30 day challenge : no Google search
I wrote many times in the last year that i really don’t like the direction Google is going to. So from a fan of the company i became more of a Google sceptic. Among the things i don’t like using their search engine is living in the so called Filter bubble, the shameless promotion of their products over much better alternatives and their positive bias towards themselves.
For a long time i’ve been looking for an alternative to Google Search. I considered using Bing and Yahoo but they are not what i want. Unfortunately Google is hard to beat not because other search engines wouldn’t be good engines, it is because Google searches very well in certain languages. For example if you search in German it will return relevant links for that language. Other search engines don’t do this because its quite hard to do such a broad search engine.
Anyway i gave up the thought that i will find a search engine that its good at local languages. I found a search engine named DuckDuckGo. Yeah, i know they have a funny name. But their search is working like a charm. I’m using it for almost a week now and i wasn’t missing Google.
So i decided that i do a 30 day challenge. Like an irony of fate i was inspired by Matt Cutts (Google’s anti spam team) to do 30 day challenges. This will be the first.
What is a 30 day challenge ? Actually a 30 day challenge is when you decide that you will do something for 30 days in a row. And 30 days seems to be enough to build a habit out of your challenge.
My first 30 day challenge is not to use Google Search. No matter what i need to learn there are different search engines and there are different ways to learn things. No Google Search for me until the 11th of May. And i will see after that.
I will keep you informed of my progress in the following weeks and i will also write a more thorough report on how can you search the web without Google when i finish my challenge.
Allow Youtube videos in tt_news
I was writing some time ago about how to allow Youtube videos in the RTE of TYPO3. Well that solution works for general content but it doesn’t seem to work for tt_news. However there is a solution for this and you can enjoy Youtube videos even in tt_news content.
In order to allow the embed codes in the tt_news content you need to make a few special configurations. First of all in the root typoscript template setup add the following lines:
RTE.default.proc.allowTags := addToList(iframe,embed,object,param)
RTE.default.proc.entryHTMLparser_db.allowTags := addToList(iframe,embed,object,param)
RTE.default.proc.allowTagsOutside := addToList(iframe,embed,object,param)
plugin.tt_news.displaySingle.content_stdWrap.parseFunc {
nonTypoTagStdWrap.encapsLines.nonWrappedTag >
allowTags = script, iframe, param, embed, object, a, abbr, acronym, address, blockquote, b, br, caption, center, cite, code, div, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, img, li, link, ol, p, pre, q, sdfield, span, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, thead, tbody, tfoot, td, th, tr, tt, u, ul
}
plugin.tt_news.general_stdWrap.parseFunc.allowTags := addToList(iframe,embed,object,param,p)
and in the typoscript constants the following code:
styles.content.links.allowTags = b,i,u,a,img,br,div,center,pre,font,hr,sub,sup,p,strong,em,li,ul,ol, blockquote,strike,del,ins,span,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,address,iframe, object,param,embed
Make sure this last setting is on one line. Here it is on multiple lines because otherwise it couldn’t be displayed properly.
Well, with these settings made and after you’ve cleared all caches the Youtube videos should be visible in tt_news.
Project Glass–is this the future ?
Reportedly Google is working on Project Glass – an interesting idea of combining some glasses with Google Goggles and all kind of Google software into one product that could start a revolution. See the video below and imagine what implications this could have.
The new TYPO3.org is here
The TYPO3 Association re-launched yesterday the TYPO3.org website. The new site is cleaner and more in line with today’s standards. Of course there are a few bugs here and there but overall the first impression is good. Only if they could remove the Berlin Manifesto which is not valid anymore.
Go and check out the new TYPO3.org.
Why Yahoo needs to lay off a few thousand employees
I just got the following email on my Yahoo account:
Greetings,
I got your contact during my search in international chambers of commerce. I am Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance in Nigeria. I sincerely need your very kind assistance to claim and receive fund worth Forty eight million, three hundred thousand us dollars (US$48.300,000)
Source: The sum arose from over-inflated contract awarded by Nigeria Ministry to a foreign firm. We have fashioned out a foolproof plan to successfully transfer the funds to an account belonging to a foreigner for investment purpose, i want to front you as the beneficiary of the fund and 25% will be your compensation for this assistance.
I assure you that there is no risk involve in this transaction because we will perfect the transaction in a way that there will be no trace of the funds to you after the transfer.
Please keep this transaction safe and confidential because my colleagues in the Ministry have trusted me in getting a foreign partner for the transfer of the fund.
