Sam Davyson

What follows is a text originally made for a browser page. But I think it is worthy of the blog. This is Part 1. Part 2 will update on the bits of the following that are out of date.

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At the time of writing most people use Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the Internet, but I am not sure that this is going to remain the case for very long. There are some great (currently) “alternative” browsers available and all of them that I have tried give a much better browsing experience than Internet Explorer.

My first alternative was Mozilla Firefox. When I tried it the Internet just seemed to have been sped up. Within seconds I found myself making full use of the tabbed browsing feature and enjoying the time (and system resources) that it saved me. I also installed numerous extensions which made browsing even more enjoyable (if not slightly slower). However I heard a lot of people ranting about other browsers and given the upgrade that I had experienced moving from Internet Explorer to Firefox (that I hadn’t thought possible — when I used Internet Explorer I couldn’t imagine what could be better about it) I figured that there may be an even better browser out there.

I continued to browse with Firefox enjoying its streamline interface, and the personalisation achievable with the Extensions. Then I read this page which explained quickly and clearly why a browser called Opera was the one to use. I liked the sound of it so I downloaded Opera, getting both the 7.5 version and the version 8 beta 3 release. I installed it and ran it. It loaded up quickly enough and I looked at it and thought it was really rather ugly. It, like Safari, seemed bulky and the tabs were blue coloured and too 3D like. Anyway I switched skins (Tools > Appearance) to Windows Native (which is what I am) and that made it all look a little more like Internet Explorer / Firefox (with tabs nearly identical to Firefox). I then surfed around and was amazed to find it was faster than Firefox, infact it was way faster. I backtracked to the Opera homepage (for some tutorials) hitting the back button, and I found that the previous pages displayed instantly. Now this may not seem like much but when honestly it is quite amazing. Anyway, I learnt about mouse gestures (an extension in Firefox but a feature in Opera), the available skins, the ways to change the interface, the notes, the mail client and a whole load of other stuff. I really liked Opera, so I started to use it.

But that isn’t the end. No, there is a down side to Opera. Firstly there is a small (and it is small — about two lines of text on this page in height) advert displayed in the browser unless you are willing to buy a licence for the browser (for $39). Is it obtrusive? Not at all. It is a Google text advert and you still get more page display space than with Internet Explorer (but a bit less than in Firefox). So this Opera Browser is made by a company, unlike Firefox which is Open Source and made by the Mozilla Foundation. Also although Firefox now has about 5% of all Internet user using it, Opera has far fewer users (although due to masking it is not known how many exactly) which means less compatibility with websites. However it is not a widespread issue: the only website that I use that doesn’t render fine in Opera is Gmail in which the rich formatting of text isn’t possible. Everything else (that I use) works fine.

So I still use Firefox, I still like it alot and I am a member of Spread Firefox where I occasionally post, but I also use Opera mainly for its speed (and that instant back feature) so some of the time (like now) I have them both open and I work like that. Maybe not the most efficient way to run things but it is certainly painless browsing. So if you are using Internet Explorer, try an alternative for an afternoon, there are things that you don’t even know you are missing out on. Go on, I dare you.

The links in this page are no longer relevant. I have added some replacement links.
I’ve created a new homepage (my new homepage) today. The previous homepage (not online) used 3 completely different pages (all in the one page) to serve the needs of all users. Shabby (but in a way unknown to the user) JavaScript commands allowed the showing and hiding of various bits to customise it to suit you. There was a scrolling blog column using the latest feed from this blog. There were plans for pages to be embedded ino the homepage and then to be shown within the framework through JavaScript rather than frames.

The new homepage has none of these things.

I found the past one was difficult to update, and full of broken links. I’ve stripped it down to fit with the theme shown in the archive. Only necessary items are left on the homepage. The result is a very short page with just 14 words. It is really simple. And I like the way it looks so it is sticking. For the moment at least.

Update: There is now a seperate blog for Site Updates. See the latest news from this site, there (site updates are now dealt with on this blog).

No, I havent just found out about Wikipedia. I have known about it and used it (and sometimes even added to it) for ages. But there are people that don’t know of it. And they should. Because it is quite simply the best encyclopedia there is.

It is totally free and totally built by its users. This keeps most of the articles bang up to date and of extremely high quality. If you search for something and they don’t have it, then you can make it. If you see something you thing is wrong you can change it. Surely this can be abused? Yes it can. But there are tight controls and extensive back-ups to restore good versions when this happens.

Overall this makes for a highly usable and useful site. Often for research purposes it is simply the best that there is. Oh, and by the way, no sign up is required to contribute.

