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Another one too good to be missed, Top Gear’s Audi RS4 review.

And apparently there will be an RS4 Avant version. Nice!

dc

No, not that watered down version for us in America on Discovery channel, the entire BBC episode, without commercial interruption, is on… Google Video of course!

Top Gear Season Seven, Episode 1. Great comparo of the Aston V8 Vantage, BMW M6 (God it’s ugly!), and the Porsche Carrera S. Naturally, they’re tested in the pissing down, pouring rain, at the Isle of Man. Reminds me of the Oregon coast really.

No need to suffer through the American Music Awards tonight. Let your wife enjoy that rubbish in peace and quiet, and retire instead to the office for an hour of Top Gear!

dc

Nah, not really. Well I don’t think so anyway.

A week ago, I was in the top ten results for ‘Dan Crouch’, ‘Daniel Crouch’, and those terms plus ‘blog’. All of the sudden, my site is completely missing from Google! What could have caused it?

A little research reveals that it’s probably called the Freshbot Effect. Apparently it’s very common for a new site to get listed very high artificially and then disappear while the ‘true’ value is determined by algorithm. Doing a search on my URL returns absolutely nothing, which means the site is currently not even indexed on their servers — a sure sign of Freshbot apparently.

To get it back, I’ll need more traffic and more inbound links. In addition, keeping fresh content should also be of benefit. I just wonder how long it will take.

Additional Google Search Result tips.

dc

DevgroupNW hosted David McFarland to demonstrate the new noteworthy features of Dreamweaver 8. David is the author of many Dreamweaver books titled ‘The missing manual’. I can see why, he knows the in’s and out’s better than anyone I’ve seen.

Dreamweaver 8 highlights:

- In the code view window, you can collapse code segments. Especially useful with complicated template headers that won’t get modified, leaving just the relevant section to edit.

- Guides in design view. Similar in functionality to those found in Photoshop and Illustrator, these will prove very handy in lining up div segments. And yes, there is a snap to features as well.

- Dreamweaver can now link to external stylesheets. This allows the user to code a page for an existing site’s stylesheet during construction. I’ll bet it’d be especially handy for those Zen Garden authors/adopters.

- .css support is better, but not great. At least all the .css specific functions are located in their own pane now.

- David demonstrated the advanced search and replace features that Dreamweaver supports. Although not necessarily a new feature, I hadn’t seen the tool used with such prowess before. The example he used was for stripping font tags from a 10,000 page website and referencing the .css sheet instead. The conditional search and replace with 3 levels of conditional logic was impressive!

- Dreamweaver 8 supports PHP 5, which OSU will be getting in the spring.

- XSLT support for XML documents/feeds. This was very cool and he demonstrated just how easy it is in design view by adding feeds to his demonstration website in about 5 minutes. I’ll be trying this functionality out soon on my index page.

- fyi to me, David mentioned that Flash installations are much higher Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime. Makes sense after I thought about it.

dc

Let’s skip to the end on this review: Solid 5 stars from this amateur reviewer

We were down in Eugene to toast our friends Paul and Heather on their recent home purchase. They suggested Cafe Lucky Noodle.

The cafe doesn’t take reservations, and admittedly we showed up about 8:30pm, so we had a bit of a wait. Being a Friday it was quite busy, but it was well worth the wait — and the bartender took good care of us in the lobby while we were waiting. The restaurant is quite cozy with minimal lighting and great music, and we felt comfortable even before we were shown to our table. And once we were seated for dinner, I was treated to possibly the best filet mignon I’ve ever had. It was one of their specials for the evening served with risotto, and it was perfect. Service was attentive for a place that was packed, and for six people to eat, drink, and tip, $300 was a bargain.

I can’t wait to go back!

dc

Announced yesterday, Google Web Analytics is now free! Considering we were looking at Urchin previously, this should be interesting.

And according to this blog entry, it’s free for up to 5 million page views!

dc

{A brief citation of articles related to business blogging. Enjoy! -dc }

Business Blogging for Beginners – Fast Company

“Creating a business blog is a lot like hosting a cocktail party: You’re networking with customers in a low-pressure setting and, at best, nurturing great relationships.”

Blogs will change your business – Business Week.

