Harry Maugans: Technology, BMWs, and Business

More SEO Tweaking and Widescreen Support on Car-Wallpapers.net

2006-04-06T22:09:00.000-04:00

I thought I was pretty much done with all the search engine optimization on car-wallpapers.net, however on my religious daily reading of Matt Cutt's blog, I had a realization hit me like a brick. Meta tags! While the indexable content of the site was diversified and dynamic to provide a nice sized landing spot, the title, meta-description, and meta-keywords were all static! There was a single php template file I was referencing for the header of every page in the site, and that header template file had those tags hardcoded. Oh no, this will not do... I dug in to the code again. Now when you view the browse page (by category, tags, or tag-filter) or view wallpaper page, it adjusts the title of the page for accurate readings on the SERPs (ie, instead of the fluff promoting the site, it shows the description of the browse page related to their search query). It also adjusts the description based on the page you're viewing (also for SERP [search engine result page] output purposes), and the meta keywords are dynamically adjusted to mix the generic wallpaper-oriented keywords with content-related keywords based on the individual wallpaper or category being viewed. On the view wallpaper page, I even went as far as rewriting the flow of the page to add all the tags attached to the image in the meta-keywords. This way if a search engine crawler reads the page, in addition to reading the keyword landing content at the bottom of the page, it is further emphasized by the meta tags supporting it. Hopefully this will raise our returns in the SERPs for very specific wallpaper searches, such as "e34 wallpapers", rather than just the generic "BMW wallpapers" search. Also, Google is more likely to assign pagerank to inside pages that are not a clone of the homepage's meta information.

Also, while I was working on the meta tweaks, I realized that search engines (Google especially) place a pretty high importance on the alt tags of images. Then I realized that on the view wallpaper page, the only place the tags are visible in the indexable content are as the anchor text from the tag links. This means when you view an e34 BMW wallpaper, the text "e34" does not appear anywhere as plaintext on the entire page, and anchor text is not weighted very heavily for a page's own content, as it's more accurately describing the content of the page it's linking to. Based on these two facts, I went in and added an ALT tag to the large thumbnail on the view wallpapers page that describes the category the wallpaper is in (such as BMW), as well as all tags attached to it (such as e34). While this still isn't plaintext, it's solving the missing-alt-tag problem, as well as adding more dynamic content to each view page. If I added the link list in plaintext on that page, it'd begin to detract from the usability and friendliness of the page. There has to be links to each tag page, and rather than duplicating the entire list, it's better design practice (and more focused toward the users) to only have the link list. While the ALT tag isn't as effective as plaintext, it's definitely a step in the right direction and in this situation the best of all possible worlds.

That's the technical / geeky side of car-wallpapers.net. Now what you guys are probably more interested in, widescreen support. I've done a bit of research on different resolutions and aspect ratios of widescreen monitors, and decided the best move forward is going to be redesigning the auto-resizing engine of the site based around aspect ratios, rather than hardcoded sizes. I also realized (in math and theory first, but then looked and saw in practicality) 1280x1024 is a different aspect ration than the standard 4:3 resolutions (such as 1024x768), and as such, most 1280x1024 images are stretched and distorted. 1280x1024 is unique as XSGA, and while it's the default size for many LCDs, it breaks the rules of standard aspect ratio practices. I'm probably going to have to keep it in the 4:3 ratio bank and deal with the distortions unless someone has a better suggestion. Anyway, my plan for revising the uploads auto-resizing system is to, rather than create a static set of accepted resolutions, create a static set of accepted ratios, then check the uploaded image's ratio against that static list, and confirm it's larger than 800x600 overall. At that point, the system will automatically flag it as widescreen (if it is) on the view page, and automatically generate new wallpapers on a simple algorithmic step down, continuing recursively until breaking when the size drops below 800x600. This would allow you to upload a 1600x1200 and generate all the standard 4:3 background images, as well as uploading a 1920x1200 and stepping all the way down the widescreen list. When it's rewritten, it will probably only support 3:2 (only because Apple went and changed things with Powerbooks), 4:3, 16:9, and 16:10. I was considering adding support for HDTVs and projectors (for the higher-income geeks), however I think that would be in vein, and add more junk to the galleries than anything else. I'm going to do a bit more research on this over the next week and ensure I'm not missing something so I can develop it correctly the first (or second, if your a pessimist) time. I'd appreciate any suggestions, comments, or ideas on this. Thanks!

