Last week Jefferson Graham from the USA Today newspaper ran a column about search engine optimization. He spoke with master of all things SEO at Google, Matt Cutts. They also filmed a video together and I’ve embedded it below. It’s worth a watch if you are trying to optimize your Web site or blog. It’s just the basics but it’s something many of my clients don’t think about. Especially the part about making sure that you use the words you want to rank for on your page.

Although this is on the outer fringes of technology-related information, I just wanted to post a happy story about an experience with customer service.

Those of you that have followed this blog for a while should know that I have had some very poor experiences with customer service in the last few years. I was honestly beginning to think that it was perfectly normal for companies to completely ignore their customers any time a support issue came up.

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Victor Tsaran is an accessibility engineer at Yahoo! who focuses on developing best practices for the creation of websites that work well with screen readers. The video below is about a year old but still provides great insight into the acessibility side of the Web. It’s something we don’t speak about enough but is so very important.

Although it slipped under the radar with everyone getting ramped up for the release of Firefox 3; the folks at Opera released a new version of their browser a few weeks ago. On June 12, Opera 9.5 was released, and apparently includes quite a few updates.

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Sometimes when trying to access a web page, an error code will appear. Have you ever wondered what that code meant? Here is a list of the most popular error codes and their description. The first thing you should do anytime you get an error code is to make sure that you have entered the correct web page addressed. Everyone has incorrectly spelled a company name or added too many periods.

401 - Authorization Required

This error code means that you must have special access to view this page. The developers may want only certain people to access this page. There are several ways to limit access to a web page, including password protection. You may get the “401 - Authorization Required” error message when you try to view a web page with limited access. (A web site may have a customized version of this error message, displaying “Access Denied” or “Unavailable.”)
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On Thursday, June 19, OpenSuSE 11.0 was officially released by Novell. The newest version of OpenSuSE includes many new software packages on the installation DVD. Some of the new packages include Firefox 3.0, KDE 4.0, Compiz Fusion (apparently a 3-D display module - pictured at right) and a newer media player called Banshee 1.0.

All-in-all, the new release from the OpenSuSE community includes over 200 new features that are only available in OpenSuSE.

Having been a SuSE user for a little more than three years, I cannot recommend this download highly enough. When I first installed SuSE, I was very weary of using Linux, as I had heard everyone talk about how difficult Linux was to use if you weren’t a complete computer geek. SuSE was a different experience altogether, however. The desktop is extremely intuitive and the entire OS is very easy to use. It took very little effort to understand how to configure and use SuSE, and I very quickly came to love it.

If you are curious at all about Linux, you should definitely download the new live CD from the OpenSusE download site. A live CD is a disc that contains the entire base operating system on a single disc. Live discs do not require you to install anything on your computer. Rather, the entire operating system runs directly from the disc. Of course, with a live disc, you don’t have nearly as many configuration options and you can’t really store your files effectively. However, the newer live discs from SuSE have even included a one-click install option right on the desktop, should you ever decide you want to install the system on your computer.

Today was the official release date of Rock Band for the Nintendo Wii game console. However, an article at Joystiq.com shows that the highly anticipated music game is not all it’s cracked up to be. According to the article, the Wii version of the game will be missing some key features that are available in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions. Instead, the game is apparently going to be similar to the Playstation 2 version, possibly with even less functionality.

What will be missing?

Despite the Wi-Fi capability built in to every Wii console, the new special edition of Rock Band will not include the “Rock Band Store”, where, among other things, players have the ability to download additional songs for the game.

Nor will Wii users be able to create their own Rock Band characters. With the Mii characters being so ingrained in the culture of the Wii, why would Harmonix/MTV games not take advantage of that? Why spend so much time “customizing” the Wii version of the game only to strip nearly everything that makes it fun?

Even worse, the guitar peripheral that was sold with Guitar Hero III will not be compatible with Rock Band. Of course, Harmonix/MTV Games pawns the blame for that misstep on Activision, the company behind Guitar Hero. No matter who’s to blame for it, it’s yet another problem for those of us that want to play both games. Rather than being able to use the $80 guitar peripheral that came with Guitar Hero, I’m probably going to have to run out and drop another $80 for another guitar if I want to play a four-player game of Rock Band.

After making Wii owners wait nearly a year to get their hands on this amazing game, I can’t help but feel like Harmonix/MTV games is stiffing us. I can only say that I hope Activision will not do the same thing to us when they release Guitar Hero: World Tour. At least when I buy that, along with the GH guitar I got with GH3, I’ll be able to play a four-player game with my friends and family.

Although I have not yet purchased this game (and I’m honestly questioning whether I will, knowing full well that I’ll spend another $180-200 whenever GH:WT is released later this year - hoping that the GH offering will offer the missing functionality of RB), I am already sorely disappointed. I’m sure it will still be fun, but it really upsets me that they pulled out so much of the good stuff from the game, again, after making us wait for so long for our own version.

I received an announcement from the team at screencast.com in my e-mail the other day. Screencast is now officially moving out of beta and into version 1.0.

For those of you that are not familiar with screencast, it is a file organizing and sharing site for online videos. The Web site is owned by TechSmith, the company behind Camtasia Studio, Jing and many other multimedia applications.

With an account at screencast, you can easily save your videos and upload them directly from your desktop. Once the file has been uploaded, you can share it across the Web.

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Presumably, in preparation for OpenSuSE 11.0, which should be released very soon, the top three support forums devoted to the software have merged into one.

The forums I frequented for support (forums.suselinuxsupport.de), along with suseforums.net agreed to merge with the official forums found at opensuse.org. As a result, there is now only one definitive place to look for help with OpenSuSE and Linux in general.

Be sure to pop over to opensuse.org and register if you’re even the least bit interested in using Linux.

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Social news aggregator Reddit is making a big announcement today. They have decided to open source the Reddit code. I spoke with Steve Huffman to learn more about the announcement and grab some of the latest stats from Reddit. The open source license matches the one Facebook is now using for some of their code.

He says that open sourcing the Reddit code is the next step in the transparency of media that Reddit strives for. It’s also a way for Reddit to give back to the open source community. Steve noted that they are the only one of their peers offering their code under an open source license. He also said that Digg struggles with transparency.

I immediately asked if the “secret sauce” would be part of the code. The idea we can review the code and figure out how to hit the Reddit front page seemed possible. Steve explained that certain key parts of the secret sauce won’t be released.

I also asked about developer manuals and guides - something that is important when reviewing another’s code. At this point there are guides but they are a work in progress.

As for the latest stats, Steve shared the following on our call: 4+ million unique visitors a month 120 million pageviews a month 2,200 user-created reddits (including the custom tech reddit run by some of the top tech bloggers) 23% of registrations are coming from the user-generated reddits politics and technology are the strongest categories entertainment is the fastest growing category

I also asked for U.S./non-U.S. traffic on Reddit and Steve shared that nearly 45% of traffic on Reddit comes from outside the U.S.

Will this announcement today help Reddit gain more marketshare against Digg and potentially against newcomer Yahoo Buzz? It should certainly get the developer crowd talking and hacking. Reddit needs to make sure they promote this to all of the applicable sites in the Conde Nast portfolio. Whether it will drive more traffic and users to Reddit, we will need to wait and see.