitting is bad for metabolic reasons, true, but standing still isn't much different. Standing has other benefits though. For example, so many of us have back problems because of the shortening and tightening of the psoas muscle, which is exacerbated by sitting. To me the standup desk is less about the value of standing per se and more about the value of variation and multiple movement patterns.

I was thinking of small usability tests, which only need a couple of people, but I guess if you're going to do conversion rate  optimization you need big numbers. I definitely appreciate that problem - it would describe everything I have that sells something!

Hmm... I just cut and pasted it in and it worked fine - in two browsers, logged in and not logged in.

Man... we got four feet of snow last Friday/Saturday (settled out to a bit over 3 feet).

Proof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBodg6ynjQ8

(on Sunday, skiing a few minutes from the house).

As I sit here, another foot (a bit more actually) has fallen since last night. And in our vacation rental property we have a family with an eight year-old taking his first trip to snow country in the winter... he's gettin' his money's worth. The snow in the yard is deeper than he is tall!

Woohoo!!!

PS - pay attention to the opening words on the soundtrack if you watch the vid. I think this crowd will get a laugh out of it.

By "works in the same way" I assume you're discounting browser extensions?

I've tended to just use the Firefox Web Dev toolbar thingie. Of course, it doesn't give you the percentages, but those should be coming out of your own site stats anyway (assuming the site has some traffic already).