The WP-super-cache plugin from Donncha O’Caoimh is probably one of the better plugins. Intriguingly, rather than worrying about the Digg Effect, Donncha recommends you proudly protect your pages by making them “Stephen Fry proof”

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Stephen Fry proof your blog

I’ve known this was an option for a long time, but was using a caching plugin for WordPress and had mistakenly assumed that the two were not compatible. However, I enabled GZIP because of the GTMetrix site speed test repeated recommendation to do so and notice a quite significant difference.

Without compression, a typical page takes about 3 seconds to load 240 kilobytes of data, making 29 requests. With GZIP enabled across all content MIME types, the time is just over 1 second to download 166kb of data (same number of requests). My Google Page Speed grade went from 89% to 96% (Yahoo’s YSlow grade was 77% now 81%).

If you’re running a blog on an Apache server and have access to your cPanel, you should take a look and run some tests. Your mileage may vary. You can check whether compression is working properly using this page.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Compress your blog with GZIP

On the internet, web pages are only one of the many kinds of traffic that run on the virtual tracks of the internet. Other types of traffic include music files being exchanged via peer-to-peer networking, or from the iTunes store; movie files travelling via BitTorrent; software updates; email; instant messages; phone conversations via Skype and other VoIP (internet telephony) services; streaming video and audio; and other stuff too arcane to mention (ten years ago I might have mentioned gopher, usenet etc).

Everything you need to know about the internet; it’s old but still relevant.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Everything you need to know about the internet

I took a look at the equivalent metrics for Sciencebase and Sciencetext. SB has about 4000 RSS subscribers although that figure is often reported at nearer 5000, but let’s assume it’s just 4000. The reach, Feedburner tells me, is more than 500. That’s the same order of magnitude click/read numbers as Battelle sees. As a percentage it’s far higher. More than 10%. One in ten subscribers actually view or click on an update in the newsfeed. The percentage for Sciencetext, which has fewer RSS subscribers still, is about 10% also.

I suspect that there are simply a lot of people who no longer the newsfeed either because they moved on or because they are flooded with other feeds. I also suspect that a fair number of “subscribers” are actually bots of one kind or another, scraping content and creating splogs and such. Of course, there are also the legitimate syndication sites that use RSS properly.

I think, however, that the take home message is that the metrics do not matter and that every blogger should write to please too people. Primarily, one should write a blog to please oneself. If there’s a reader out there hanging on your every word, then they are precious and you should treat them as such. Whether you refer to your reader as a follower, a fan or a friend. Hold them close treat them well and they will keep reading and making your blogging time worth it. After all, it seems that the other 90% are not even going to see the post…

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Reach friends and fans, hold them close

Previously, the data Google collected on you when you used YouTube was carefully cabined away from your other Google products. So, in effect, Google could use data they collected on YouTube to improve and customize the users’ YouTube experience, but couldn’t use the data to customize and improve user experience on, say, Google+.

The same siloing took place for your search history. Previously, Google search data was kept separate from other products. Even when users were logged in, Google promised not to share the information they gathered about you from your Google search history when customizing their other products. Considering how uniquely sensitive user search history can be (indicating vital facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and much more), this was an important privacy protection.

No more. Whatever Google tool you’re using, you are now a single user across the whole system. All the different bits tell all the other bits all about you when you switch between them.

What Actually Changed in Google’s Privacy Policy.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Google privacy policy: the actual changes

Use Google Translate to look up the phrase and as you start typing it into the German to English box, the word “vorsprung” translates as “lead”, add “durch” and the translation expands to “projection by”! Add “technik” and it flips to “advantage through technology”.

Intriguingly, however, if you swap “technik” for a semantically related word like physik (physics) and run the translation you will get: “projection by physics”…

Does anyone else think this looks suspiciously like yet another example of marketing manipulation of Google’s results?

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Vorsprung durch Technik

It is odd, to say the least. A country in Northern Europe replete with natural resources, in particular lots of trees, should become a global leader in ICT (present economic climate and the advent of iPhones and Android aside). However, political scientist Anil Hira of the Simon Fraser University, in Canada, has undertaken a detailed case study of Nokia and determined that success came from deliberate and coordinated efforts by the state and private sector towards a national goal. And, what was that national goal? Essentially, back in the 1970s, Finland decided that it would become “the Japan of Europe” – an agile exporter able to introduce new products and improve productivity, leading to a major improvement in its standard of living.

“With a small domestic population of 5.2 million, a relatively remote location, and a traditional economy based on natural resources (lumber, pulp, and paper), [Finland] is probably one of the last places one would expect to see the emergence of one of the leading high tech companies in the world,” says Hira. However, there was a precedent.

From rags to insulators

Finlayson, a high-end textile manufacturer, began in 1820 and a branch plant of the Swedish Rörstrand works became an independent Finnish manufacturer of ‘Arabia’ porcelain. This latter company diversified into manufacturing industrial porcelain and electrical insulators, in 1922 it established a research laboratory and began developing new technology. Likewise, Nuutajärvi glassware design merged with the porcelain people into the Wärtislä group, itself founded on a sawmill in the 19th century. The company is now a leader in marine engines and power plants as well as engineering services.

