Google has come out with a new beta version of their popular Google Toolbar, with some very handy improvements on the old toolbar…

1) Simple API: The term API is almost a misnomer — it literally takes seconds to make one of these. I just can’t resist the urge to make a new one every time I run into new website. A couple of simple steps and voila - a new button’s sitting on your Toolbar (check out the Getting Started Guide).

2) Flexibility: The simple inclusion of RSS & Atom feeds (and particularly allowing the update of toolbar button icons through feeds) has allowed for buttons like a weather button and a mood ring button.

3) Accessibility: Most users don’t even need to make buttons. It takes one click on our buttons gallery or on a website that offers them to install a button for your favorite sites. And the custom buttons we built to search our intranet showed us how valuable a customizable toolbar can be to organizations, so now there’s an enterprise version of Google Toolbar that can be securely deployed across a company.
Link: googleblog.blogspot.com

It’s a pretty nice upgrade, they even setup this library where you can download different buttons to your toolbar if you don’t feel like making your own, you can download it here and enjoy…

Many webmasters ask, what are the true criteria to getting listed in DMOZ?
Well we will venture into some interesting DMOZ stats to find out what they truly like.
Here is a list I found that sorts the top-DMOZ listed sites by number of listings, so let’s see…

If you look at the list closely you may find a few surprises and disappointments, like this one on page 6 rank 2624 with 70 listings…

A pornography site with 70 listings, you may think that’s bad but if you scroll down a bit to 2984, I think you will lose all respect, if you had any, for DMOZ and its system…

Yes, that is right DMOZ believed that a child pornography site deserved not only to be included into directory but to be listed 61 times! I guess in DMOZ’s eyes child pornography was judged 61 times to be completely legal and not at all contradictory to their number one rule, “The Open Directory has a policy against the inclusion of sites with illegal content. Examples of illegal material include child pornography; libel; material that infringes any intellectual property right; and material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence).”

So if you still want to get into DMOZ after this, then you know what to do, otherwise just let them dwindle away.

Google AdSense have raised the heckles of many webmasters by quietly and unexpectedly adding a clause to their referral programme. Basically, to qualify for the $100 referral fee, the person you referred needs to gain their first payment within 90 days of their acceptance. This appeared in the TOS without announcement and has surprised many of us.

Many webmasters new to the programme will struggle to make the limit in the time Google has now imposed. I myself took a year to earn my first payment, and I know one of my referrals didn’t put his ads on the page for a couple of months after signing up. A lot of webmasters have put time and effort into plugging the referral programme and adding it to their sites, and now it seems as though many of us will by caught out by this new rule.

It seems all the more crazy that Google is hurting the very people who help to make their programme what it is. Given the massive growth that Google is experiencing, it seems to be slipping into faceless corporation mode. One can only hope this is not the start of a new trend of taking for granted the very people who help to make it successful. We should vote with our feet, but unfortunately, and I’m sure they know this, the benefits still outweigh the downers, so we’ll soldier on.

Google has done a survey and looked at the web code behind a billion web pages and compiled the results. It makes for some good reading - and covering all sorts of little thoughts about HTML and page elements.

I found it surprising to see how many people used Adobe GoLive for their web authoring uses. I’d have expected to see DreamWeaver up there in first place, but I guess a lot of people find the cost prohibitive. I certainly swear by it though. It was also nice to see the web authoring software I cut my teeth on mentioned, the dreaded NetObjects (that was another lifetime ago). It makes for an interesting read if you find those kind of details interesting - like what I do. ;)

One thing that webmasters forget is that if you are at the core of a website or blog, you need to be motivated - everyday.

Yes SEO, link development, and traffic are all important and I am in no way trying to diminish the methods that webmaster’s use to get a website out there, but we often overlook how much the author’s motivation plays a role in a website.

