automaticable

That’s right people.  Kyle Wegner, everyday SEO and automaticable contributor, is internationally famous.  How is this possible, you ask?  Well, the image you see in this post was used by a fellow named Martin Menu in a presentation in France last week.  The conference he presented at was called the Atlassian User Group, which you can find more information about here (site in French).  In the presentation he not only included my image, but a By: line, so my name has now been recognized internationally.

The reason I know about this is because Martin contacted me and asked permission to use the image I created.  Though the image has been realeased under the Creative Commons Licence (with some restrictions), I really appreciated him asking whether he could use it or not.  The internet is such a free for all with people stealing other people’s work, and it is nice to know that some people still respect the hard work people put into their art.

If the presentation ever gets put online and Martin follows up with me with the link, I’ll definitely be posting it here.  Until then, just know that a group of people on the Champs Elysees saw my RSS image and name during some conference on June 19th. 

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Many of us at automaticable downloaded the all-new Firefox 3 we helped to announce yesterday.  For those of you that haven’t, you can still install the fastest browser in the world by clicking here.  Anyone who did download on June 17th, however, has something to be proud of. You were 1 of more than 8 million downloads that occurred, easily placing Firefox in the Guinness Book of World Records for the single day download record.

Anyone who participated (ok, and wannabe’s too) can get an official personalized Firefox 3 download day certificate! As you can see, I’ve already downloaded mine and am proudly displaying it here on automaticable. Get yours now!

Happy Download day everyone! This is an exciting thing on all ends, because not only is this my first techy blog on good ole automaticable, but today is the Firefox 3 Download Day!! There’s many plans going on, the biggest of all, of course, is the ability to pledge to download the new update today, in the next 24 hours, to be apart of the Guinness Book Of World Records 2008! That’s right, with the new release of Mozilla Firefox is trying to have the most downloads in a 24 hour period. When I pledged, just moments ago, there were 1,683,932 other pledges just like mine! So head on over to www.spreadfirefox.com and make your pledge today! While you’re there check out some of the other cool things happening. You can plan an office or school Download Fest where you all meet up on your lunch breaks and download the new Firefox 3, join some of the great Download Day groups on Facebook, or Myspace, or become a campus rep for Firefox! All of these things are very exciting and I want to encourage ALL of our automaticable fans to head on over and make the pledge to download Firefox 3 today and be apart of the magic happening all around the world!

Do you have secure, domain-specific passwords generated by PwdHash? Well, the handy Firefox extension just got an update that brings support for the latest Firefox 3– you can grab it here. This is one of the last extensions that I’ve been waiting for on Firefox 3. What extensions are you still missing?

Just a quick post here, but something I’m very excited about.  Since Google Maps started releasing “Street View” for cities around the US I have been waiting anxiously for them to add Atlanta.  I actually thought it was a bit ridiculous to be queued behind places like Spokane WA and Manchester NH since Atlanta is a fairly large city, but I’m sure there were reasons behind the decision.  Maybe since Atlanta is such a large city and is not on a grid system they figured it would take more effort to actually scour the streets.

Anyway, I was looking up directions today to figure out where to go to pick up my car since it is in the shop and was greeted with camera icons that marked every turn on my trip.  Awesome!  No more having to guess what each obscure twist and turn will look like when I take trips.  For someone as OCD about directions as me, this is great news.  I am always looking for visual cues to let me know I am going in the right direction.

Well, it’s all but confirmed now.  With Firefox 3 download day set to hit any time this month, it looks like the Firefox developers are preparing.  As a result, it appears that the final release of Firefox 3 hit the hardy-proposed repository this morning.  I installed the update, and am running it now.  Check it out:

And you can see the version string through Synapic Package Manager:

The latest in hardy-updates is “3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1″, but this version string is “3.0+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1″, clearly lacking any “release candidate” tag.  Could this be the real deal?  It was probably uploaded in an effort to make sure that Ubuntu users are able to access it in hardy-updates on release day, so they have a better chance at their world record.

