Are you concerned about Gmail violating your privacy? Do you have a method for routinely backing up your Gmail account? Do you trust Gmail?
When Gmail started two years ago I thought the idea of having a free, giant, email account was divine and I paid someone on eBay $40 to get one of the first Gmail invitations.
In yesterday’s The New York Times an editorial asked if search engines, and Google in particular, are making students stupider because they acquiesce critical thinking for clicking on search return links and then copying the information they find without providing any sort of analysis:
In December, the National Center for Education Statistics published a report on adult literacy revealing that the number of college graduates able to interpret complex texts proficiently had dropped since 1992 from 40 percent to 31 percent.
I certainly agree high school and college students have no idea how to employ effective Online Research Methods that will result in a properly cited and “thought about” term paper.
When one creates an argument for a term paper, one must not start with the returns of a search result. One starts with a larger question in search of an answer.
Then that answer must be attacked in a methodical cycle of consequences that will shape and form an argument.
Continue reading → Are Students Getting Stupider?
If you aren’t using Google Sitemaps to manage the search details of your blogs and websites then you are missing out on a free way to find out what Google search terms bring people to your site. Having that knowledge at hand lets you keep your readers’ interest in your pocket.
If you aren’t using Google Analytics to track your
website visitors and performance, you should get on board because the service is free and robust and the discovery process may tell you things you don’t want to know but need to know about the sites you operate.
Once you sign up for Google Analytics — you may not be able to do it right this moment because their service is overwhelmed — and you add a little bit of script code to the raw HTML of every page you want to track, you will begin to see the magic of what is really happening on your sites behind the browser.
Google are getting into the website hosting business and they give you a 100 MB of server space to get started! Will there be advertising on the hosted sites — perhaps so — but not yet anyway.
Google Page Creator is how you create a Google-hosted website. You may not be able to sign up right now to set up your own hosted pages because of high demand for the new service, but I was able to play around with the site the other day and you can visit the results of that artful playing live on the web right now right here:
http://dboles.googlepages.com
Here are the top search query click-throughs (people searched for these terms and then actually clicked on an Urban Semiotic post title return to read it) for your favorite Urban Semiotic blog as provided by Google Sitemaps:
It’s time once again for Mr. Grumpy to Go Blogging! This is Round Three of the Mr. Grumpy Series on Blogging. Mr. Grumpy’s goal here is to point out misfortunate blog design choices and mistakes in meaning and incoherent content and creative choices that make blogging a painful experience for the rest of us instead of one built on Passion and Magnitude. Some of the following mandates come from Mr. Grumpy, some of them come from Mr. Grumpy’s readers — all come from eyes too swollen by bad blogs to afford us a good night’s sleep and that makes everyone grumpy! Let’s get started:
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