Picasa XML template for Simpleton

I have created a lightweight XML template for those of you using the Simpleton Image Gallery in conjunction with Picasa.

Download the Simpleton Template archive and unzip in into your Picasa “web templates” folder, usually:

c:\program files\picasa2\web\templates\

To export your images from Picasa into Simpleton, click “Folder > Export as HTML page…” and choose “Simpleton XML Code”. Then just upload into the Simpleton “content” directory, using your favourite FTP client.

Search engine referrals

The other day I was looking at our website’s stats to get an idea of search engine referral ratios. While I fully expected Google to win comprehensively, the actual figures based on the last 10,000 page views were certainly an eye-opener:

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Google loves blogs

If you want any proof that Google loves blogs, have a look at some specifics for our own website below:

We’ve taken some random articles, on topics we’ve covered over the months. We then looked at what appear to be actual keywords that humans used in Google to get to our website, rather than our article titles, for instance.

Although our website gets a relatively low volume of traffic (between 200-300 page views per day), it’s interesting that the keywords “who are bitacle” and “blog thieves” both currently enjoy top ranking with Google.

It just proves that content is king, no matter how humble the aesthetics are. And blogs are the perfect platform.

Searching for search engines?

If you want proof that there’s still a significant percentage of internet users who haven’t bothered to learn even the basics of how to use their browser, look no further than the Wordtracker top keywords list:

Based on the current top 30 keywords, we can see that 7 of the top 12 searches didn’t need to be searches at all.

If only users understood that their browser has a location bar, where they could directly type in the URL of the website they’re trying to get to, they wouldn’t have to search for search engines like Google and Yahoo, which they’re doing at the moment.

Google is now officially a verb

According to the folks behind Merriam-Webster, google is now officially a verb, after having been submitted for consideration some three months ago. It’s approved meaning is:

To use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.

Of course, “googling” something or someone has been in widespread use for well over three years now, so it’s no surprise that it’s usage as a verb has made it into the official American dictionary. Oxford and Macquarie will soon follow, no doubt.

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