Pagerank Update

2006-04-05T10:41:00.000-04:00

I just noticed a pagerank (a website's ranking of importance, in Google's eyes) shift. Car-wallpapers.net just went from a PR0 to PR2, and hot-car-sites went from PR0 to PR4! That's double United Bimmer's PR2 ranking, and HCS has only been online for a few weeks, as compared to UB life of well over a year!

Google Analytics

2006-04-05T00:20:00.000-04:00

I just (finally) received my invite to join Google Analytics. :D

It's now running on a few sites, including United Bimmer.

Search Engine Optimization and Tweaking

2006-04-03T23:02:00.000-04:00

I just realized that when the search engines read car-wallpapers.net, the homepage has plenty of content to hit on, but each subpage looks nearly identical. The filenames of the pages are different (for different Makes), however the SE-readable content (non-images) is just a bunch of random resolutions. Then when you actually view the wallpaper, there's slight differences in the filenames, but overall, most of the text is the same. Granted the pictures are different everywhere, but I'm afraid of being penalized by a search engine because of this setup.

In my effort to diversify the subpage content, I added the original filesize to the view-wallpaper page. While this page has very little text to start with, adding another nearly-random number will mix it up a bit. The main search engine optimization upgrade I made though was to the browse pages (by make and by tag). It's a bit more server CPU intensive, but I think it's worth it. At the bottom of each browse page, it has a tag-dump of all the tags attached to all the wallpapers shown (that page only). This is great for search engines to pick up on because if the server name is car-wallpapers.net and the filename is browse-bmw.html, having text content with keywords like "wallpaper", "e36", "m3", etc. will direct the exact traffic we're looking for to us. It creates a dynamic (though tagging) search engine landing spot that sets us apart from the non-tag-enabled wallpaper galleries (the rest of the internet). For example, if someone searches for "e34 wallpaper" on Google, looking for just that, we are the ONLY wallpaper gallery that return a valid result. Actually, by that search United Bimmer's e34 forum is returned on the first page as well, which shows how SEO fine-tuned our forum is also, haha, but I digress. Most wallpaper galleries are setup to land search queries on the car make name (Subaru, BMW, Nissan, Ferrari, etc), and on rare occasion, you find them narrowing the pages down by model (M3, 350Z, etc), but with our innovating tagging system, we can narrow it down to every single detail... and now that our tags are integrated with the browse pages, this creates even more possibilities.

While car-wallpapers.net is still not very deep in Google, it's doing great in other search engines. And the fact that it's actually surfacing at all (especially Google, known for it's rigorous website acceptance levels), is quite impressive. Also, car-wallpapers.net has only been online for a little over one week, but is already receiving about 300 unique hits a day, with no advertising beyond a post in a few forums a week ago, and no backlinks besides the United Bimmer homepage (PR2, not to impressive).

And on another note, but the same topic, hot-car-sites.com is dominating MSN results. While Google strongly dislikes that site, look at some of it's MSN search query result placements:

#1 - hot car sites
#1 - hot car
#1 - hot car topsite
#1 - car topsite
#1 - car topsites
#1 - car rankings
#2 - car sites
#3 - top modified cars

Considering the site has been up for only a few weeks, that's very impressive. Granted those are not the most popular search queries, but it's definitely a start. All three sites (UB, car-wallpapers, and hot-car-sites) are also all hosted on different IP addresses, so the interlinking between them should be beneficial on the search engine front.

Another small search engine tweak I made today was on the United Bimmer homepage. I found the top-downloaded BMW wallpapers changed fairly infrequently, so I changed it to display random BMW wallpapers instead. This accomplishes two objectives. First of all it further diversifies the United Bimmer homepage. No one wants to see the same content (especially graphical like that) static for long periods of time (which is why we eliminated the old rarely-updated homepage). By mixing up the wallpapers, someone may see an image that catches their eye one day and download it. The second objective of the switch is for that of SEO. When Google crawls the car-wallpaper.net homepage, it's already pinging the most-downloaded images fairly constantly. To do the same from the UB homepage would bleed more PR to a select part of the site (only those 4-5 pages) and hurt the overall e-stickiness. By showing random samplings of BMW wallpapers from the more-frequently-crawled UB homepage, it exposes more of the insides and guts of car-wallpapers.net to the search engines, increasing the exposure of landing points. While those few pages might not return as often, it's a quantity over quality focus with a site of this dimension. In time, the entire site as a whole will increase in importance, rather than just a select few parts. This is better in the long run.

