joshbuhler.com

With the recent release of Safari 3.1, I was curious to see a before and after comparison of how Safari 3.0 and 3.1 would render the Acid 3 test. For those who don’t know, the Acid tests are designed to determine how well a browser follows various web standards. Currently, no browsers pass the Acid3 test with 100%, but they are getting closer.

Once I checked out the two versions of Safari, I got curious to see how well some other browsers performed. And so here are the results of my completely unscientific testing, sorted by the respective scores of each browser. Now, on to the results!

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Everyone knows that Google is a great search tool, but did you know you can also use it as a calculator?

Try it: enter something like, “2 * 47“, or “45 + 34 * (23 + 3)“.

You can also use it to perform conversions - just enter what you got, into what you want: “25 miles in kilometers“. Have you ever wanted to know how many miles are in one lightyear?

I’ve seen Shaun Inman’s ShortStat application before, but never took the time to set it up and get it running. I finally did so a few days ago, and I’d have to say that I like it. I like it a lot.

My site currenty uses Urchin Web Stats, and I like them, but the downside is that I usually have to wait until sometime the next afternoon before they accurately show my site traffic. Also, with ShortStat I can track only the pages that I want to. Urchin lumps together the stats from two other domains I run with my main site.

Urchin is definately more comprehensive in what it covers, and I’ll still be using it, however, I guess you could say I’m a bit of a stat-addict in that I like to know what’s going on up-to-the-minute sometimes. That’s the main advantage that ShortStat has.

ShortStat gets even better if you’re running Tiger. Just download and install the ShortStat Dashboard Widget, and you’ll have a quick glance at the total number of the day’s hits and top referrers.

Through some detective work based on a patent recently filed by Google, Darren Yates has posted an article explaining how Google goes about ranking sites.

Some of the techniques seem to be fairly obvious, but others I wouldn’t have even considered, like checking the length of time that a domain has been registered for. (One year at a time is bad, FYI).

Worth reading if you ever work on anything that involves getting your site indexed by Google, or any other type of SEO work.

Link: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-10-2005-71368.asp

via slashdot.org

Edit: Thanks for the help - but we’ve got the amount of responses we were looking for.

As part of a project, and to satisfy our own curiosity, we’re conducting a quick, very unscientific poll. We’re curious about the effect that browser plug-ins have on your browsing habits.

If you have about two minutes, you can help us out by answering a quick 13 question survey.

Link: Link has been removed - we got the answers we needed - thanks.

The form below is from the Xbox.com website. I was entering a contest to win an Xbox 360 when it launches, and was given this form to register:

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Looks like Google has added satellite photos to it’s map service. After finding the location you want on the map, click the “Satellite” button in the top right to view a satellite photo of the address.

I tried finding my house, but it looks like the picture was taken before it was built, so all you get is an empty field where it should be. So instead, I’ll link you to the Happiest Place on Earth

Earlier this week I signed up for an account in the Goowy Mail beta. I really like the idea they’ve got going, but I don’t know that I’m completely sold on using it fulltime yet.

It’s been pretty easy to use, and it looks great, but it’s little too slow for me to use as a web-based client. It seems to take a while to initialize once you sign in, and on my machine (OS X, dual 2.0 G5) I get that lovely spinning beach ball ‘o death a few times doing things like changing the interface skin or adjusting other options. It’s also a pretty hefty download for anyone who might be using dial-up, coming in at a little over 400 K. Of course, once you get past that initial download, and have stuff cached, then it won’t be so bad.

Overall, I’ve liked it, and having a web-based email client that behaves similar to my desktop one is nice. Of course, time will tell if it’s the next Hotmail or GMail, and if I’ll keep using it everyday. The biggest issue I have now is that I’m quite happy with my email setup now, and one more address is the last thing I need. However, I’d love to see a Flash-based email client that I can install on my own server to use with my existing accounts.

Just bought a new Windows XP machine last week to run a few Windows-only apps, and so that I have a PC for testing purposes, and set it up over the weekend. In trying to protect it as much as possible, I’ve decided to make sure that Internet Explorer runs as little as possible.

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