We intend to invest our own share in any profitable business in your country based on your advice because our economy is not good enough for investment.
Please If my proposal is acceptable to you, reply as soon as possible.
I await your urgent response.
Best Regards,
Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Minister of Finance Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Yahoo!! We are in 2012!!! If you are unable to create a spam filter for Nigerian scams then what do you expect ? Really ?
I guess that the news of Yahoo laying off some people should not surprise anybody.
Business in Cluj
Its almost 12 years since i live in Cluj Napoca, one of the finest cities in Romania. It become somewhat of a home for me and for thousands of other people who where not born here but live here and help build this city. Yesterday i discovered a website created by the City Hall which promotes Cluj for business. The site is http://www.clujbusiness.ro/ and there you can find many information about the city and why you should invest in it. There is also a video created which you can see below and i recommend you invest 5 minutes in watching it. You won’t be disappointed.
Cluj Napoca: Heart of Transylvania-full version from Laviniu Lazar on Vimeo.
Microsoft mocks Google Apps
Yeah. That’s true. You can wake up in a morning and see that Google changed your application. Just like i did a few months back with that horrible new Google interface on Gmail and Google Apps. And you can’t do anything about. Just switch away from the darn thing.
TYPO3 market share statistics–2012 edition
About this time of the year – one year ago, i was writing about TYPO3’s market share. Back then i took some criticism, being accused of comparing apples to oranges. Obviously i was curious again how the numbers evolved and despite of the criticism i will do this again.
Yes it’s true, TYPO3 is not a regular CMS but rather an Enterprise CMS but for the majority of people its still a CMS and its being treated as such. One important reason why i do this again is that the data reflects not only the CMS market but the overall market of all websites monitored by W3Techs (the source of the data) and also for the breakdown of the different TYPO3 versions.
Let’s start with the overall market:
(source)
From this data we can see that 70.9% of the websites use no CMS at all (at least its not detectable that they’re using one). This number decreased from 75.9%. So the logical conclusion would be that more and more companies and people are using some kind of a CMS on their website (grey is the overall market share and green is market share from the CMS market)
There aren’t any spectacular changes in the market shares of the different CMS’s, that’s why a graph with yearly change is not showing anything relevant. TYPO3 stays at a steady 0.6% of overall market share and lost a little from the CMS pie (which grew since last year). So we can say that TYPO3 did neither gain or lost market share since one year ago on the global website market.
If we look at the major version distributions of TYPO3 we can see:
(source)
There are still 1.2% of websites using TYPO3 version 3.x. That’s quite alot! Even if its half of what we had last year. These people really have to consider upgrading because running a version this old is a great security risk (no patches are available if some security vulnerabilities are discovered). One thing to note that TYPO3 v5 didn’t yet made it to this statistic although it seems there are a few sites made with v5.
Let’s see how the 4.x versions are doing:
(source)
That’s an interesting change. One year ago version 4.2 was first with 38.6%, now version 4.5 leads with 35.9%. This version is a Long Time Support version and its understandable that people will tend to use it more. Also this is the last one with IE6 support – although IE6 is practically dead some companies still use it.Versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 lost about about half of their percentage while 4.4 is almost at the same share.
Version 4.6 also popped up on the radar with 1.6%. That’s a good number taking into account that is relatively young (few months) and also requires PHP 5.3 which is not a default offering on the majority of webhosts.
I suggest you take this data with a grain of salt. W3Techs monitor lots of sites but probably they also miss a few. These statistics are here just to make an idea of where TYPO3 is.
Overall i think that is evolving slowly even if it didn’t gain market share in the last year. Good things happened. Version 4.6 was released with lots of improvements and 4.7 is on our doorsteps with much improved usability.
Well, that’s it. I hope in about one year we have better numbers.
I’m a certified TYPO3 Integrator
Back in December at the TYPO3 Usergoup Romania Meetup 2011 i participated at the TYPO3 Integrator Certification Exam. It took some time but finally today i got a mail announcing me that i passed the exam.
So now i’m officially a Certified TYPO3 Integrator. I don’t yet have the certificate as it comes by regular mail, but the listing of certified integrators is updated and it seems i’m there (Bodor László – Romania)!
How to earn money with Google Plus
Well, you can’t. But some people can. You might ask yourself how. Well it’s simple, they sell Google +1’s. And it isn’t very cheap either. 100 Google +1’s for 29.99$.
