I’m hearing rumours that some thought is being put behind implementing web ratings on all websites just as all movies have a rating. Not only would this be colossally stupid, it would be impossible to enforce.  And for those 2 reasons, I don’t think it will ever happen.

I’ve heard some stupid things before:  For example, I was working for a company that had a backhoe tearing up part of the parking lot with a cement mixer off to the side.  A co-worker came into the office and asked “Do you know what they are doing out there?”  Without missing a beat, another co-worker promptly told him they were hunting elephants with snow shovels in the parking lot.  At that point the first co-worker just stared blankly at us all and still couldn’t piece everything together and come to the realization that they were repaving the parking lot.

Applying web ratings to all websites would be just as absurd as that previous example.  I know age verification on websites is practically fool proof these days.  I always take the few seconds it takes to specify my birthday as 01/01/1950 to get onto websites that have the gaul to ask for it.  86.5% of all users of those websites do have a birthday of January 1st.  While that statistic my not be accurate, I bet it’s not far off. Or are we going to rely on parents to filter which sites their kids can browse to? While I’m sure some parents would do a great job, 86.5% of them have no idea which sites their children frequent.

Applying these web ratings would be about as impossible to implement as hunting elephants with snow shovels. While my content may be PG right now, there is always the possibility that I’ll get a new author who likes to throw around 4 letter words like there is no tomorrow.  Also, while my content may be appropriate for young eyes, I don’t monitor / filter any comments placed on this site to the degree that would be needed.

Rating a movie is one thing, but trying to place those ratings onto a Web site is ridiculous. There are too many people providing too much content on too many sites for it to make any sense. In other words, the Web, unlike film, is not a controlled environment.

I’m all for protecting kids from dangers in the world, and the Internet has plenty of it. But trying to apply generic ratings to the multi-faceted Web is ridiculous.

Now that Blue-ray has won the battle with Toshiba and their rival product HD-DVD, what’s next? Now its time to gear up for the war. Blue-ray won’t be lucky enough to enjoy a decade as the format of choice for consumers around the world. In fact, they’ll be lucky to make it 1 year.

The big winner in the format was, surprisingly is Microsoft. Did you wonder why Microsoft never made HD-DVD standard in their XBox 360′s? They new that Blue-ray would win the battle with Toshiba. They also new that digital downloads would be the successor to blue-ray.

Netflix, a purveyor of rental discs, obviously saw the writing on the wall, instituting its Watch It Now feature last year. Amazon.com, which sells plenty of packaged media, has its own Unbox video download service.

Perhaps most importantly, consumers will continue to get more and more comfortable with the idea of their library being digital. We’re already there with music and family pictures, and it’s a relatively easy transition to make to one’s movie collection.

The biggest roadblock for the move to digital movies is available bandwidth, but that too is becoming less of an obstacle. Companies such as Verizon and Comcast seem to be improving bandwidth to consumers on a daily basis.

With all this in mind, don’t jump too quickly on the Blue-ray bandwagon as you could save some money by waiting for a fully functional download option.

Today I’d like to give you a quick tip to make any blogger or webmaster more productive and efficient.  I don’t know about you, but when I start my daily tasks, I have a number of things that I do automatically; without fail. I read some blogs via bloglines, some others via Google Reader, I open my WordPress dashboard, I open my site, my email,  SiteMeter, Google AdWords, and I open Google Analytics. That’s a lot of sites to open manually each day, even if each one is individually bookmarked. The answer to this is to group those bookmarks.

My tip to you is easy, and it works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7. Bookmark each of the sites that you open and organize those bookmarks into a common folder for easy single click access. If these were the sites you had open when you closed your browser, you could simply configure your browser to open those same pages on next open. However, if your like me, I move on to other things before I close my browser so I need an easy way to open those default pages.

To open all these pages with 2 clicks of the mouse begin by bookmarking all the sites. If your using Firefox, click Bookmarks – Organize Bookmarks – create a “Webmaster” folder and drag all these bookmarks to this folder. Next time you open Firefox, click on Bookmarks – hover over Webmaster – click on “Open all in Tabs”. Every site you have bookmarked now opens in their own tab.

The steps to do the same thing in Internet Explorer 7 are very similar. Bookmark (Favorite) each of the sites, just like before. Now, click on the star to view your favorites, create a folder, and drag all the sites to that new folder. To open this group of favorites, click the star then click the arrow.

Now, I remember every site that I need to perform tasks on each day and get to them super quickly.  This process assures me that I won’t accidentally forget one of these daily tasks.

I have received numerous reports of errors and performance issues occurring within BlissLogs.  I will be able to look more closely tonight, but in the meantime, I have asked my hosting provider to migrate my site to a server running PHP 5 in an effort to deploy other functionality in the future.  Thanks for your patience

Yahoo! Mail has become the first, major, free email provider to offer unlimited storage.  Meanwhile, Google is only giving us a measly 2869MB.  Any bets on how long it takes Google to offer up unlimited storage?  I’ll go conservative and say within a month.  This isn’t going to make me switch from gmail to Yahoo!, but I do find it interesting that Google is now behind Yahoo! in this category.