“It’s time for a frank talk. And no, it can’t wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don’t even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there’s plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that’s sick in our society today, and it’s on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business — including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)”

The Bottom Line on Business Blogs – Entrepreneur

“So how do blogs fit into a business? They can be used in several different ways. Many companies use them for communication and collaboration among distributed colleagues, partners, suppliers, customers and others. That’s the most popular use. My personal favorite is that they also can be used as a unique, informal way to establish a company or individual’s reputation or brand. Other businesses use them to improve operations (like for project management or tech support knowledge-sharing), to demonstrate expertise (useful for professional services businesses) and to establish competitive differentiation. Blogs let companies reach out to value chain members with organizational news, marketing promotions, new product announcements and more. “

“Blogs can really give a company substantial business benefits:

· They’re cheap, easy to launch and don’t require HTML expertise.

· They make working in groups easier, are community-builders and can be more inclusive (and interesting!) than e-mail.

· They strengthen internal and external business relationships and improve productivity through interactive information exchange.

· They’re not intrusive, since users have to seek out a URL to read the content.

· They improve branding by presenting a more authentic and distinctive voice for a business than canned PR or MarCom messaging.

· They’re more searchable than e-mail and instant messaging, so they’re effective as an information or knowledge-base archive.”

How Blogs Pertain to You – iMedia

“Many businesses and publishers are still trying to figure out “blogs,” wondering if they should have a blog and what they should blog about. That’s probably a mistake. What they ought to be trying to understand is bloggers and blog readers.

It’s probably not wise to generalize about something as amorphous as the Blogosphere, but here goes: the Blogosphere is a place for people who want a more personal relationship with various entities they deal with on a regular basis — corporate, government, media, you name it. They want to have a sense of a person behind or within the enterprise. They are looking for something or somebody real.”

When a business shouldn’t blog – Business Blog Consulting

“Imagine two opticians. One says “I take care of eyes. There’s lots of medical info on eyes out there, so my Web site will be a digital brochure, and that’s good enough for me” while the other says “I get the same questions from every patient, and there’s so much confusing information online, I’m going to try and shed some light on eye care and eye health by writing about it. But not with a newsletter, how 90s!, but with a blog.”

Now, a slight aside: I believe that the future of business is findability, and if your business doesn’t appear when your potential customer looks for you online, you’ll eventually wither and die. Given that, you can guess which optician I think is going to be more successful in 24 months.”

Recently inspired by this thread on the Vortex about panoramas, I decided to give it a shot myself.

Swear to God, in less than 20 minutes, I downloaded the ArcSoft Panorama Maker trial software, installed it, went outside and set up the tripod (overkill), took the pictures, downloaded them onto the computer from the camera, and then let Panorama Maker 3 do it’s magic.

Here’s my first attempt as a compressed .jpeg. It has some obvious flaws in it, but you can see the potential. If I took a few more pictures with more overlap, it would’ve been much better. I only used 6. And with a subject that’s more interesting than our scrappy backyard, results should be better in future attempts. (And yes, we still haven’t painted over the masterpiece entitled Millie.)

Not impressed yet? Well check out the backyard Flash movie (gasp!) and QuickTime {oops, no links… The QuickTime is 60m and the flash is 12m. Sorry!}. For a trial version of the software, that’s a pretty cool feature to throw in.

Two thumbs up for Panorama maker!

dc

The road to the top is only open for another few weekends, so I decided to ignore crappy weather and hit Mary’s Peak this afternoon. Plus I was watching track videos last night and was needing to let the BMW sing a bit.

A fun drive, but it’s a little dicey with the wet road, leaves, pine needles — and freezing rain!

dc

“Phase one development will include a road course of approximately 2.6 miles in length, 15 turns and an abundance of elevation change. The support structures include garages, timing and scoring tower, turn stations, grandstands, maintenance buildings, and offices. Potential users include the Sports Car Club of America, International Conference of Sports Car Clubs, Oregon Motorcycle Road Racing Association, Portland Karting Association and numerous other sports car clubs, motorcycle clubs, government agencies and media production companies.” Full article on Oregon Raceway Park at motorsport.com.

Official Oregon Raceway Park website. (Possibly the crapiest new website I’ve seen recently btw…)

dc