SEO: Improve your Speed with WebPageTest

...2 days ago I posted about the factor to better your SEO strategy, Page Load Speed, and how google is going to add it to its pagerank algorithm, ...so let's get our website fast!!. WebPageTest can help you in this task with tips as:

• Cached Elements. Turn your dynamic pages into static pages thanks to cache!!.
• The use of a CDN (Cache Delivery Network). ...A system of computers containing copies of data, placed at various points in a network so as to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from clients throughout the network.
• Use CSS and JS. Unify your styles and functions in external files, ..and do not forget to minimize your js files.
• Compress your images and text.
• etc., etc....

The test will be conducted from the location specified and you will be provided a waterfall of your page load performance as well as a comparison against an optimization checklist.

How to use it??, ..as I always say an Image is worth better than 1000 words, in this case a video by David Artz.

SEO: You better boost your website load time!!..

Recently I have been asked if search engines take into consideration the speed load of a page, and that remained me about something I read some months ago.

Google is going to add a new factor into its famous algorithm, this new ranking factor has to do with how fast a site or page loads!!. You may think "Ohhhh, shxt, my website is on a slow service provider!!". Well, time for a change, either to look for a faster provider or for your provider to improve its infraestructure and communications.

Is speed that relevant for a search criteria relevance??. Google’s co-founders want searching to be real fast, an they say "as if you are flipping through a magazine", and that is why they want to include load speed into the Algorithm. Actually Google is thinking in more important issues:

• Adworks will index page faster if the load speed is better, which will turn into more pages indexed...
• Who is building a superfast broad-band access??....

But who better than Google's SEO expert Matt to explain us about this new Factor??



At any case, in my opinion, this is a great news for internet consumers and surfers, because many providers will speed up its communications!!, ..run forrest run!!!

NEWS: Picnik Adquired by Google

Everytime we have used picasa at our desktop, we have had the ability to manipulate, edit your pics, crop them, resize them..., but why do we need to download picassa at our PC when google likes to have everything on the cloud???, even within its new operating system...

That is probably why Google has adquired Picnik!!, ...hmmm, I bet my house on that :)

Google has announced that no changes will be aplied in short term to picnik, but most surely we will see a new picassaweb called just picasa and picnik totally integrated with it!!. Actually Picnik is more powerfull that picasa in image, pics manipulation.

Picnik is the third company bought by google this year, after Aardvark and reMail...., It is obvious there crisis period is over, although i may ask ..has Google ever be in a crisis??, ...even when Microsoft is kicking up and hard with bing streetview, ot "touchable" windows 7??.

SOCIAL NETWORKING: Opensocial by Google

Do you like to use apps at facebook??, have you ever though about programming a widget or app similar to those??, ..what about if you could program a widget which can be used not only in facebook but also in Linkedin, Friendster, XING, Sonico??, do you realize the commercial power behind these widgets? ....hmmmm, if all your answers are a "YES" then that means you want to use OpenSocial.

What is Opensocial??. Well google uses some sentences to define it:

• "OpenSocial enables apps, containers, and other clients to collaborate and move the social web forward."
• "OpenSocial helps these sites share their social data with the web. Applications that use the OpenSocial APIs can be embedded within a social network itself, or access a site's social data from anywhere on the web."

But translated to our "freak" language, I could say that Opensocial is a API, or set of APIs, to build social applications across multiple Social Networks, or other Websites, which can be shared and interact with existing online communities and with the ability to access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

For example, imagine that you have a surf clothing store and build a social widget which will send the coolest surf pictures uploaded for any subscribed user to the rest of subscribers, obviously with the logo of your enterprise on all the pics, and send a "wanna join" message to subscriber's friends in Facebook. Do you get an image of the commercial possibilities of this widget???.

Now imagine subscriber's friends at:

• Hi5
• MySpace
• Linkedin
• XING
• Orkut
• QuePasa
• FanBox
• .........
• .........

And much more Containers, which is the name used by google to define any social network or webiste. And yes, the code is the same!!!, just change the container ;).

Web Marketing no longer is limited to your corporate site, Internet is no longer static, is no longer just html, or just emails, ...internet is dinamic, updated with million of messages every second, and your bussiness may be in those messages, you bussiness should go "social"!!, and Opensocial will be a must to build this kind of widgets.

Opensocial is now in version v0.9, so as you can imagine is in early stages, but a nice API is already ready to be used. Actually check out the "world of apps" which already use openSocial. Will your app join this world soon????