You know your pagerank, but do you know what it means?  I do not claim to be an expert, but I do have an idea of what goes into a site’s pagerank.  Smashing Magazine covered this topic in great detail a couple weeks ago.  If your interested in learning all there is about Google PageRank, get comfortable for a long read and visit Smashing Magazine’s article.

We all learned of the new Microsoft Surface Computer from the video on John Chow’s blog last week. I have to say, this thing looks cool. I’m already trying to come up with reasons that I will need one when it is released. I have found another video, this time from Bill Gates himself. Check it out and tell me that it’s not cool. By the way. . . Click on the Mash button in the tip right corner to generate the code to display this video on your site.

Update: This video seems to be having problems displaying in Firefox, but works fine in IE. I am going to leave this posted until I can figure out the problem in Firefox.

Help!  I lost your blog!  That’s not something any blogger wants to hear about their blog. There are many things that can be done to make your blog stand out, but none of them are as overlooked as creating a personalized favicon.

What is a favicon?

If you are reading this post by visiting the blog, you can see my favicon up in the address bar. It is the small image of an infinity ring that appears to the left of the blogs URL. If your reading this from my feed, you can visit BlissLogs now to see what I’m talking about. I chose this image to be my favicon for a couple reasons. First, my wedding ring is an infinity ring that looks very similar to this favicon. Second, my tattoo is the infinity symbol on my right calf. Third, and this one gets involved so pay attention. My favorite word is Bliss, hence the domain BlissLogs; a good band/musical group that uses the word bliss often is PM Dawn; PM Dawn even had an album called “The Bliss Album”; the symbol they use on many of their CD’s and their website is the infinity symbol.

Why do I need a personalized favicon?

This one is easy, it gives your site something to make it stand out from the crowd. When I first started this blog, I left the default HostMonster (aff) favicon on my site. A co-worker of mine had a bookmark of this site on his pc desktop and the icon was the boring default Internet Explorer icon. That just made this shortcut blend into the desktop and get lost among all the other icons. That doesn’t sound too ideal when you want to make your blog memorable and stand out from the rest.

How do I get a favicon?

Your first step is to find an image that best represents your site or your personality. Once you have a digital image that you want to use, visit a favicon generator site. There are many to choose from, but basically all you need to do is point to your full size image and upload it to their site. They will then generate a new file, favicon.ico.

How do I add it to my site?

First, you need to determine where your site is pointing to to find the favicon.ico file. I have noticed some themes look into a theme-specific directory, while some just look to the root directory of your site. There are many ways to get this info, but I have found it very easy to just visit my site, right click on the page and choose view source. I then search for “favicon.ico” and make note the file directory. Now all that is left is to replace the old file with the new one you created on the favicon generator site. I usually use FTP to upload my files to the site. I want you to realize now, you may not see the new favicon display immediately. I’ve noticed many browsers cache this image and it could take days to display correctly.

Summary

I hope I’ve given you reason enough to change your default favicon image because by doing so, your blog will be more memorable and stand out from the crowd of mundane sites. Don’t let your sites shortcut get lost on someones desktop like mine did before I change my favicon. If you have any questions regarding this process, feel free to either comment here (I will respond to all comments) or fill out my contact me form.

The purchase of DoubleClick by Google that took place last month for the low low price of $3.1bln is now in jeopardy of being stopped. In the realm of the pot calling the kettle black, Microsoft is complaining that this purchase too much power in the online marketing sector. I won’t get into how Micro$oft has formed their own monopoly over the past 2 decades in the personal computer software, as you’ve read it all before. Now, Microsoft, along with AT&T, are complaining that this will combine the two largest advertising distributors on the internet. Oh yea, did I mention, Microsoft lost the bid to buy DoubleClick to Google?

Microsoft and AT&T’s biggest issue seems to be that they will lose a lot of market share in the highly profitable arena of online advertisements. That market reached over $17bln last year.

The real concern for many people regarding this acquisition by Google is that of privacy. The union of Google and DoubleClick poses risks to consumers by allowing Google to track the online activity of individuals more closely. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has raised this concern to the FTC.

EPIC’s Complaint

On April 20, 2007, EPIC, CDD, and US PIRG filed a complaint (pdf) with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the Commission to open an investigation into the proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google. The groups urged the FTC to assesses the ability of Google to record, analyze, track, and profile the activities of Internet users with data that is both personally identifiable and data that is not personally identifiable. The groups stressed that the increased collection of personal information of Internet users by Internet advertisers poses far-reaching privacy concerns that the FTC should address. The groups further noted that Google fails to follow previously agreed upon standards for online advertising conduct, and urged the FTC to to require Google to publicly present a plan to comply with these standards. Pending the resolution of these and other issues, EPIC encouraged the FTC to halt the acquisition.

Well, the FTC is now investigating it. I don’t expect anything to come of this investigation, but find it interesting that Microsoft of all people is complaining. What are your thoughts?