Ian's Messy Desk

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Office Depot Online has a number of business resources listed under the Business Tools section of their web-site.

Feeling even more shame than Richard, I have pulled the contact form out from under that stack of papers on Ian's Messy Desk. ;)

GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you.

Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.

Learn more about Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Google turns seven today.

Adobe's pdf format has become the standard for exchanging documents, both on and off the web. However, Adobe's software for creating pdf's can be pricey for some users. There are a number of free alternatives out there and in this week's Office Letter lists user-suggested free software for creating pdf's.

31% evil, 69% good

Far more evil than B.D. or even the CBC!!! (That can't be right.) ;)

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As if Darren doesn't have enough fingers in the blogging pie, he has joined with Jeremy and Duncan to create the b5media.com blogging network.

What is b5media?
b5media is a network of blogs that have been born out of conversations between Duncan Riley (of BlogHerald.com fame), Jeremy Wright (serial blogger from Ensight.org) and Darren Rowse (blogging at ProBlogger.net).

b5media is not a simple thing to sum up - you might want to look at the different ways that we as the founding team have described it in previous post on this blog.

Oslo, Norway - September 20, 2005 - Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its desktop Web browser. Acknowledging that the ad-banner and the option to pay for its removal has limited mass adoption of the browser, Opera is now offering its ad-free, full- featured browser completely free of charge in a move to grow its user base and penetrate the mass market.

The removal of the advertising banner and licensing fee is made possible by a gradual increase in revenues from search and service partners, including a new revised search agreement with Google. The extended contract with Google includes a search revenue deal, marketing support and technical cooperation. Opera expects this contract to increase the revenue per user.

During the first half of 2005, 30% of Opera`s desktop revenue was generated by selling advertising displayed in the integrated ad banner, 25% by licensing sales and 45% by Google search and other affiliate partners. Users have had the option of removing the ad banner and receiving support for a fee of US$39.

By removing 55% of the current revenue stream, Opera expects to see a decrease in desktop revenue in the short term. However, revenue in the long term is expected to increase as the ad-free browser is expected to significantly expand Opera`s market share and the contract with Google provides more search revenue per user.

The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download, completely free of charge, at http://www.opera.com.

New blog search tool in two forms:

Google

Blogger

For a long time now, I've been accustomed to seeing the search string "Ian McKenzie" in my referrer logs. Entering Ian McKenzie in a search engine returns Ian's Messy Desk at the top of the list, much to the obligatory amazement of one friend and my daughter. In the past week, I started seeing referrals from Yahoo.ca for the search string "Ian". A quick test shows that I am the number one listing (after the ads) out of almost one-hundred million Ian's indexed by Yahoo.ca. Gandalf is second place.

Boy, if I take that and a Loonie down to Tim Hortons, I bet they'll give me a small coffee. :^

Portrait Illustration Maker

I'm not very good at judging what I look like. Maybe someone else needs to take a crack at creating my face.

Link from Marla

Richard has announced that the Sketty Methodist chuch web site is on-line. I'm particularly interested in the fact that they are using WordPress to power the site as I use WordPress to maintain our congregation's web-site. I'd be interested in getting some feedback on how suitable they —and perhaps others— find blogging platforms for maintaining this type of web site.

There has been much discussion around the web on the (un)suitability of using blogging software as a CMS. There are WordPress features that I find particularliy useful for this task:

1. Ease of updating —Once the initial installation is complete, adding content is relatively straightforward. As Richard mentions, any number of authors can be set up in WP, allowing individual groups within the congregation to add their own content.
2. Static pages —Certain types of information doesn't change frequently: address and driving directions, group membership lists, weekly schedules, etc. Static pages can be created and then updated only as needed.
3. Categories and sub categories —Church congregations generally have a lot of things going on. Categories allow the webmaster to manage the organization of the site. Individual groups get a sub-category, which is further organized under a category. (E.g., band, choir and worship team all have their own sub-categories, which come under the category of music.) Everything flows through the front page, so that visitors to the site can see at a glance what is happening at Edmonton Temple. Those who are interested in a specific activity, say ALPHA, can find the details they need in that category.

I've been using WordPress at the Edmonton Temple site for a little more than six months now and am happy with the system and the results. The response to the site has been good and our traffic has slowly been increasing.

I'm on Google Talk.

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk offers you:

• Choice: Get in touch how and when you want to–over email, IM or a call
• Quality: Talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room
• Convenience: Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk so inviting or talking to your friends is just a click away
• Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

You can contact me via my Gmail address - ian.mckenzie AT gmail.com