So I got these ads on The Search Engine Roundtable but I am having problems with one.

The Google ads have this hidden pixel for DoubleClick tracking purposes. It is a 1x1 pixel. The 1x1 pixel, 3 out of 8 times, messes up the ad layout. What do I mean? Well, when the Google ad is displayed in 3 of the 8 sections, the 1x1 pixel seems to push the other ads down.

Let me illustrate... X marks the spot of the ad location where the 1x1 pixel messes up the other ads. O marks the spots where the 1x1 pixel does NOT mess up the other ads.

X O
X O
X O
O O

If the Google ad is displayed in any of the X positions, then it messes up the other ads. I tried adding display none and absolute to fix the issue, but it did not work.

Any thoughts out there?

Otherwise, I need to have Google send me a different tracking technique - which is doable.

What is with the title? Not sure. I kept thinking... "Messy Pixel" and it reminded me of Trix for some reason.

Posted at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From a coding perspective, this is pretty wild. This guy coded Super Mario in JavaScript. Well, it is not the whole game, but it is a lot of it.

The compressed version of the JS code is 14kb.

Here's an experiment in keepings things small and confined to one Javascript file. There are no external image files or anything, everything is rendered with Javascript using either canvas elements or old fashioned div-making tactics (for IE). The sprites are stored in custom encoded strings in a format that only allows 4 colors for each sprite but in turn only takes up around 40-60 bytes per sprite.

We also have MIDI music embedded as base64-encoded data: URI's. No music for IE, though, and it seems all the other browsers each have different, minor problems with it, but it sort of works.

Pretty crazy, play one version over here or check his blog for other sizes and versions.

Posted at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A RustyBricker sent this to me, Browsershots. It basically asks you for a web address and then it will capture screen captures of your site in dozens and dozens of browsers with dozens of operating systems and dozens of other variables like screen resolutions.

The Search Engine Roundtable doesn't look too bad in Epiphany 2.20 / Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) or Iceweasel 2.0.0.10 / Debian 4.0 (Etch).

I think the CSS needs some help in MSIE 5.5 / Windows 2000, don't you?

Very neat and useful tool to leave you with before my flight.

Posted at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many of you know I live in the wonderful world of web programming. Yea, 90% or more of our (RustyBrick) monies come from building out web based applications for specific needs. Along with that comes writing software that bills, charges, refunds, etc money from users automatically.

Now, as you read this, and seeing the title of the post, you might think that RustyBrick coded something that blew up and cost someone or several hundred people $7,500,000. No, we did't. But I can point fingers and say this guy did.

And I quote:

It turns out due to my excessively fat fingers, nearly every one of our customers has been seriously over-billed in the last 12 hours.

Yea, he billed over 10,000 customers a total of $7,500,000 in 12 hours. How so. Well, I would summarize but if you read his blog post, I am sure it will be more enjoyable for you. Especially, if you are a coder.

Posted at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the RB'ers told me they have been using DejaClick, a Firefox extension, for automating test scenarios on the web sites.

Basically, you have the tool record your clicks and actions. You then save that to a file and you can play it again. For example, if I want to make sure my contact us form works, I can run a test scenario for it and play it over again when I want to run the test. It saves time. Here is a video that shows it in action:

So you can set this up to make sure certain features work on a site after you make coding changes. This tool will be heavily used here.

Posted at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Shawn Hogan at DigitalPoint Forums explained some of the trouble server people have to go through with servers and hardware breaking. Oh, how I can relate.

I am exhausted...

Sequence of events...

The cluster lost one of the blades today for the first time ever (this blade is the 2nd master DB server). The primary master writes everything to the 2nd master, then the 2nd master replicates out to all the slaves (read only access). Something happened with mysqld before, but this time it was a hardware issue.

I screw with it remotely as best I can. Once I figure out it's a hardware problem, I go to data center.

The blade is on, but not able to be pinged. Okay.... let's just power cycle it.

Weird, the power button doesn't work on the blade.

Check the full post... Sorry Shawn!