Google are the kings of search. I know that.Well at least I thought I did. Recently whilst Google spreads its focus to other areas other search engines have started to really challenge Google on search results I think. Yahoo! for example recently announced its index (the pages that you search when you search Yahoo!) is larger than Google’s by a factor of almost 3. Admittedly it is not all about the index. Infact when almost everything you put into a search engine yields millions of pages of results you could say the index is rather unimportant, as everyone has already got too many pages to look at available. Another indicator of a good search engine is the rate of index update. As I recently saw in an article surrounding the launch of Google Talk, Yahoo! had the official Google Talk pages in their index way before Google did.

Anyway, Yahoo! is a big contender and it already offers all the services that Google is now starting to branch into (albeit of lower quality to the ones Google produces). But this post is about MSN Search, a relatively new search engine which I think is actually pretty good. I don’t know how big it’s index is, but it seems big enough, and the rate at which the index refreshes is unbelievable. It seems to update daily. Which I think is a fair bit more often than Google.

The main thing for me with MSN Search is that it lists my pages. A search for me, gives result number 1 as my homepage, and subsequent results are other pages that are mine. A search for me on Google gives a lot of trashy pages mixed in with some of my pages. To see how many of my pages are on the Google index one can search for site:153rd.com/sam (now site:sam.davyson.com). You get 5 results (see Update 3 below). On MSN Search you get 147. However that doesn’t mean that Google is necessarily worse. It might mean that MSN has picked up loads of trashy pages and has indexed those along with the rest. This is perhaps true, but the first results are useful, and as you scroll through the results you realise the PDF’s that I have on my site have also been cached. So have the DOC’s and the PUB files. Some are unsuccessful and the description is useless (see image below) but others are as good as the record of a HTML webpage. But even when it is unsuccessful at least the link is there.

So far I have ignored one of the most important features of a search engine. Infact probably the most important: accuracy. Does MSN give you relevant results? This is harder to gauge. And although it is certainly true when searching for myself the better results come from MSN Search how about a more mainstream search. Does the engine pick the best records from the index to show? I don’t know the answer to this question but I would imagine that both engines are similarly good at this. I think MSN Search has an advantage when a user is searching for a quick fact due to the linkage the MSN team have made with Encarta Answers. This gives instant answers to questions like “bear habitat” as seen in the image below. Google have come up with something similar since MSN Search launched called Q&A, but I find it’s recognition of questions that have straight answers is poor and it doesn’t have the reliable fact base of Encarta to use.

Overall I am a Google user. They beat MSN hands down in almost everything they move into. Email, Maps, Satellite Imaging, Blogs, Personal (Portal) Homepages… I also use Google for my searches. It is good. But to make use of the index that MSN has of my website I’ll be integrating an MSN Site Search to my pages within the coming weeks. This will provide an effective way of searching my content as unlike the Google Site Search I could employ it will stock more than 5 pages and will be updated regularly. So I think that MSN Search is better but I am still using Google Search? No. I don’t think that MSN Search is better. But I think it is a strong product and I don’t think that Google should take their crown for granted. And I hope they don’t, because search is so central to Google once the engine is rubbish their site traffic will disappear and so will their revenue and their ability to generate other superb products.

// Update: A search directory has been created (link) and several pages have got a search box added at the bottom (like this or this) when the user may not have found what they want.

// Update 2: A search box has been added to the side of blog pages. Expect further integration as the site continues to evolve.

// Update 3: A search on Google for site:153rd.com/sam (now site:sam.davyson.com) now gives 122 results. Most pages I have are covered. This is a huge change from the five when this post was originally released (4 days ago). It could be because of the Sitemap I submitted or more likely the huge index increase Google is showing as Search Engine Watch reports.

Relevant Images:
No longer online.

YubNub (external link) is the command line of the internet. Or should I say one of the command lines, as there are a few. But Yubnub is the best I’ve seen.

It has a simple interface just like Google. A textbox in the middle of a page. A large logo. Some writing. However with the textbox you can do most things you’d ever do on the web, and if you can’t, you can make it so you can. So you can.

Typing “g” followed by a word searches Google. “y” does the same for Yahoo!, “wp” does it for WikiPedia, “ebay” for ebay, “cnn” for CNN, “flk” for flikr, “gim” for Google Images …

And if a service that you like or a webpage you often visit isn’t available in a command then you can use the best command of all “create” to create a new command. As long as the code you want to use isn’t taken, you can make it. And it’ll work instantly.

For instance if you type in “samsblog” then you’ve guess it, you end up here.

You don’t just have to use the tool on the website there are loads of ways to install YubNub including a search plugin and a Greasemonkey Script.