Mickey Mellen
We love Google Chrome. While we keep a wide variety of browsers installed on our computers for testing purposes, we all use Google Chrome virtually 100% of the time. It’s fast, stable and secure, and it comes with a rapidly growing set of “extensions”. Extensions are Google’s word for “plugins”; a way to make Chrome more useful for you. There are thousands of extensions to choose from, but below are some of our favorites. A great thing about Chrome is that if you’re logged into your Google Account in the browser settings, all of the extensions are automatically synced across all of your computers. Buffer Buffer is a great app for sending content to your social networks. You can toss a bunch of stuff at it while you’re reading, and it will slowly “buffer” them out for you over the course of the day. This extension gives you one-click access […]
Read MoreGoogle has been around for 15 years, and while they are continually updating their algorithm we’ve been continually updating the way we search. A popular trend that we showed you five years ago was the increasing length of search queries; as people became more familiar with search engines, they began to know what to search for with less trial-and-error. For example, in the early days of Google you might have searched the following sequence of queries when searching for a car: used car used ford car used ford mustang used ford mustang atlanta These days, most people jump directly to item #4 because they understand how to get the results they’re after. Siri and Google Now With the introduction of high-quality voice input via Siri and Google Now (and even Microsoft’s Cortana), our style of search is changing once again. With voice input via Google Glass, Android Wear and (presumably) […]
Read MoreToday in Georgia we have a handful of runoff elections, and our phones have been ringing off the hook with robocalls from some of the tighter races. The two men running for the Senate, Jack Kingston and David Perdue, have each robocalled our house more than a dozen times. It’s crazy. The problem is that a phone call, by nature, is requesting our attention right now. The various types of communication break down about like this: Snail mail If you send someone a letter in the mail, you’re saying “I want your attention sometime in the next few days“. I’m certainly not a fan of junk snail mail, but it’s a minor annoyance at worst. Email If you send someone an email, you’re saying “I want your attention sometime in the next few hours“. Granted, some people take days to respond to an email, but I think the expectation is […]
Read MoreWordPress is preparing to launch version 4.0 on August 13, 2014. The first beta versions are already available for testing. Despite the major version number, this is not a major update. For WordPress, it appears that changes to the left of the decimal point aren’t as significant as they are elsewhere; however, future updates show how WordPress has become a platform, rather than an application. InfoWord’s Tech Watch blogger, Serdar Yegulalp, describes WordPress like this: Originally just a blogging system, WordPress has grown into an entire site-publishing solution courtesy of its third-party developers. Aside from the thousands of easily interchanged themes available for WordPress, its library of plug-ins can turn it into everything from a discussion board engine to an e-commerce solution. Consequently it’s now considered a viable replacement for other content-management and site-architecting solutions, from Zen Cart to Drupal. Geeksided.com blogger, Jacob Long adds, Self-hosted WordPress blogs make up over 60% of all websites […]
Read MoreYesterday I picked up an LG G Watch, one of the first devices featuring the new “Android Wear” software. It’s a rather plain-looking device, but the software on it is phenomenal. If you’re unfamiliar with Android Wear, this short video from Google gives a nice overview of what you can expect: I’ve been using a Pebble watch for the past few months, so the idea of a smartwatch isn’t new to me, but Android Wear takes it to a whole new level. Last year I explained why I felt the Droid Maxx was the best smartphone around, and I think it still takes the crown, but Android Wear really changes the game. In particular, it makes two of the best features on the Droid Maxx become rather inconsequential: Active Notifications: The “active notifications” on the Droid Maxx are great, but rather unnecessary when I’m getting all of my notifications (or […]
Read MoreIn most industries, a bit of extra effort (or even simply nominal effort) can go a long way. While it can apply in a variety of different areas, I see it most often in real estate. My first big experience with it was three years ago when I took my family to the beach. There were a lot of houses for sale, but none that seemed to put any effort into providing information to potential buyers. The “take info” boxes were all empty, none had custom URLs, and QR codes weren’t even being considered. It was quite sad. QR code to nowhere I was reminded of this during a family walk a few nights ago. A house not too far from ours was for sale, and we were curious about the details of it. They had a QR code, so I figured that would be a great way to see […]
Read MoreI’ve been playing various versions of the “Madden” football video game since 1992, and it’s been great! In late 2000, Sony released the PlayStation 2 and one of the first games released for it was “Madden 2001” — and it was amazing. The graphics were much more realistic than any football game in history, and the animations were buttery smooth. The Kickoff Things looked so good, that EA Sports (who developed the game) made sure to show them off at every turn. A prime example was the kickoff animation. At the start of each game, after halftime, and after every score, one of the teams kicks off. The animation that led to the kickoff was really cool, but quite complex. Here’s what it looked like: The problem was that every game would have around 15 scoring plays, making the game roughly 2-1/2 minutes longer simply because of this animation. If […]