Posted at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I like to introduce new software we built here at RustyBrick. It is called RustyBudget, in short it allows bloggers and authors to easily manage the stories they want to write about at their blogs or publishing sites.

Duncan Riley did an excellent write up on it.

RustyBudget is essentially “a writers or editors budget”, where a blog owner and blog writers can manage story leads, including author allocation, story notes and overall task management.

Why did I build it? Because I spend a ton of time blogging and managing the topics that should be covered at the blogs I write at. As many of you know, I write at both the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. Both blogs are extremely active in terms of traffic and the number of posts we write each day. On both blogs, I help manage what topics we cover and what we don't cover. We manage which authors writes what and what stories they should bring in with it. As you can imagine, the larger the blog, the more authors the more topics, the more confusing things may get.

This software helps organize these tasks and also helps the task more efficient. And efficiency is something I am all about. So initially we built something internally, and then built it out to make it for anyone.

Some people don't like the colors, which is not a big deal, because you can customize the look and we are planning on adding an API. But the bottom line is, that without this tool, I would be spending a heck of a lot more time managing the blogs as opposed to writing at the blogs.

I made a quick intro video on how it works:

For additional demos, go here.

It is free for anyone to use. We only charge if you invite three authors or more to collaborate with you. And then it only costs $4/user/month.

Please let me know your thoughts. We can add features as you see fit.

Posted at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , RustyBrick , Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For some reason, whenever I go to Reuters.com, my processor spikes.

I asked Ronnie why. He said there is a piece of code on the site that is running in some type of loop.

Don't you think this would have been fixed by now. It has been happening to my Safari browser for well over a week.

Try it on any article, here is an example. You may notice that your computer begins to lag while this page is open in Safari and Firefox. I am not sure about Internet Explorer.

Posted at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A Reuters article named Microsoft forges ties with open source maker Zend caught my attention. Zend is the corporation behind the extremely popular web development language PHP, we use it here religiously.

Microsoft and Zend have formed a type of partnership where Microsoft "will ensure PHP programs run on past and future versions of Microsoft Web server software." Andi Gutmans, Zend's co-founder said, "PHP has always worked on Windows. The problem is that it never performed very well." I guess Microsoft gets PHPers to move over from Unix operating systems to Windows OSs.

Posted at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hawaii SEO asked;

Why do you prefer MovableType over WordPress?

So why do I prefer MT over WP?

Honestly, I started blogging years ago and back then, MT was the way to go. WordPress has a lot of good features and a lot of bloggers live by WordPress - so I am sure it rocks. But I have been using MovableType for almost three years now and I am comfortable with it.

If MT stopped upgrading the software, if they stopped adding features, if they stopped supporting it, then I would consider switching. But right now, MT is serving me very well. So I will stick.

Who knows what I would choose if I was to start from scratch now. I have been hearing of many WordPress hacks recently, but I am sure MovableType is not hack free. Who knows...

Posted at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tonight I upgraded all the blogs I manage to version 3.33 of the Movable Type platform. This post is simply to test it out...

3.33 was released on September 26, 2006 as a "required" update.

Today we are releasing required updates for both Movable Type and Movable Type Enterprise to fix a number of vulnerabilities affecting all previous versions of the platform. The current status of our security update process:

• This is a mandatory update due to the severity of the combined vulnerabilities.
• These vulnerabilities were discovered by our own team during a routine security evaluation.
• There are currently no known malicious exploits targeting Movable Type for these issues.
• We will be disclosing full details of the vulnerabilities on our Professional Network blog in a couple of days allowing you to update in the meantime without incurring unnecessary risk.

We are a go! If you see any bugs on any of the blogs, please let me know. Thank you!

Posted at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A common issue web developers and designers have is the ability to check how a particular site renders in different versions of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 7 was just released, many have already upgraded, but there are still people who use Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 5.5, 5.0, 4 and even 3! So it is important you test your site out on multiple versions of IE.

Justin, a RustyBrick'er, informed me and my staff that you can easily do this with a little program by Tredo Soft. The installer contains IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6 to run concurrently with IE7. This installer does it all for you. The installer is at http://tredosoft.com/IE7_standalone with details instructions, step by step.

