Google +1 is much easier to install and get working with minimal change.

There’s full documentation listed here, Google +1 Documentation, but to summarize what the Google blog post is about.

Add this code to your section

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Then wherever you want a +1 button, add the following code

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

There are a few changes you can make to this snippet to make it do different things.

Currently I have 2 +1 buttons on this page (1 for the main site under my domain name, and one for this particular blog post, next to the title). This is very simple to do, you add a href to the above snippet detailed below.

<g:plusone href="http://www.mywebsite.com.au/mypage.html"></g:plusone>

If you don’t include a href then it will default to the URL in the browser.

You can change the sizes of the button just as easily, the full list of sizes available is here, but they range from 24px by 15px to 105px by 24px, so there will be a +1 button that will fit your website’s needs.

In the meantime, get +1ing! err Plusing! .. Plus?

(What we’re going to call it?)

Like most other things spawned by the internet, this will probably be passed off as something trivial and not important, but if we take the time and care to look at it, by showing this almost pseudocode to complete novices they quickly begin to grasp the idea of syntax, and language and how to build proper web pages or applications.

I’m not suggesting that those of us who are adept in other languages such as PHP,ASP,The various flavours of C to switch, but when trying to explain variables or loops to complete beginners, which of these is easier to understand?

PHP

for ($i = 0; $i<10;$i++) {
echo $i;
}

LOLCODE

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP
UP VAR!!1
VISIBLE VAR
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHX
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE


Use LOLCODE to teach the basic concepts then simply switch to another of the more “adult” languages and the abilities should transfer over. The down shot of this is that LOLCODE may in fact take off, in which case I look forward to ending all my scripts with KTHXBYE.

LOLCODE and full documentation is from http://lolcode.com/ and if you want further information then you can check out Wikipedia’s article here LOLCODE

The WordPress Super Cache plugin (if one forgets about it), can cause all sorts of development problems. In any case, the work’s been done , so begin liking!

Firstly, to make sure your tweaks are having a positive effect on your pages load time, it’s important to know where your starting from. I personally recommend using the Firebug Plugin with the Google Page Speed add-on to measure your web pages performance.

This gives you an exact breakdown of how long each element of your webpage takes to download to the browser. It also has a recommendations section to help you improve the load time a site.

A useful website to measure your site speed is the following http://www.whatsmyip.org/http_compression/ (This only tests GZIP compression but it is essential to increasing your site’s speed).

This site’s results: Gzip Compression for www.sataris.com.au

As you can see this very site is serving GZIP content and the savings are huge!

Whilst there are a myriad of plugins that have been built for WordPress & Twitter integration I’ve settled for a more elegant solution with twitterfeed.

using the RSS feed to post updates to twitter is an ingenius solution as the current offering of plugins is a little thin.

I any case if you want to be notified when the blog is updated you can subscribe to the RSS Feed or you can follow @sataris

I started to use subversion a few days ago after finally giving in to peer pressure and curiosity. After a few problems with getting Dreamweaver, Subversion (via Wandisco) and TortoiseSVN to cooperate. (With alot of help from this article on the Adobe Devnet (Using Subversion with Dreamweaver CS5, if you’re are using Devnet then feel free to look me up! my DevNet profile), subversion is now running in all it’s glory.

There may be some raised eyebrows asking why you would use subversion when you are the only developer but SVN has some great features that make it well worth the “You’re collaborating with yourself” jokes that may get thrown your way.

Revisions

Revisions are the core of why Subversion is a great utility. Many wonder why bother with SVN, but as a new convert (Thanks mainly to @peter_dimo) I can’t sing it’s praises enough. being able to traverse the development of a project from Production back to version 0.1a and being able to see the evolution of the project, of the code and being able to develop accordingly will give you as a developer a greater freedom to be creative and try new blocks of code withour worrying about the consequences if it fails (I highly suggest using a development or staging server rather than a production site) but if you want to live on the edge then go for it (You’ll always be able to revert back to the working version if it all goes awry).