In other words, Finland already had a tradition of mergers, diversification and verticalization on which to model the transition of Nokia’s arboreal ancestry into ICT. Fundamentally, the shift was instigated by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the need to shift its economic dependence to Western customers, says Hira.

State secret of Nokia success

“Nokia’s success clearly is related to timing and the initial favorable factors,” adds Hira, but “Nokia’s success is by no means permanent as it was initially based in part on favorable timing and first mover advantages in technology and marketing.” Indeed, the emergence of smart phones (and a failure so far to innovate in that direction) together with a significant lowering of tech manufacturing and labor costs, particularly by the Far East has meant that Nokia has lost much of its momentum. That said, their mobile phones are still sold in vast numbers and even underpin rural economies across the developing world, not least because of their robustness and long-lasting batteries.

Nevertheless, there was what Hira calls a “miraculous transformation” of the Finnish economy in just ten years, which was almost entirely due to the evolutionary and adaptable nature of the private-public partnership. It is unlikely that Finnish economic history and the case of Nokia will be replicated, although South Korea comes close. However, what seems obvious is that a high level of informal as well as formal cooperation between public and private sectors can take rapid advantage when technological windows are opened.

By the way, Nokia is pronounced “noh-kya” (rhymes with rockier) not “No-Kee-Ah” it is the name of the Rapids on the banks of which Knut Fredrik Idestam established his water-powered pulp mill in 1865.

What is next for Nokia? Well almost a year ago the company fell into the arms of Microsoft and abandoned its age-old Symbian mobile operating platform in favor of Windows Phone 7. It was almost a stealth takeover, The Economist claims. However, there are troubles with sales although neither company dares reveal figures. If you do have a Nokia smart-ish phone you can expect an update to the OS in early February (the 8th in rumored fact) as the latest update to Nokia Belle makes its debut. Just ahead of that Nokia has appointed Marko Ahtisaari as Executive Vice President, Design, and a member of the Nokia Leadership Team, effective as of 1st February 2012. He will be reporting directly to President and CEO Stephen Elop.

Anil Hira (2012). Secrets behind the Finnish miracle: the rise of Nokia Int. J. Technology and Globalisation, 6 (1/2), 38-64

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

The Nokia case: no pulp fiction

It is very hard to keep a low profile if you are online – Google, Twitter, Facebook etc know a lot more about you than you might imagine and with tracking being high on the un-privacy agenda, it will soon become impossible to keep yourself to yourself.

My mantra has always been – if you don’t want it on the Internet, don’t put it on the Internet

But, Neowin’s round up of privacy reclamation is worth a read either way: How to regain your online privacy: part one – Neowin.net.

First: Download all your data and then delete/deactivate your Google, Facebook, accounts. Ditto Twitter and your Windows Live account. And, obviously, delete all your other accounts. Told you it was drastic.

Now, permanently set your browser to private browsing and run no tracking extensions and anti-cookie plugins as available. Instead of going through your ISP direct when surfing use an anonymized proxy or virtual private network (VPN).

Of course, the most drastic and simplest way is to unplug.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Claim back your online privacy

Anyway, I tweeted a few more examples, posted a blog about it, and updated the hashtag on the What the Trend site…followers and others ran with it and it went on all day Friday. It didn’t quite go viral and as far as I know it never actually “trended” on Twitter. But, here’s the interesting thing. I did it purely for fun and perhaps got a wee bit carried away. Some people seemed to enjoy the Friday diversion but it had a side-effect too in that I presume most of my followers hanker after my relatively serious science and technology news and views rather than a tedious stream of spoof rock song titles. Of the 14632 Twitter followers for @sciencebase on Thursday (having seen 34 new people join the sci-tech party in the previous two days, there were 3 who jumped ship as the #mundanemetal meme panned out and another 4 the next day. That said there was a dip of 3 the day before the meme too…so conclusions are difficult.

However, Saturday after some more normal science and technology tweets Sciencebase was up 8 and so far today we’ve added 35. Total at the time of writing is 14668 and TwitterCounter reckons we’ll gain 23 tomorrow and have reached 15000 by the beginning of March at the current average rate. That’s a lot slower a rate of increase than at the time we were nominated for a Shorty Award early in January.

The point not being to brag about the number of followers I have, just to point out that creating an off-topic meme on Twitter can actually negatively impact on your followers but after the noise dies away things seem to go back to normal pretty quickly. Of course, if I’d created an on-topic twitter meme, things may have been different. But, I am a chemist, so what other kind of music would I reference than metal?

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Impact of a Twitter meme

It could become an essential tool for users in countries that restrict free speech, which is pretty much everywhere to a greater or lesser extent. The plugin would also help defeat implementations of  PIPA or  SOPA  in the US that will, should they pass into law, restrict sites across the globe.

Don’t be fooled, however, the very same plugin might also be used, perish the thought, to let people in The Netherlands, Italy, Finland and elsewhere access The Pirate Bay even if their ISPs are blocking it.

From TorrentFreak

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

WordPress plugin unblocks blocked sites