Known bugs you should be aware of include:

• Sometimes IE5, IE5.5 and IE6 crash unexpectedly.
  
• The address bar in Internet Explorer 4.01 does not work. This is due to a missing file "browseui.dll". If you have that file with version number "4.72.3612.1706" let me know. As a workaround, press CONTROL+O and enter the address you want to visit there.
  
• Microsoft supplemental EULA says : IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID EULA FOR ANY "OS PRODUCT", YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY, OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA.
  
• IE 6 will consistently crash if you drag a URL from the toolbar
  
• Clicking on any bookmark (new, or previously existing), will launch the Print dialogue
  
• (Minor) You get the java error" 'is_browser_supoorted' is undefined on many sites, including gmail.
  
• Sites claim cookies are disabled (particularly gmail), even though I choose "override automatic cookie handling' and accept all cookies [from Internet Options > Privacy > Advanced]
  

Posted at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I can honestly say that I have a more enjoyable time reviewing the web statistics from this site over the Search Engine Roundtable. This site may get a couple to a few hundred visitors per day, whereas the Search Engine Roundtable gets several thousand visitors per day. I can dig through the stats on this site. I can see I got a single referral from David Naylor or 3 search referrals for the keyword phrase scoleciphobia, one from Google.com, one from Google.ca and the other from Comcast Search yesterday. I would never dig that deep into the Search Engine Roundtable stats, it would take hours and hours to review one day of stats.

So I enjoy being able to review the stats of a small site that I run. Of course, I wouldn't give up the traffic I have at the Search Engine Roundtable for anything.

I use Urchin 5.x, as an FYI.

Posted at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When you order something online, they most likely ship it to you via UPS. Sometimes they ship it to you via USPS, the good old government postal service. Now, I have no problems with the service - really. I do have problems with their online tracking system.

Typically I will get the shipment before anything shows up on the track and confirm page at USPS.gov. If at best, I would get a notice that it has been shipped out the day it arrives at my office.

But today, we got a package, that was already marked as delivered, yesterday at 8am in the morning. Ahem, we got it today at 11am. It said, yesterday, that we got it yesterday at 8am.

I just don't understand that one. Maybe it was delivered to the local post office? Who knows...

Posted at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Category: Shopping , Web Development | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

If your browser resets its favorite icon cache, you may notice that I have added a favorite icon to this site. Favorite Icons are always challenging being that they are typically displayed at 16x16 pixels within the tiny URL bar and in your browser bookmarks. More details on the Favorite Icons at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon.

So, I hoped I squeezed a clear representation of this site into that 16x16 space.

If you don't see it yet, this is what it may look like in your browser (downsized to 32KB PNG file).

Posted at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

TechCrunch reports that Amazon went down today at around 12:45PM (EST) and went back up for some about two hours later.

People are trying to guestimate how much money Amazon lost.

Those figures just scare me.

More details at TechCrunch.

Posted at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In order to continue using the Sitepal feature, I have decided to use the API feature to automatically pull the contents I enter into the excerpt of the entry, into the mouth of the Cartoon Barry feature. It addition, we now require you to click the "speak" button or the icon at the top right of each entry to both view and listen to the character do its thing. I have reconstructed some of the past entries, to use this feature. I am sorry about the rss updates, I hate doing that.

Oh, the popup automatically closes when it is done talking...

Posted at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) | Speak

Via /. it appears that "Jani Taskinen, one of the lead developers of the Zend Engine (the engine that powers PHP)" has left due to some political reasons in the community. Check out this message:

Thank you all for the last 6 years or so. It has been fun (sometimes) and many times not so much fun. Unfortunately I have had enough and I don't want to be associated with this project anymore.

I'm sure most people (the ones who matter) can understand why. If someone doesn't, I could not care less. Take care.

Please do not reply to this email.

--Jani

p.s. Delete my CVS account. I have no use for it anymore.

Now that is harsh, very harsh. To give six years of your life, and to feel that your contributions were not noted, well - that would explain such an email. I am sure it is deeper then this.

Posted at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Category: Web Development | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)