So Google, this is the future you imagine for us ? Can i Google –1?
I wonder what Matt Cutts has to say about this ?
PHP download script for big files
Today i had a task at one customer where a directory of files needed to be downloaded using a PHP script. For one strange reason the script failed and the browser displayed a File not found error. I couldn’t for a while figure out what was happening. But after some test it was obvious that the file size was too big for the server (90 MB) because with a smaller file size it worked.
So this was the original code:
header("Content-length:".filesize($filename));
header('Content-Type: application/zip'); // ZIP file
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="downloadpackage.zip"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
readfile($filename);
exit();
After some digging i quickly found the solution, it is : ob_end_clean();
Here is the final code:
header("Content-length:".filesize($filename));
header('Content-Type: application/zip'); // ZIP file
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="downloadpackage.zip"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
ob_end_clean();
readfile($filename);
exit();
Works like a charm with any file size
Goodbye Gmail
I was saying last time that i really don’t like the new Google interface, actually lots of people don’t like it judging by the number of visitors i get from keywords related to that post.
But Google don’t listens anymore to their users. Their have gotten into a position from where they can dictate how we should use everything and how should we think. They decide what is good for us and what is bad. In other words, its their way or the highway.
I decided a few days ago that for me its the highway, at least regarding the e-mail client i use. This happened after they forced the new interface into my Gmail account, without having an option to return to the old look. This brings me memories from the past, sometime 7-8 years ago when for similar reasons i have dumped Yahoo Mail.
After looking for a few options i decided that its time to use Thunderbird again. I still have my Gmail account but i set it up in Thunderbird and i use that as an e-mail client, so its not yet a definitive goodbye. At least until i will be able to migrate all my data from Google and have time to make a permanent move to my own domains for everything e-mail related. Actually i have set up all my email addresses in Thunderbird so i don’t need to have a high number of browser windows open for each and every one of them.
Having Thunderbird as an e-mail client has a few advantages. For starters you do have the IMAP protocol which means that you have your email synchronized with the server and don’t store it locally (only for caching). Its just like a web based client. Everything you do is reflected on the server and if you need from time to time to log in from another machine you have everything there just as you had it on your own machine. Another advantage is that you don’t have any advertising in it.
Regarding disadvantages, after a few days of use, i’m happy with this system and didn’t yet encounter any drawbacks. I will se how it goes in the next few days.
Why to use TYPO3 ?
From time to time this question pops up. So why would anyone use TYPO3 and not WordPress or Drupal ? I thought about writing an article on the subject until i found this article : An honest look at why we use TYPO3 written by Zach Davis.
I couldn’t write it better so i’m sharing the link and although its a long article, it is worth reading!
A little crawling experiment
Almost a year ago i wrote the article about the TYPO3 market share statistics i’m preparing to make a new statistic in the early days of 2012. Having too much time on my hands last days i thought why not to write my own crawler which searches for TYPO3 sites ?
I know this is quite a difficult task. Actually it is not that difficult to write the crawler, its much more difficult to scale after the number of domains start to grow in the database. But i like challenges.
So i started working on it and after a few hours a basic crawler was born. What it does is that it scans a website and tries to identify it if it is a TYPO3 website (based on the TYPO3 header comment). Then it extracts all distinct domains from the links and goes to the next domain.
The early data is available here: http://crawler.lacisoft.com/ The crawler is not very speedy because i limited its speed (i don’t want to kill my VPS). Also because of this i limited its scope to .ro domains (domains from Romania).
Another issue is that for now it counts a domain twice if it has both www and non-www version. Technically i could solve it to count only one but i’m not convinced that this would be the right step as theoretically www is a subdomain of the main domain and it is possible that the www and non-www versions house different websites. I will think more about it.
For now this is only an experiment, let’s see how it works out.
Later edit: The crawler is still scanning, the data is not final!
The social media riddle
To paraphrase a friend, it looks like the crusades for the Holy Grail of the Church of the Social Media are at their peak. Before explaining you why i think this whole social media stuff is a big waste of time, please watch the following 4 minute video:
The video above is not made by me, i have found it on a blog (via zoso) some time ago and it caught my attention. Now let’s get back to my view on the subject. In fact this subject can be divided into several different topics. So let’s debunk some myths about social media experts and their tools: Twitter, Google+ and Facebook
The social media experts
Social media “experts” are popping up everywhere like mushrooms after a good rain. In fact they are the fastest growing segment of “experts” in the world, the growth rate being unprecedented in marketing history. If you go to an internet related conference you are certain to find them there in ever growing numbers.
