If you’ve ever built a web site, you’ve probably done your best to make sure people know about it. It’s no surprise, then that there’s no shortage of sites out there ranking the popularity of all the sites on the internet. We’re all familiar with Google’s Page Rank where the bigger number from 0 to 10 is better and Alexa’s ranking system in which your site’s ranking is out of all sites on the internet, making a ranking of 1 the best. Today, AllTop linked out to Nmap.org’s visualization of the 300,000 most popular web sites on the internet, and JoeTech.com made it in the image, right next to Mashable, as did Lnk.gd (my URL shortening site).
As you may be able to tell from the image, Nmap grabbed the favicon image from all of these sites and used it to represent the site in the visualization.
The area of each icon is proportional to the sum of the reach of all sites using that icon. When both a bare domain name and its “www.” counterpart used the same icon, only one of them was counted. The smallest icons–those corresponding to sites with approximately 0.0001% reach–are scaled to 16×16 pixels. The largest icon (Google) is 11,936 x 11,936 pixels, and the whole diagram is 37,440 x 37,440.
Here’s a breakdown of how JoeTech.com and Lnk.gd compare (in this visualization) to some sites you may recognize. In parenthesis are the dimensions of the site’s image relative to the complete image.
JoeTech.com (416 x 416):
It’s worth noting that the image they grabbed (from some time ago, I would think) was the OLD chat bubble favicon while the current one is the head part of my logo.
While I think JoeTech.com should definitely be in the image (based on my Alexa ranking), I have to question where it stands proportionate to the likes of Mashable and The White House. I haven’t taken a look at the algorithm used by Nmap, though, so perhaps there’s a secret sauce I don’t know about.
In any case, it’s nice to make the cut and even nicer to see the visualization of all the web’s traffic. I have a poster from 1999 that visualizes the web’s traffic in a similar way and a quick comparison of the two shows some striking changes in how the web is viewed today. What was your favorite site to visit back in 1999 (if you were online then) and what are your favorites now? I think it was Google and Ebay for me in 1999 and today it’s Google and Facebook.
As most of my regular readers are probably aware, JoeTech.com is hosted on a dedicated server with Codero. I’ve been with Codero since before they announced their Phoenix data center and will probably have a dedicated server there for many more years. When I learned of that data center, I was excited not only because I’d be in a local data center, but also because it reminded me that Codero is constantly working to improve on their service offerings. This week, I learned that they’ve taken another step to improve upon their customer interaction as well with a web site refresh:
The new web site refresh is just one thing that resulted from their spending the past few months meeting with customers about what they do well and what could be done better. While I liked the old site, I’ve noticed that it’s just a little easier to shop for services and get information in general with the refresh. I’ve always liked the design, and that carries through to the latest incarnation as well. In the end, though, I’m just one person, and frankly, I already have services with Codero, so I’m curious what everyone else thinks. Here’s the questions Codero is asking on their blog.
1. What do you look for on a website when evaluating a hosting partner?
2. Do you have a checklist of things that you look for, or is it more about the overall experience?
Here’s my responses:
1. For me, I look for pricing and server stats first and foremost. In addition, I’ll look for things like customer testimonials or a client list. If I knew, for example, that a well-trafficked site was hosted on the base server plan, it builds my confidence in the product.
2. I generally have a checklist. It may just be in my head, but I know what I’m looking for and sometimes will even add to my checklist when on a site that offers information I hadn’t thought of. A great example of this is Codero’s Price Match Challenge. If you ask my wife, it’s all about the experience. She wants the information to be easy to find, and if the site doesn’t work, she’s on to the competition. The is especially true for any shopping cart experience.
What about you? What do you look for from a hosting provider’s web site?
I’ve written before about how to jailbreak your iPhone in 15 minutes, under 10 minutes and even 60 seconds, but every time, a computer was needed to to the work. While I still suggest backing up your iPhone, which will need a computer, jailbreaking it can now be done right from the iPhone’s Mobile Safari web browser.
Jailbreaking your iPhone on IOS4 is easier than ever now. Thanks to some hard work by @comex, I just went to jailbreakme.com on my iphone and tapped the slider. It did all the work, and a minute later, I had Cydia up and running. That’s it.