This is by far the greatest benefit of using SVN. If you’re wondering why you’re latest version of a website or application is no longer working correctly, you can revert back to a previous working edition and you can compare the two revisions to find the problem. (A good tool for this is WinMerge (found here) If you’re using OSX then you can use Meld.

If you’re not using Subversion I suggest you at least give it a try. I’m confident that when you begin using it you’ll never look back!

In my initial setup with Thunderbird I’ve noticed many more cons than pro’s and these vary from usability to lack of features.
This seems to be a very unfinished application, in order to bring thunderbird to an acceptable software solution you must install a myriad of addons (available from Thunderbird Addons) to perform tasks that are present in virtually every piece of software since 1998.

Con #1: Minimize to Tray
Is missing from the default thunderbird, There are of course many addons that you can install to implement this, but why? Why would you create an application that usually will be running for hours at a time (like the normal office working hours) without this ability?
Minimize to Tray Plus offers a way to have thunderbird act in a way it should have from the beginning.

Con #2: Sort by Date
To be fair thunderbird can sort by date, it just doesn’t remember it every time you open it. Unlike Minimize to tray this option can be edited through the Thunderbird config file (which requires some know-how) to operate; And even then it doesn’t effect folders that you’ve already created. You’ll have to delete the mdf files for the respective folders to have this take effect. (Did you understand that? exactly it’s retarded to the point where I’m leaning towards Outlook)

Con #3: Lack of Calendar
Maybe its the years of using Outlook at the office which has made my expectations of what an e-mail client should be, and did MS Deliver, however as I said before Addons make up what makes Firefox great and it’s the same for Thunderbird and the Lighting addon (Lightning) adds a fantastic calendar to Thunderbird. I just wish this was part of the default Thunderbird.

Pro #1: Open-Source
This almost makes up for everything that I dislike about Thunderbird, It’s open-source, it’s free and it’s this that allows the thousands of developers and thousands of addons for thunderbird to be developed so you ca customize it to what you want it to be (much like FireFox).

That concludes this initial part of my Thunderbird review (I’m sure there will be much more Pro’s as I continue to use it) This has just been my experience setting it up and having to act like I want.

If you’ve setup Thunderbird and have issues with it or great addons that make it that much better, let us know in the comments!

The local business results (The little map with the listings) appear sporadically in google search results for location based searches (and sometimes for general terms). Great debates have raged over if these listings are actually ben meficial to the webmasters listed or is it simply an experiment by Google to see how much “Universal” results is too much for users.

There has been no mention of this on the Analytics blog, so it may be a new feature that’s being rolled out, and frankly it’s about time. The click through’s and impressions that we could access before are useful in the same way that a fuel guage that only tells you if it’s full or empty. The more accurately you can measure what drives people to your site the more effective your landing page.

It’s a bright day for analytics freaks and those who actually know what they’re doing online!

“Ah, distinctly I remember, it was  in the bleak December”. As I so often do, I refer to Egar Allen Poe to illustrate my point. Given the following what date is it?

12/5/10

The answer depends largely on where you are from as there are 3 date formats used around the world

DD/MM/YY: (Used in Europe & Oceania) would make the above the 12th May 2010

MM/DD/YY: (Used in the US) would make it the 5th of December 2010

YY/MM/DD: (Used in Japan) would make it the 10th of May 2012

All of these are correct depending on where your visitor is from, so it makes sense to make this as straightforward as possible.

You will notice that this blog does not provide Dates for posts/updates as I feel my posts have a certain timeless quality, but a more accurate reason would be I haven’t had the time to implement them yet.

When I do implement them you can be certain there will be no mistaking what date a post was made, the simple and elegant “May 12th 2010″ is not open to interpretation. If you can make your users not have to think about the little details you can almost gurantee they will enjoy the rest of their experience with your website.