Now the only thing I have left to do is wait, which isn't very fun. hah

New Categories

2006-04-03T14:44:00.000-04:00

I just added a few more categories to car-wallpapers.net, per the request of members:

-Mazda
-Koenigsegg
-Nissan
-Other

Anything other makes should go in the Other category, and after enough of one make accumulates, I'll create a category for that make and move them all over. :)

Voltaire's Candide

2006-03-30T03:04:00.000-05:00

This is a step away from "Technology, BMWs, and Business", however I just wrote this quick article on Candide and thought I'd share.

Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire constructed the novella “Candide” partially for the purpose of entertainment, but mostly to satirize the fallacy of Gottfried William von Leibniz’s theory of optimism. Throughout the course of his saga, Voltaire juxtaposes the raw, unrepressed optimism of one character in the story with exaggerated real-world adventures of pessimism and gloom. From gruesome war to disease, sedition, and deceit, Voltaire misses none of the bad in the “best of all possible worlds”.

Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician in Voltaire’s time. He argued that our world was the epitome of perfection, and all evils that transpire are for the betterment and evolution of our ideal society. God, he believed, was perfect, and as Earth is the conception of God, it must maintain such sound imperfections. However Voltaire chooses to begin writing on these premises alone to further accentuate his satire, purposefully overlooking the inescapable evil that comes with the “best of all possible worlds”. Leibniz was actually not suggesting our world was perfect, but rather the best of all the worlds available to God. Voltaire disregarded this in “Candide”.

Dr. Pangloss is introduced as the literary symbolic representation of Leibniz’s theory. Conceived early in the novella, the then naive Candide reveres Pangloss as the supreme authority on all philosophical matters and follows his teachings without question. Candide enters the world with this very closed-minded philosophy to further exaggerate Voltaire’s satirical aim, but throughout the story he experiences a fierce internal conflict between his childhood schooling and the realities of society. Voltaire also created the character of Martin, a very pessimistic antagonist acting as the devil whispering palpable cynicism into Candide’s ear. As their journey progresses, Candide finds it harder and harder to support the unyielding raw optimism of Pangloss.

At one point in “Candide”, the characters arrive at Eldorado, a utopia designed to metaphorically represent the perfect society described as “the best of all possible worlds”, a quote used by Leibniz and Pangloss to portray our “perfect” society. This city is “impossible” to find, and is described with details to make it seem as distant from reality as possible. By materializing Leibniz’s ideological perfection without laws, jails, or the need for material goods, Voltaire is showing Leibniz’s theory as laughable. This allows Candide to see for himself the quintessential essence of Pangloss’s teachings, just before being submerged again headfirst into the icy waters of society’s realism when they leave. Eldorado is one of Voltaire’s strongest examples of the philosophical collision in the novella, since it reaches beyond speculation and rumor to show Candide hard, physical evidence of the Atlantistic notion brought forth by Pangloss.

Chapter Nine is a hard hit for Candide’s faith in Pangloss’ teachings. He is forced to murder two men in an attempt to protect his own life and that of his mistress Cunégonde. They die in the exact same way for a nearly identical cause, and still the Grand Inquisitor is given a grand burial while the civilian man is thrown on a dunghill. They were both human beings- were their lives worth different values? Candide questions the ideological perfection of society’s injustice.

Voltaire also adds an interesting touch of satire through his choice of character names. Pangloss is loosely translated as “all tongue” or “windbag", an ironically fitting name for one who offers no proof to support his claims. Candide is translated to “white”, a slightly deeper translation, but no less fitting. In the beginning of the novella, Candide is a very naive child, innocent and pure. He accepts the teachings of Pangloss, the only philosophy he is exposed to. As he makes his journey all over the world, his purity staggers in parallel with his maturity. He begins to question his personal beliefs, however always remaining true to his honesty, loyalty, and generosity… sparkling associations with the unblemished color white. His continued loyalty is apparent by maintaining his honest oath to always love Cunégonde, even after she grows old and loses her beauty. His generosity is illustrated when Candide offers some riches to the ousted king after hearing his tale from a world far less than the best possible.