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of ampm. All opinions are 100% mine.
You don’t have to talk to a lot of computer programmers (or their families) to learn that sometimes they’ll skip meals to stay in front of the computer and keep coding. I’m no exception, but I try to get in my regular meals without losing too much coding time. This week, I departed from the drive through for a new kind of meal.
ampm wanted to know what a computer geek like me might come up with from their new menu and I was happy to create my very own food concoction for ampm’s secret menu tab on Facebook.
For a few days, I headed to the ampm near my office for lunch and dinner. I started out with just a plain chicken sandwich and worked my way up to my food masterpiece. Along the way, I tried a variation of the Triple Dipper Dog seen on the Facebook menu and it was really pretty good. I took Nachos, loaded them up with nacho cheese, chili, and some diced onions, and dipped a corn dog in it. If I do that one again, though, I’ll crunch up the nacho chips into tiny bits before topping them.
The Turtle Burger Crunch
After some days of food inspiration and a couple experiments, I ended up with my own food concoction. I was going to call my new creation the JoeTech.com Turtle Burger, but it just didn’t sound right, so here it is with its final name, The Turtle Burger Crunch.
Here’s what you need (my cost was just over $4):
- Cheeseburger
- Hot Dog
- Doritos (or your favorite chips)
Here’s how it’s done:
- Remove the top bun from the cheeseburger
- Remove the bun from the hot dog
- Center the hot dog atop the hamburger
- Pile some chips on top
- Put the hamburger bun back on top and press down a bit
When you’re done, your hamburger will have a head and tail and crunchy inner shell. Eat any way you like. I uploaded this to the Facebook menu, too, so you should be able to find it there soon.
The Secret Menu On Facebook
I’ve mentioned the secret menu tab a couple times already because it was a handy source to look at for ideas on what I wanted to make. The menu is where I discovered the Triple Dipper Dog I improvised. Better still, they reveal new items every week and even let people submit their own menu items like I did.
Just a glimpse of a few of the existing menu items should give you an idea of what menu items to expect from ampm, and the user created items offer their own taste of creativity. Check them out and add your own. That is, if you think you can beat The Turtle Burger Crunch.
Back in April, I stumbled across a post on Dragonblogger.com about a contest on Leapfish.com. Te contest is the Leapfish $100k Cash Dash. That’s $100k as in on hundred thousand dollars. I was immediately interested, but wondered if I’d have a chance at any of the prizes.
I Won A Laptop (And An iPad)
Pictured above is what came in the mail for me last week. Inside the box was this Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop.
It’s loaded with 3 GB of RAM, Pentium 2.2 GHz Dual Core CPU, 250 GB hard drive and Windows 7 Home Premium. Best of all, it was free as a prize from Leapfish and the Cash Dash contest. As I mentioned, I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get a prize with a contest like this, but I did everything I could to earn points and kept earning until I reached the 4,000 points required to win one of the three laptops they offered up as prizes. When I was done, I kept the momentum going until I had the 10,000 points required to win one of three Apple iPads. That’s right. I won a laptop and an iPad. I couldn’t believe it, either. At 11,270 points, I stopped shooting for points because I’m happy with what I’ve won already, but it wasn’t long before the larger non-cash prizes were snatched up.
Still More To Win
The prizes that have already been won are great, but the bigger prizes are still out there. Leapfish is a new search engine with a social twist and some real-time search features that not only outshines other search engines in some ways, but it also combines results from Yahoo!, Bing!, and Google. They set up the contest to get the word out. The goal of the contest if to get 1,000,000 people to set LeapFish as their homepage. To do this, they’re giving out cash prizes when they hit specific milestones. For example, when 25,000 people have set Leapfish.com as their homepage, the site will give one winner $1,000 cash. At the 50,000 mark, they’re giving out $2,500 and so on, all the way up to a $50,000 cash prize for one winner at the 1,000,000 mark. They’re just over 500 so far, so there’s a long way to go, but if you join up and spread the word, you’ll get points (entries in the contest) and help get Leapfish closer to a cash prize milestone.
I’m writing this post on the laptop I won, my iPad should be on its way to me soon, and I still have a shot at some of the cash. Sign up and maybe you’ll win some, too.
