Tag: Google

Another Step Forward

Carl Setzer5 Comments
woman working on computer in office

Today I finished Google’s Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User certificate. I have two more to complete in order to finish the Google IT Support course. Initially, it was nice to refresh on a lot of the material that I studied completing my Associates in Information Systems. We’re pushing through that now, which is pretty cool. In particular, diving deeper into Linux is something I’ve really wanted to do. This wasn’t terribly deep, but I enjoyed the Linux focused labs, which took me a bit.

I’m still exploring what I want to do after this cert. There are so many options within the world of tech. I could dive deeper into systems administration, or I could move into data analysis. I really enjoyed my studies into data systems and structures. And I enjoy my current IT role.

More soon!

A Summary Of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

Carl Setzer
Google Webmaster Tools

One of my assignments this week was to read through the Google Webmaster Guidelines and summarize their general recommendations.

  • Make sure your pages can get links from other pages. You will want to make sure you use crawlable links when you do that, which means using anchor tags (<a> with a href attribute).
  • Create a sitemap and ensure that it has links to all the important pages on the site. They also recommend having this as a “human-readable” list of links for those important pages.
  • Keep the number of links on a page to a “reasonable number”. They recommend “a few thousand at most”, which, to me, seems excessive.
  • Ensure that the hosting server supports the “If-Modified-Since” HTTP header, which is what informs the Googlebots when content has been changed since they last visited the page. It’s important as it saves bandwidth and, thus, networking overhead costs.
  • Use the robots.txt file well. It is important to ensure that the web crawler bots are not crawling non-important pages. Besides ensuring the robots.txt file has the right information, you also want to make sure that it is kept up-to-date. Doing these things ensures that your “crawling budget” is utilized well.
  • Another thing that you can do is manually submit your site to Google’s crawlers. This triggers them to head over to your site immediately, as opposed to waiting for it to be discovered crawling other sites.
  • Lastly, you should make sure that administrators of other relevant sites know about yours. Emailing an announcement, or posting such on social media is a great tool towards creating awareness of your site and garnering backlinks.

Amazon Frames, Google Glass and the Reinvented Future of Connected Eyewear

Carl Setzer

Today I logged into Amazon and the first thing I see is this ad: 

I’m surprised that I missed the announcement for Alexa Frames. Looks like these have actually been on the market for a few years.  Though not as feature-rich as the old Google glasses, they are definitely more discrete and attractive. 

This got me wondering about the status of Google Glass, and what similar products are on the market. With a little research, I found this piece about Google Glass. Now, I’ve known that the product is far from dead as there’s now Google Glass Enterprise Edition. But it has been more of a niche thing (here’s a post from the Verge from last February about it). 

 

As far as other products, I found this: Focals By North. Looks pretty interesting, but not ready for the mainstream yet. This video is from 2019, so perhaps they’ve updated things in the meantime. 

I think that the glasses will hold a significant part of the future of mobile computing. In particular, I’m curious about the ways VR/AR will be integrated into these glasses. Or how they won’t be. 

 

Google Tip: Deleting Old Google Sign-In Accounts

Carl Setzer

As many of you know, I just left a job. Part of my process for that is clearing out any data I’ve captured. One thing I always need to do is clear out any of the old Google accounts I’ve used. Like what you see in this view: 

 

The first step to getting rid of the other screens is to sign out of everything:

Next, go to the login screen, which will now look like this:

Click on “Remove an account”, and you’ll be able to choose the account(s) to remove from the screen. And, boom, it’ll be nice and clean for the next log-in.

Oh, YouTube Red, so close, yet so far

Carl Setzer

I’ve been hoping for YouTube to make upgrading to Red family plans easier for a few months. Imagine my delight to read this, then:

 

So I scurried over and clicked the “Upgrade Now” button, and…well…nope:

I thought myself so clever, setting up my family on a Google Apps “Standard Edition” (ancient predecessor for G Suite) back in the stone age (they stopped supporting it in 2012). It’s been nice having the family email accounts all together and under my administration (“Dad…I forgot my password…again…”). So, no Red Family plan for us…for now, at least. I suppose I can use an independent gmail account to do this. I wonder if I can share with a G Suite account from a personal account? Hmmm…

Anyway, I’m annoyed. Not angry, not going to abandon the Googleverse just yet. But, well, “harumph”!

Harumph
Harumph

And now, Google Music

Carl Setzer

I value knowing what’s going on in the tech world. Yet, there is so much change, coming so fast, that sometimes I miss the obvious.

I subscribed to YouTube Red some time ago. My focus: ad elimination. So much of my family’s video time is spent on YouTube, so it was a prudent investment.

I didn’t realize that the subscription includes Google Music. I discovered this today, so used it as my music delivery mechanism. Music is such a core part of my being, that the way I access it has value.

I like the interface. So far, the selection has been solid. Spotify, of late, has been quite a resource hog. Accessing via a web browser seems to use resources better, or at least more gently.

Anyway, I’m exploring shifting over fully, and cancelling my Spotify account. I’ll be diving deeper into Google Music and share what I learn.

And the Google Docs Phishing Scheme Continues

Carl Setzer

I just got this message from my college (taking an AutoCAD class at Edmonds Community College). It’s the Google Docs phishing scam. You get an email from someone you know that has “shared a document on Google Docs with you”.

Rule #1 with this sort of thing: DON’T CLICK THE LINK!

This has been around the interwebs for some time. The very first of these I saw, I called the sender and asked. And I’m sure you know what they said.

Now, if someone says they got one of these from you, it’s possible your account’s been compromised. It’s also possible you’re being spoofed (someone forged your email address in the “from” spot…it’s pretty easy, actually). I recommend immediately changing your password, since it won’t hurt. You should be regularly changing your passwords, anyway (yeah, yeah…I know…).

Anyway, live your digital life with a healthy dose of suspicion. Trust but verify, and any of a number of other security-esque cliches.

Clearly this is starting to grow again. Here are two articles to explore this fun further (both posted today)

Practice safe computing!

 

 

Subject: “<some name you may recognize> has shared a document on Google Docs with you”

Message:

 

“_______ has invited you to view the following document:”

 

 “Open in Docs” <—– DO NOT click on this link!

————————————————————————————————————————————-

Do not open the document! Immediately mark the email as Spam or Delete it. This is a widespread phishing scam targeting Google Apps. If you accidentally opened the Doc, your email account may be compromised, and your email address will continue to send the scam to everyone in your contact list. Several people at EdCC have already been fooled by this scam, so you may receive this email from someone familiar, such as your instructor, staff at EdCC, or other students.

We urge you to change your password and visit your account security page in EdMail to verify the applications that have access to your data in Google Apps.