In many ways, “Candide” is an allusion to Geoffrey Chaucer’s "The Canterbury Tales". Voltaire uses “Candide” to poke ridicule, even to the point of criticizing, the endless flaws of the world. From government corruption to inhumane warfare, Voltaire tends focuses more on the issues at large, rather than Chaucer’s focus toward individuals like merchants and friars… however there truly is no difference. Society is composed of merchants, friars, priests, physicians, knights, and pardoners, so essentially both authors are attacking the same body, but from different angles. Where Chaucer may compare the nun to a prostitute, Voltaire compares the Bordeaux police officer to a common thief. When juxtaposing both works, rather than seeing a contrast, you see a single large picture, seamlessly flowing from one source to the other. One might wonder how much influence Chaucer had on Voltaire.

“Candide” is a remarkable literary work written by the very embodiment of the 18th century enlightenment. Voltaire forever shifted the paradigms of modern satire through a witty, yet pointed assault on Leibniz’s blind theory of optimism. Devouring Leibniz’s premises with colorful, yet blatant, real-world contrasts, Voltaire reflects the sheer lunacy of such a theory. Moral of the story? If Voltaire disagrees with someone, he lets the world know it.

Wrigley's spends millions to prove chewing gum is healthy

2006-03-29T02:42:00.000-05:00

For over 100 years Wrigley's Gum has contended the benefits of chewing were "just plain common sense", however now Wrigley's has decided to launch a multi-million dollar, multi-year campaign to scientifically prove that chewing gum is indeed good for you. Wrigley's has always been pushing the limits of traditional bubblegumhood, with their oral-care gum netting over $1.4 billion a year. However all new product launches have not been so successful; in 2003 they halted production on the flopped "Surpass", an antacid gum. With studies focusing on stress and weight management, cognition, and focus, we'll see just what Wrigley's comes up with at the end of this campaign.

Balmer Admits To Brainwashing Kids

2006-03-29T00:24:00.000-05:00

I found this hilarious. In an interview with CNN Money, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer was asked if he owns an iPod. He replied: "No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."

I wonder if that's how Microsoft handles their small business division. To get companies to BUY less-stable software, they brainwash them, haha.

Sony to Stop Producing Playstation 1's

2006-03-28T04:12:00.000-05:00

After selling over 100 million units, Sony is ending production of the original Playstation 1 consoles. Sony says the Playstation 3 will still be backwards compatible for PS1 games. They also plan to release a software emulator that will allow gamers to play the original PS1 games on their PSP.

Car-Wallpapers.net Day 1 - The Launch

2006-03-24T01:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday at this time, car-wallpapers.net had about 6 unique visitors in the logs. Me and a few people I asked for suggestions from during the development. Today was the official launch, and we had well over 1,200 unique visitors from all around the world (not just US). Also today over 200 wallpapers were submitted by members, over 300 tags saved, and almost 1,000 downloads. Not a bad start. :)

I have had an overwhelming number of requests for widescreen support however. Does anyone off hand know the standand wide-screen resolutions?

I've also integrated it with United Bimmer, eliminating the old gallery we used to support.

However I am actually thinking about renaming it already. Car-wallpapers.net sounds too cookie-cutter. I'm thinking autobackgrounds.com or something like that.

US Government Supports Apple Against French

2006-03-23T18:38:00.000-05:00

The US Government has publically declared their support for Apple, against the French, citing they "compliment [Apple] because we need for companies to also stand up for their intellectual property rights".

From the article, "We assume this will continue to escalate, and it'll only be a matter of days before French students start burning iPods in the streets and Americans retaliate by torching Archos Gminis. And it looks like the cafeteria in Cupertino will have to start serving iToast for breakfast."

GG France.

Added New Categories to Car-Wallpapers.net

2006-03-23T18:09:00.000-05:00

In response to many people's suggestions, I've added an Aston Martin, Lotus, Maserati, and Subaru category to car-wallpapers.net. I also went through the tag system and hardened the security, as one forum member explained an exploit he found in it.

We've had almost 600 unique visitors in the past hour or two, so hopefully some of the visitors will begin posting new wallpapers and giving back to the site. :)

China Instates 2 Year VOIP Ban

2006-03-23T04:16:00.000-05:00

China has just instated a ban for at least the next two years on VOIP communications in an attempt to secure their fixed telephone business. This has been a major setback for Skype, which has been in talks for the past year to launch their SkypeOut service in China.