TOOLS: Colorzilla

It is totally clear that this tool will help developers with something realted with colours..., for sure!!. Do you need to choose a color from a palette??, do you need to copy a color from any other place in any homepage??, do you need a Color Picker similar to ones that can be found in Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro???. All this and more can be found within this handy tool.

It also allows to zoom into a homepage by 1000%!!. Strange tool but not if you want some colours in a picture!!, ..isn't it??. :)

It even analyzes all the colour in the DOM of the homepage!!. what else??

• History and Favorites palettes
• Page Pan option allows to quickly pan the page without using the scroll bars
• Displays element information like tag name, class, id, size, relative mouse position etc.
• Outline elements under the cursor
• Multi-platform - works on MS Windows, Linux and MacOSX.
• Manipulate colors by their Red/Green/Blue or Hue/Saturations/Value components.
• ....................
• ....................

And much, much more!!!

CANVAS: CopperLicht , the 3D javascript engine

HTML5 came to stay with us bringing little things as sections, articles, footer, header, dialog..., but big fantastic things as the Canvas which is used to to render graphics on the fly, such graphs, games....

Many, many projects are already using the canvas element as Raphael but the future will bring many online games which by now can only be run over flash technology.

One of the first 3D engines to appear is CopperLicht!!. If you like to work with 3D Studio, LightWave, 3D Builder, etc., you will be able to "post" your designs to the web an be accessed online because CopperLicht supports many 3D formats as 3ds, .obj, .x, .lwo, .b3d, .csm, .dae, .dmf, .oct, .irrmesh, .ms3d, .my3D, .mesh, .lmts, .bsp, .md2, .stl. and more!!.

Just before the idea of slow performance going though your mind, CopperLicht will turn all your 3D designs to small binaries file that will turn down the amount of time needed to download them!!, ..compressing them could be also a good idea ;)

Wanting to know how ot use it, Ambiera is already providing a whole bunch of tutorials after free subscribing!!.

And the jewel of the queen is the 3D Map editor, CopperCube, ..just amazing!!!.

The 3D features which brings:

• Lots of precreated materials and shaders.
• Fast, precalculated lightmap support.
• Billboards.
• Skyboxes.
• Extensible 3D rendering based on a hierarchical scene graph.
• Transparent objects: Automatic correct item ordering when rendering transparent 3d objects.
• Paths and Splines.
• Animation and Action system.
• Texture animation.
• Optimized, reusable 3d math classes (vectors, matrices, plance etc), all with collision test functionality.
• Automatic redraw reducing (optional): Instead of redrawing the whole 3d scene every frame which can be slow on old computers, CopperLicht is able only to redraw when it is absolutely necessary, for example when the 3d scene changed or the camera moved. This is very useful to reduce CPU load.
• Picking and simple click detection: Simply add a JavaScript callback function to any scene node which gets called when your scene node is being clicked. (See AnimatorOnClick for details)
• (IiP:) Skeletal character animation
• (IiP:) Particle systems
• (IiP: ) Fog
• (IiP:) Parallax Mapping

Go on, and get your hands on CopperLicht, and if not convince yet, just check the demos, ..and remember what is needed to run WebGL!!

And yes....it's freeeeeeeeeeeeeee

TOOLS: Browsercam, test you developments at any browser and OS

Everytime the compatibility of code between browsers is getting bigger and so less problems, ...javascript frameworks help keeping compatibility working and that is just incredibily helpfull, but also some new operating System and devices has come to our live in the last years, ...android, symbian, iphone, htc, nokia...and our sites need in most case need to work in most of them. Having install opera, chrome, firefox, Safari, Explorer in your computer can be achieved with no hasstle, ..but what about installing diferent versions of those borwsers and different OS combinations??? hmmmm, not an easty taks.

What is the solution to our problem??. The Browser Compatibility Testing Tools, and here we have one. Browsercam.

BrowserCam is a paid service that lets you test multiple URLs in a huge number of browsers, which of course you would be able to test before paying a cent. It provides all these possibilities:

• Internet Explorer
• Mozill
• Firefox
• Safari
• Konqueror
• Opera
• Netscape
• AOL
• Camino
• Chrome

and OS Systems as:

• Linux
• Mac OS
• Windows 98, vista, 7......

Not bad, ehhhh?, ..and also different browser versions, ..for example with explorer you can test for 4 , 5 , 5.2 , 5.5 , 6 , 6.02, 7 , 8!! .

And waht about devices??. no problem, blackberry (cruve, storm, pearl, 7100g...), Iphone, Android, windows mobile...

How does it work??, easy!!, enter your URL(s), browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions, and other capture details in our Screen Capture Wizard and BrowserCam creates screen captures!!. Check it out!!