There is a simple solution. http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com is a superbly simple web 2.0 styled page that checks out a domain to see if the issue is global, or if you have just been impatient. This solves the problem, but requires going to a whole other website and copy/pasting the web URL.

Google Chrome has reportedly shortened the whole process even further, by integrating the server check function right into it’s ‘cannot find the requested page’ message. A small peice of text may now appear under the main and usual body of text which reads: “Other users are also experiencing difficulties connecting to this site, so you may have to wait a few minutes”.

A quick and nifty improvement to, in my opinion, the best browser on the market today. Way to go Chrome!

In Germany the government has urged Internet users to find alternatives to Internet Explorer. In the same article (taken form BBC News) Sophos (an Internet security firm) told readers that the warning should be adhered to IE6, IE7 and even IE8 as the exploits had not only been proven to work on all these browsers but also the details of how to do so posted publicly on the Internet. Google has come under even more criticism as of late, with an open letter from security firms and lawyers asking why the security settings to enable HTTPS 100% of the time when accessing Gmail, Docs and other Google applications is so hard to find.

Google is reportedly considering it’s options regarding their operations in china. It may be that the years of strict censorship over the Chinese Internet has finally built to a head, and the recent attacks have broke the camels back. Either way, Google pulling out of China would be a devastating event for Chinese companies and civilians alike.

Not according to one company; ‘Baidu’, Chinese search engine giants recently posted the following on their blog:

“Google claims it will quit China. What it’s proved is not what the Google fans have claimed, that Google is a ‘Human Rights fighter’. Just the contrary. It’s proved that Google is a hypocrite.”

It’s a bit of a legal battle at the moment – let’s hope Google and China manage to come to some sort of agreement soon.

Should software or web apps be put under this much strain this early on in development?Although I think that pressure can add to and excel success, I do feel that in this instance Google have jumped in too early. They seem to have had a lot of negative feedback, which I would mainly associate to the way which Google discussed the concept as a revolution in Internet Messaging, yet in practise hasn’t worked out quite as expected. Twitter had a major part to play in this, with various trending topics hitting the top 10 shortly after its release.

It is good that the general public are becoming more aware and involved in beta testing, or should it be left to tech-heads?

Yes and No. Obviously it’s important for the general public to test out new software, as they often pick out different flaws or approach things in different ways to IT Professionals. However, I think it should be a confined and controlled test group of maybe 150-200? Leave the hardcore testing to the ‘Tech-Heads’, as they are the one’s who will find the deeper lying problems with BETA versions, which may require big fixes in some circumstances, in contrast to the usually smaller issues (GUI, glitches etc) which general users find.

Where would Google Wave be at without Twitter?Probably somewhere close to where Google Mail was back in 2004. Google has utilized (knowingly or otherwise) Twitter to pass around invites between parties. Without this (and other Social networking sites) there would surely be less people on Wave, consequently less general users testing out the software (as discussed in point 2). On the other hand, Social networking sites may have a bit of a negative impact on Wave, as more and more invites can be pushed out to a wider audience, consequently allowing more people to comment on the good (and more importantly bad) features.

However, after the plug-in was updated some time last week it started showing errors in Google’s Webmaster Tools. The error was the following.

“Paths don’t match we’ve detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that includes the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Sitemap don’t use the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/myfile.htm).”

To fix this is simple, but I had to search around quite a lot to get the fix. All you have to do is go to the General tab under Settings in WordPress and add the ‘www.’ prefix to both the WordPress address AND the Blog address, then rebuild and submit the sitemap.

If you are still getting errors (which I did) check that any additional URL’s mentioned in the XML-Sitemap tab of Settings have the ‘www.’ prefix, as mine reset automatically.

As I said; Simple! But it took quite a lot of re-building and re-submitting to find the answer!

Google’s latest feature is the integration of ‘real-time result’s (RTR’s) including Twitter, Facebook and Myspace updates to be shown for relevant search results. Although the feature is currently limited to a minority of key words it will be built upon to produce more and more results in this fashion. It’s a brilliant idea, gathering such vast amounts of information in one place. Although Google haven’t released financial details, Facebook have announced they are making no profit from the setup.

Google Goggles (it’s a mouth full) is Google’s next development – Using images instead of keywords to produce search queries, consequently returning both visual and text based results (including, perhaps, RTR’s). This must use some similar code to the similar image feature (another amazing feature from Google) although it must also feed to a variety of databases in order to analyze and search indexed pages using said image.

Google still dominates the Internet search market, boasting a global share of about 70 per cent share globally. The company reported revenues of £3.66 billion for the quarter that ended on September 30 this year. The majority of the revenue came from Search Advertising. Google may be seen to have competition in local times from Wolfram Alpha and Bing, but its ever-evolving search techniques and developments just show that it really is the world leader in Web Development.

There isn’t that much to rave about as of yet, simply a basic GUI which has a similar layout to Gmail and that’s about it. You log into your Google account and you’re away. I posted a message to Alex Sleat and got a response later on. Seems you can incorporate polls, which is a nice feature, and Google maps.

It needs some work, to make it more google-esk, but it’s a nice concept and the incorporation of all the Google goodies will make it a strong contender for facebook chat and the days of MSN!

What’s especially nice about it is that it is entirely browser based, so it can be accessed from anywhere unlike MSN, which requires a download. It would be nice for conference calls and I think it will thrive in an office environment – I’m just not sure that the day-to-day user needs all the functionality that will (hopefully) be implemented. Either way, I’m looking forward to a Google Wave update to bring it out of its beta stage. Remember the days of Google Beta?!

To aid my task of ramping up my page hits I have used a selection of SEO techniques (keywords, Metadata etc) as well as Google Analytics to track my progress. Finally, using Twitter and Facebook as a free way of advertising the fruits of my labour (in this case, my blogs!).

The page views, which before now have been from a sporadic segment of friends, have gone from 6 Visits (Monday 9th Nov, 2009) to 29 Visits (Tuesday 10th nov, 2009). This wild increase is because of a number of influencing factors; Interesting content, Relevance, Keywords and Micro-Marketing to name but a few.

Needless to say, I’m over the moon with the stats of Tuesday, but the real test now begins as I attempt to first of all establish a consistent (day-to-day) number of page views, and secondly climb even higher (I intend to focus on the retweeting features and plugins to extend my reach even further).

For those of you who don’t know, Monopoly City Streets (MCS) is an online version of the recently released board game, but uses Google maps to allow real roads to be brought, built upon and sabotaged. There are also local, national and international leader boards for the top few of the digital tycoons out there (I’m currently number 3 on the South Staffordshire local boards).

MCS has been running a while now, and I expected there to be some sort of reward at the end of the season (set for January 2010) such as an iPod or laptop (or even a car or house? – It is Google powered, after all).

However, following a recent post on the MCS blog it has been announced that there is NO rewards and that the game is just that – a free online game to promote the board game. Hasbro also stated that they underestimated the popularity of the game and as such the databases were unable to cope with the pure number of queries being thrown at them.

Now, featuring one of the world’s most popular board games and powering it with one of the Internet giant’s software, and then sticking it on the most readily available media source in the world would perhaps make developers think it may be a golden egg? Perhaps not.

Anyway, to the point of this post – Start charging some money (say £15) to sign up to an account and use the profits to increase database functionality and throw in a few prizes for the winners (or top 3!) of each leader board?

It’s just a thought, but surely the way forward with traditional board games. It makes you wonder what else could be digitalized? I’m thinking of starting a design for a detective based game, with rooms, characters and weapons in… Rowley in the study with the Laptop, anyone?