If you want to download this pre-release for yourself, all you need to do is enable the hardy-proposed repository:

• Go to System > Administration > Sofware Sources
• Click on the “Updates” tab, and make sure the box for “Unsupported Updates” is checked
• Press “Close”, and let the package manager refresh.

Afterwards, you should see the update icon in your taskbar, with the latest Firefox 3 ready to go! Note, however, that the hardy-proposed repository does contain *unsupported* updates.  To be on the safe side, you should disable it after you install Firefox.

Has anyone else been running Firefox 3 yet?  Have you noticed any differences?  Mine feels a little faster, although that may be due to the fact that a few extensions are still incompatible.

People, I have something very depressing to admit.  I have run out of things to say.  Because of this, automaticable is suffering.  Since when am I opinionless?  I must be getting sick or something.

Someone say something inspiring.  Give me some ammunition here.  Tell me you love Bush, or that I am a Godless heathen.  Talk to me about how gays shouldn’t marry.  Make fun of my lack of style.  Say my music sucks.  Tell me SEO is a scam.

If you don’t want to do all those things, just visit all the links I stuffed into that last paragraph.  That’ll keep you busy while I try to think of something new and awesome to say.

I hope all of you Obamamaniacs were right, because he just pushed Hillary out of the game.

That is all.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a favicon is the icon that rests on the left side of the tabs or navigation bar in your browser that is unique to different websites.  For example, the favicon for automaticable is a red wrench on a black background.  See it?

Earlier today I noticed that my iGoogle page had a new favicon. Instead of the capital G surrounded by Google’s primary (and green secondary) colors, now a blue, lowercase g stands on an opaque background.  For a second I thought my browser had loaded the wrong page, as such a drastic change really threw me off.  The favicon change actually applies to the google.com page as well, so if you do not use iGoogle you can check out the new favicon simply by going to Google search.  Also, if you don’t know or don’t remember what the old Google favicon looked like, Google Blogoscoped has a short story, including an image, of the favicon change.  You can find that story here.

So why do I bring this up?  Well, to me this is a huge branding play by Google.  Their capital G has long represented them as a clear, powerful symbol.  It looks like Google has decided they do not want to have as powerful of a symbol representing their brand, as consumers generally trust super-powerful corporations less than mom & pop shops.  Moving to a lowercase logo has been a trend in the past for companies that want to feel more personal.  The first that comes to mind is AT&T, the once megapowerful telecom provider for the United States, which has recently rebranded themselves with a lower case at&t.  Whether people actually change their feelings about a brand simply through upper case and lower case lettering is a mystery, though I can tell you personally that lower case lettering definitely looks inferior and weak to me.

Is this a good idea for Google, changing from their iconic G symbol to a plain, lower case g?  No, not in my opinion.  I’m sure this favicon change is just a single step in a long-term rebranding campaign for Google, but if they think they are going to be able to position themselves as one of the little guys, I think they are going to have to decentralize the entire company.  There is no way a company with 60%+ market share in their realm (search, here) will ever convince consumers that they are still a small personal company.

Then again, I am just a single consumer that spends a huge part of his day on Google doing SEO work.  Do you think this is a good idea? How do you think something as small as a favicon change will effect things vs. a full branding campaign?

We just added a new Wordpress plugin here on automaticable so you can use OpenID login IDs. If you’re not familiar with OpenID, it’s a framework that allows you to use the same login information on a variety of webpages.  From the OpenID site:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

So what does this mean for you?  Well, if you like to leave comments here, you can claim them with your OpenID login, rather than actually registering for automaticable.  This is convenient if you’re a casual visitor and like to leave comments on a variety of blogs– you can use the same login on any blog that supports OpenID.

If you already have a login on automaticable, you could associate your OpenID login ID with it, and enjoy all the same benefits.  Check out your profile page for details.