Read MoreThere are a lot of misconceptions in this world. Should you shake a Polaroid picture to make it develop more quickly? No. Is the “getting millions for spilling hot coffee on yourself” lawsuit an example of our legal system gone crazy? Our legal system may be a mess, but in that case I think she deserved even more. Another one we hear a lot is that “Google is always changing the rules”, which isn’t true. Google very rarely changes the rules, but they’re simply becoming better at enforcing the rules. Google has always maintained that everything you do should be for the benefit of the user, and that hasn’t changed. The difference is that shady practices (cloaked text, buying spammy links, etc) used to work fairly well, but Google is getting better and better at detecting and penalizing those techniques. Click here to check. If you look at the list […]
Read MoreThere are over 31,635 WordPress plugins in the WP Directory. The GreenMellen team joined up with the All Things WordPress Meet-up and worked up a list of our favorites, along with some tips for choosing the best for your site. Choosing a plugin Google considers site speed as part of its complicated algorithm for search rank. Plugins are mini programs and as such, they can be large and slow down your site’s overall speed. Advice: load as few as you can, and remove what you don’t need. How do you determine the quality of a plugin? Here are a few guidelines: Verify that the plugin you’re considering is compatible up to the current version of Wordpress. Double check that the plugin’s last update is relatively recent. The number of downloads can be indicative of good plugin (or a very old one). Ratings – higher is better. Recommended Plugins Think of our recommendations as a […]
Read MoreOn Tuesday, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, announced via Twitter that Google was pushing out their updated Panda Algorithm, code-named Panda 4.0. Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today. — Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014 It’s a statement to strike fear into the heart of anyone who relies on organic visits from Google for their business. And, it’s no surprise that marketers and retailers are concerned, given the impact some sites have experienced in just three days of the Panda rampage. Searchmetrics shared their Winners and Losers list showing significant ranking drops from major retailers like eBay, Retailmenot and Payday Loans. It’s not bad news for everyone — and in fact, good news for most online businesses that feature original content. The Panda algorithm was designed to remove low-quality content from Google’s search results. If a site contains a lot of duplicate content (like eBay’s auctions), it […]
Read MoreWordPress will be turning 11 soon, but tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of when I first tried it out. My original blog post is no longer available, but via the wayback machine I found my first post about WordPress, on May 24, 2004. With all of the talk about Movable Type’s new licensing scheme, there’s been a lot of talk about other blogging options. After reading a lengthy thread on SlashDot, I decided to give WordPress a try. The main reasons for that was because it was rather highly recommended by a number of people, and it’s in PHP. Being in PHP, it’ll be easier for me to apply hacks and upgrades to the system. I’ve already installed two hacks (sort of combined into one) that help a great deal. It’s taken a bit of work to get them to play together nicely. I took the WYSI-WordPress hack (which makes […]
Read MoreGoogle+ released two promising new updates this week: Stories and Movies. Stories: Users’ photos and videos automatically combine to create a slick timeline of your travels. Google’s Director of Product Management, +Anil Sabharwal describes Stories like this: No more sifting through photos for your best shots, racking your brain for the sights you saw, or letting your videos collect virtual dust. We’ll just gift you a story after you get home. This way you can relive your favorite moments, share them with others, and remember why you traveled in the first place. Not all Stories are created equal… I found some hilariously bad stories filled with pictures of my latest manicure and crazy selfies of my kids. Sometimes you get lucky, which I did on my newly discovered auto Story from England… Movies: Remember those cool, end-of-the-year videos that showed up in your Google+ gallery? Movies will now […]
Read MoreAli and I are excited to be heading to speak at the Georgia chapter of URISA (Urban and Regional Information Systems Association). We’ll be speaking about using WordPress with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and how to make the most of connecting it with systems such as Google Maps. Given my work with Google Earth Blog and our extensive use of WordPress here at GreenMellen, it should be a great fit. Our slides can be found here: What are some of your favorite geo-related plugins for WordPress?
Read MoreGmail celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, and it was ten years ago today that I finally was able to get my own account and start using it (it was difficult to get an “invitation” to it for a while). As of today, my personal Gmail account has 242,458 messages in in, and certainly many thousands of other messages that have been deleted over the years. Beyond that, we use Google Apps (business branded Gmail) for our email here at GreenMellen and a have around 20,000 messages in there. I’ve talked about Gmail quite a bit over the years, and felt today would be a good chance to revisit some of the reasons that we think Gmail is so great. My main love for Gmail lies in its ability to help keep my inbox clean. Despite hundreds of thousands of messages in there, my actual inbox often is completely empty […]
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