But what makes someone an expert ? School ? Study ? A certification ? Experience ? A reference ? Should someone proclaim himself as an expert ? Or should he be proclaimed by others as an expert ?
If so, do any of these people have what it takes to be an expert ? An expert should give you a solution for which he/she can vouch. An expert should deliver measurable results to you and should be paid according to results. The fact is that they rarely deliver but they take the money anyway.
Let’s go back a few years and remember the thing called Second Life, younger social media “experts” might never heard of it – though calling yourself an expert should be updated on things like this. Well, when Second Life was at the peak of its hype factor, the social media experts back then advised everyone (companies especially) to open up virtual offices in Second Life because that’s the future and everyone will be on Second Life – and customers will even queue in front of the virtual desks. I know a few banks and other companies who took the advice and invested money in these virtual offices. A few years later we can see that Second Life is not what social media experts promised. However they took your money and they are gone.
Obviously we are the ones who are responsible for allowing anyone to call itself what he/she wants and get away with it. As the video above states it – we accept experts without a reference.
Twitter is “the promise land” for quite a few years. “A great service that didn’t yet reached its potential”. And it never will, i might add. I was writing about how useless is Twitter almost four (4!) years ago. Since then most social media experts discovered Twitter themselves. Now they advertise it as the next big thing in social media.
Twitter is social, i must admit. Everyone was told that Twitter is cool, Twitter is the thing to do. So all my friends have an account on it. And most of them didn’t even bother to log in a second time and don’t use it at all. I think that is because the signal to noise ratio on Twitter is absolutely frightening.
I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. (source: leoville.com)
Why is that ? Most of the people who actively use Twitter are marketers and social media “experts”. And the one single thing they do is to spam. If they are not sending you promotions or links to their content & articles then they are spamming you by following / unfollowing.
Can anyone tell me how on earth can someone follow almost 95000 people ? See this screenshot:
To effectively follow that many people you must be unemployed. Just to click “Follow” on ~95000 people would take you 26+ hours if you spent one second for each people you follow. But to check a person if its worth following or not, it will take significantly more time. That is unless you follow everyone.
People like this actively seek followers and follow themselves just to be followed back so they can send you whatever they’re trying to sell. Some of them went to the point of using automatic tools to follow/unfollow users.
Well there is nothing social about bots that scour the Twitter wastelands and add/remove followers regardless of who they are.
Twitter is heading toward "everyone following everyone." …To me that makes Twitter more like playing Pac-Man than a valuable social networking tool, as people’s robotic software programs digress into an outrageous dance of following and unfollowing. (source: Reed J. Caldwell’s blog)
Google+
Although Google+ is a newcomer to this game they are already in the same situation as Twitter. I will not go into specifics here but its enough to mention that i receive many notifications that people added me to their circles on Google+. That would be fine if i would have posted anything worthwhile there after creating the account and would be even finer if i would also know those people who are adding me. Fact is that Google+ is the single social platform where most of the people who added me are strangers. I don’t know them, i’m not a celebrity to be added and i didn’t post anything there. So why are they adding me ? Probably because Google+ is heading towards what i wrote for Twitter “everyone adds everyone”.
And now the cherry on the cake. The new Holy Grail of the social media.
Facebook is useful if you want to follow what everyone you know did lately. People use Facebook to post all kind of content. From their last vacation photos to their naked newborn child and from silly videos to stupid chainletters, they post everything. Unlike other mediums, here there isn’t anyone verifying if something that is posted is true or not.
I’m not an adept of censorship but i truly believe that when someone states something publicly it should be at least verified. Unfortunately people are lazy, and they do not verify anything, most of them take it for granted. Facebook leveled the playing field and everyone (no matter of his/her abilities) has been given a tool to spread anything he wishes. Just read the above link with stupid chainletters if you don’t believe me.
The most painful thing is that they become accustomed with this shallow content. And if someone comes up with something more challenging or deep, they usually don’t like it. They like simple things that can be assimilated easily and quickly. This is one of the reasons why most Facebook marketing doesn’t work. And that’s the reason of the Like button. You can quickly Like something or not and move on.
Like
What is bothering me most in Facebook is the “Like” button. One of the more annoying applications of this button is the Like blocking used by some pages on Facebook. The user must first Like a page in order to access it.
