Buster Collings » News & Media

California IOU’s are Dumb and Dumber

Buster — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:36:06 +0000

California’s state government is the poster child for how NOT to run a state. They’re printing up their own currency nowadays in the form of IOU’s. The smart banks are refusing to accept them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GSXbgfKFWg

Slingbox SlingPlayer iPhone App is Available for $29.99

Buster — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:53:03 +0000

the much anticipated slingbox iphone app has been published in the itunes store. but somewhat to my suprise it’s not a free app for slingbox owners. it’s currently listed for $29.99. the iphone slingplayer is now the most expensive iphone app i’ve paid for; i guess in a few weeks or months i’ll know if it’s worth it, right now i’m not happy that i had to pay for it.

the bad: it only operates on wi-fi, no doubt an at&t restriction. as a u-verse cable customer, the app doesn’t have a remote feature for the “ok” button. there is an “enter” button which acts much like the “ok” button when typing in channel numbers, but the big problem is that when i connect to my u-verse cable box and it’s not active on you must hit the “ok” button to bring up the guide and/or channels. when you hit the “enter” key on the sling iphone app without a number it alerts you to select a valid number… no bueno (PROBLEM SOLVED, SEE UPDATE). the biggest bad is the price it should’ve been free, or least a lot cheaper. i wouldn’t even complain if it was $4.99.

the good: video and audio quality are good. slick and intuitive interface.

funny thing is i just happened to discover the slingplayer iphone app was out on my own, but randomly logging into the app store on my iphone.. instead of being alerted by slingmedia.. why did i sign up for the email alert?? maybe it went into my spam folder.. o well.

here’s the official slingmedia info page about the >> slingbox iphone app

UPDATE: the tech support folks at Sling were quick to resolve this issue for me.. it’s just taken me a while to post this update but better late than never. check it >> iphone slingplayer missing remote buttons

diggbar – better than tinyurl

Buster — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:44:40 +0000

digg might have been crazy for not selling out to Google or any other suitors by now, but they are continuing to develop. i personally feel that digg is a more likely business to return real dollar bills back to investors than twitter. sorry, i’ll use twitter while it’s free but i think that’s short lived unless Google eventually buys them and continues the give-it-away-because-we-can-afford-too model of.. cough cough business.

more to the point, the diggbar is better than tinyurl.com. digg has taken the tinyurl idea to another level. they’ve turned it into a sticky service which completely compliments their core service of promoting popular content. too bad for the tinyurl folks they didn’t come up with this sooner. but heck if they’re just slightly lucky Micro$oft might come along and offer tinyurl a quarter billion bucks (i think that’s how they do things over there nowadays).

so here’s how it works

Google Lengthens Snippets, But The Meta Description Still Important

Buster — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:33:54 +0000

So recently Google officially released longer snippets on search results. There has been some chatter about this depreciating the value of the meta description. I have to play spoiler here and say I disagree.

The extended snippet stuff is great for long tail queries, like the many that I do when looking for programming information. Yet I don’t think it changes the importance of the meta description tag, especially for shorter search phrases.

Short snippets indicate tighter keyword proximity within the optimization of content; more precisely what the searcher is looking for. Longer snippets are only displayed when the keyword proximity is wider, therefore the content might not be precisely what the search is looking for, so that the searcher can better determine if the content on each page might have what they’re searching for.

Here’s some examples of tight keyword proximity within the content of the ranked pages, resulting in mostly short snippets:

“asp.net response.cookie expiration”

“Austin rodeo tickets”

Here’s some examples of loose keyword proximity within the content of the ranked pages, resulting in many long snippets:

“asp.net response.cookie expiration not working”

“can i watch the austin rodeo on tv”

So I stand by my opinion that body content and title tag are equally the best places to optimize for keywords and phrases to increase rankings, while the meta description is the best place to encourage a click through.

Garmin Phone, Real iPhone Rival?

Buster — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:50:04 +0000

google android? no, garmin nuvifone. that’s right garmin, a long time maker of consumer gps products is near releasing their new smartphone, iphone contender called nuvifone. since the 2nd generation iphone was released with true gps capabilities i have been waiting for garmin to release an iphone app specifically to step up the value of the gps feature of the iphone. i guess my wait was in vain as it seems that garmin has chosen to put its efforts in competing head on with the iphone rather than settling for ‘the most useful iphone app ever’. i gotta say, it’s not gonna be an easy battle… the iphone is pretty slick with many many many features. but, i wish garmin the best of luck and i’ll be keeping an eye on their product line.

learn more about garmin phones (G60 & M20) at the official site.