From the article, "China Telecom has described Skype's services as illegal and the newspaper said last year that China was experimenting with software in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to block them."

I understand protecting investments and supporting money making ventures (from the government's perspective), however this seems like it's just hindering technological progression.

Car-Wallpapers.net

2006-03-23T04:03:00.000-05:00

Googling around for wallpapers, I don't think ANY site is doing what I developed. I might even go as far as to say, this could be the single most advanced wallpaper gallery on the internet, hah. I haven't found one close.

Anyway, check this out:

http://www.car-wallpapers.net

I've just finished developing this from the ground up. It's a wallpaper gallery that's completely member-run, without all the flashy ads, popups, and deceptive links of other wallpaper galleries. Anyone can upload and submit a wallpaper, and it goes through a period of pending addition. During this limbo period, people can thumbs up or reject it. If the wallpaper is given enough approvals, it's automatically moved to the correct category and indexed in the database. If it receives enough reject votes before it's added, the uploaded wallpaper is automatically deleted, and all data related to it purged from the system... never reaching it's category (exploring the website will help clarify this, or read the further description here).

Another cool thing on uploading: say you upload a 1280x1024 wallpaper. As soon as you submit it, the system will automatically generate additional wallpapers for the resolutions 1024x768 and 800x600, the two steps below the size you uploaded. If you upload a 1600x1200 (max supported), it generates copies for all the resolutions. This adds more choices for the user. Also when uploading a wallpaper, the image's size are checked strictly against standard wallpaper sizes, so small or oddly shaped images will never clutter the system.

Now, I've coded a complete tagging system and implemented it on the wallpapers, very similar to the tagging systems of Technorati, del.icio.us, and digg.com (as well as countless others like netvouz, blinklist, simply, shadows, etc). When you view a wallpaper, for example (http://www.car-wallpapers.net/view-wallpaper-22.html), you will notice on the bottom middle the tags the wallpaper is marked with. Anyone can add new tags, and through the edit mode (button below the bottom right corner of the wallpaper thumbnail), people can issue votes to delete tags. Tagging is great because it connects wallpapers with similar features. For example you can click on the M3 tag of that example and see all the other M3 wallpapers in the system, bringing up the search results from that tag. Then you can change the drop-down to filter by category within the tag search. For example, when you're viewing all M3s (http://www.car-wallpapers.net/tags-M3.html), you can change the drop down from "Show All" to "BMW", and only see the M3's in the BMW category (this is more appropriate for cross-make tags, such as convertible), or you can change the tag to "Girls and Cars", and see all wallpapers containing a girl posing with an M3. If you've never used tags before on another website, play around with them on here, as they're quite useful.

Now the cool part, navigation. When you click on BMW on the left navigation menu, for example, you see 5-10 submenu items that appear below it (e36, e46, m3, z4, etc). These are not hard-coded, but completely dynamic. When you click on BMW, the system goes through and looks at every BMW wallpaper in the gallery, and analyzes all the tags. It then chooses a handful of the most popular tags (algorithmic), and lists those below the Make as suggested subcategories. This setup is great because say someone logs on and uploads 150 wallpapers of the new M6. After the system detects enough popularity of that tag, it'll automatically add M6 to the submenu below BMW, so people can go straight there.

And also, this site is extremely search engine friendly and optimized, so as soon as it starts gaining some popularity, search engines will love it.

Keep in mind, the site just was finished this afternoon, so there may be a bug or two (if you find anything, let me know), however so far it seems pretty bulletproof.

The next step is to grow the database, so if you guys have any great wallpapers sitting around on your computer, please upload away! We need to bulk up a bit now (however make sure it doesn't already exist in the system before you upload). As soon as it matures a bit, I'd like to replace the UB wallpaper gallery with this one. :)

Let me know your thoughts and opinions! I need some feedback!

Thanks guys!

Hello World!

2006-03-23T03:45:00.000-05:00

I have been reading people's blogs for years, but ever since my anti-live journal campaign, I haven't had one myself.

One reason I'd like to start one now though, is to discuss the e-happenings of me. I'm not going to use it as a diary, but more as an annoucement board for any projects that I'm working on. There is going to be a lot related to United Bimmer, of course, but also just my general commentary on the news.

But enough with that, if you wish, read it and find out for yourself.