Read on …

It’s been quite some time since I’ve last visited Google Earth. I didn’t really have a reason to since MapQuest seems to work as well for me as always. Google Earth was a great new thing for me when it first came out, but the immediate need to use and revisit it was just not there. Now I’ve been back to check it out, and I’m very impressed with how much sharper it has gotten. Just check out this image of Buckingham Palace.
Can you imagine what it will be like 2 years from now? :)

I found this on the Inside FireFox Blog where the creator of FireFox previews FireFox 2.0, which I’m guessing from the title of the blog entry, Racing Towards 2, will be an answer to the IE 7.0 Explorer, here are the highlights of the new browser coming out in mid-2006…

New Bookmarks and History
Improve the browser’s Bookmarks and History systems to improve their effectiveness as renavigation aids while at the same time improving the back end for speed and extensibility.
Tabbed Browsing Enhancements
Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment, making them behave more as users would expect.
Improved Basic Content Type Handling
For things like RSS/Atom feeds, mail links etc. Improve discovery and handling user interfaces.
Web Search
Improve the discoverability and adaptability of the search UI within Firefox.
Bug Fixing
Bug fixing at all levels where risk is low and yield high, e.g. the blank tab download bug, platform stability, etc.
Some additional things we would like to look at in the Firefox 2 timeframe include:
Visual Uplift
A freshen of the visual design of Firefox while maintaining high levels of system integration.
Inline Spell Check
The rise of applications like web mail, blogging etc highlight the weaknesses of HTML’s textarea widget. We should at the very least offer people the ability to spell check their submissions.
Exit Survey
We’d like to know why people leave Firefox. A survey on uninstall would help us find ways to make the software better in future versions.
UI Consolidation and Simplification
Consolidate and simplify user interface in the browser window tying together features in meaningful ways where possible.
There are many other ideas floating around, this is just a brief snapshot of some of the high priority items on our plates. If we get this done, we’ll be satisfied!
Read article…

If you want your site to rank well, the best thing you can do is get plenty of inbound links. The more relevant those links to your site’s content and the higher the standing of the linkers, the better it is for you. However, building inbound links to you can be an arduous process.

A lot of old-skool masters insist on trawling directories to add their sites, some even pay for the privilege. Now, if you’re a webmaster you’ve probably seen lots of ads offering to submit your sites to directories or other webmasters complaining about how difficult it is to get into Dmoz or Yahoo, two of the major directories.

Now, I’ll let you into a secret. The are only two sorts of people who use directories. Webmasters and surfers who get lost and usually wind up on a directory page through a search engine. There may be the odd old hardcore user, but their numbers are so small that they don’t matter. ;)
Read on …

As any blogger knows, where there are blogs there are spammers, it is almost an inevitable occurrence, bots or just idiots they are just plane aggravating. Here at ThirdSquare as the blog had grown so had the amount of spam, it got to a level that even moderating comments one by one got tiresome and more and more irritating, so I began looking for a solution that would be able to monitor and manage comments automatically, a sort of A.I. blog moderation - I actually doubted I could find anything that would remotely fit my needs, but I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon Spam Karma.

This amazingly ingenious WordPress plug-in separates spam from other comments and ping backs using a “Karma” point system, where Karma is determined by different aspects of the comment, such as the presence of a URL, IP commenting history, and much more.

Here at ThirdSquare we’ve had this plug-in for almost three weeks now and remarkably it has yet to miss, after over a hundred comments processed it is still spotless, perfectly sifting spam out.

The Spam Karma installation is very simple and it can be found and downloaded here. After you install you can access its control panel in the “Manage” tab, and I think you will be absolutely amazed by the sophistication of this seemingly automated plug-in – a must-have for any WP blog.

It seems as though MSN has added a search function to it’s popular messenger service.

The search box is displayed below the list of contacts and above the ad. All you need to do is simply type in your search query and click Search.

MSN search results are visible in a new window. One has the option to search the web, news or images.

It will be interesting to see if Google follows suit with its messenger, Google Talk.