Like blocking, where a user has to "Like" a Facebook Page in order to access a feature, typically has a 50% or more drop off rate, even when there is something there that is actually worth liking the page to get, such as exclusive content or a great coupon. Putting a Like block on basic content will almost guarantee a 100% drop off rate. (source: Why most Facebook marketing doesn’t work – part 2)
Yet most of the social media experts recommend it. In the screenshot above you have the page of a company where in order to access the current job openings you must first like the page:
First of all this is like sitting in front of a church and begging. I see no difference between a company that begs for Likes and a beggar on the streets. Beggars receive money that they not earned and companies receive Likes which are not Likes in fact, these begged Likes lacks the significance, the user is not really liking your brand, it just pushes the button to access an offering.
Secondly, this is like a complete stranger showing up at your door and asking you to vouch for him, vote for him or doing some other thing that implies trust from your part. Would you vouch for a complete stranger showing up at your door ? Think twice!
I personally never push the Like button on these kind of pages. If they condition me with a Like block to access their page i’m gone in no time!
Don’t like or Dislike
Why isn’t there a button called Don’t like or Dislike ? I have no explanation for this but i suppose this is part of a politically correct movement where they don’t want people to be “emotionally hurt” when they receive 99% Dislikes on their latest post about what they think to be smart and helpful information (the end of the world in 2012, wealthy African princess looking for love , etc.)
Bugs
Facebook is full of bugs. There aren’t too many days when the service is functioning within parameters. If i would receive a dollar for every instance when the page was buggy i would be rich. And the odd thing is that people don’t care. Working in web development i had cases where websites with a few visitors where an image was misaligned by 1 pixel, the customer called me and was very nervous about it. I can understand that. He was right to be nervous as he perceived it as a thing that might be bad for his business. But it seems that for Facebook it isn’t bad for business. Its business as usual.
Content and privacy on Facebook
The content users post on Facebook is not theirs, i said it a while ago, others said it a while ago but the fact is that no one cares enough to do something about it. Content posted to Facebook becomes the asset of the company that operates Facebook and they can do whatever they want with this content.
But its not just the content, it is also the privacy which is not yours anymore. Facebook is like a Big Brother which constantly monitors your activity online. They know every website you visit even if you are logged in or not to Facebook. That is because the Like button is used on so many sites and if the Like button is displayed on a website which you access, they can record that.
Facebook might be well intentioned with this monitoring, i can’t know what they do with this data, but unfortunately there are others on Facebook who can steal your information and use it (sell it) to not so well intentioned people. These are the 3rd party developers who develop applications for Facebook.
You know those little funny apps that ask you a few questions and tell you where you should live, or what historical leader you match with or what were you in an earlier life. These applications when you launch them first time (pay attention!) ask you to allow them access to your data. This data can be your email address or even your personal profile information or friend list. These funny little applications have a viral spread and this way the developer has access to millions of personal profiles of Facebook users.
So i would be careful what applications i allow to access my profile information
Is it the beginning of the end for Facebook ?
Empires come and go. Every empire, application or company have a rise, a peak and a decline. It seems that Facebook’s decline is already started:
Here’s a sad statistic: Facebook users spend 23 hours of every month browsing the website. That’s 500 million people staring at a computer screen as a social network swallows up 700 billion minutes of their time. Shouldn’t they all get a life?
The bad news for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 27-year-old billionaire creator, is that many people are doing just that. They’re using Facebook less, or leaving it altogether – which is known, would you believe it, as “Facebook suicide”.
Figures show that 100,000 British users deactivated their accounts during May, reducing the total number to 29.8 million. And six million logged off for good in the United States. What started off as an exclusive online social club at Harvard University has saturated Western society. (source: Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook)
So, i’m not a social media expert but i can tell you that the fate of Myspace will not be avoided by Facebook. It will not disappear, but it will be less important and much less used. Of course this will happen in time, right now it just starts to gain traction in underdeveloped countries. But in marketing the most important people are the ones with the big pockets, and these aren’t in underdeveloped countries but in more developed nations which just start quitting this service.
In the end
Everything i wrote here are my interpretations of certain facts, so these are my opinions. You should not take for granted any opinion. You should double check, you should form an opinion of yourself and you should share this opinion. But be careful where you share it. Because it might not be your content anymore after you have shared it.
About myself i can tell that i will use Facebook, Twitter (and others) less in the future, probably i will redirect the RSS feed of my blog there. So if you are curious what happened to me lately, drop me a call, write me an email or visit my personal blog.