Submitting your googlepages for google search

Hm... It looks like googlepages.com pages are not automatically indexed by Google. That's rather strange, because it's the same Google, after all, isn't it? BTW, blogger blogs are automatically indexed.

But anyway, You want your great home page page to be findable? Follow these steps:

1. Submit your site for indexing. It may be done in general way here, or, if you have google account (and you do), you can do it through webmaster tools. I personally like the latter way, because it is much more flexible in all aspects.
   
   Well, that's pretty much it, now wait, and after a while (may be weeks, actually) your site should become searchable. If you added something like http://example.googlepages.com, sooner or later google bot will index your home page and all the pages linked from it.
   
   Is there anything else you can do? Keep reading.
   
   
2. If you added your site, after it is indexed, you can view various statistics on it, plus manipulate in some may how google bots process it. However, in order to do it, you need to verify the ownership of the site. There are two ways to do it: including special meta tag into the header of home page, or uploading special file to the root folder of your site. The first way will not work, because in GPC you have no access to the header of home page, but the second way should work fine.
   
   Pay attention to the following things: first, google gives only the name of the file to be uploaded. Uploading empty file did not work for me, uploading valid html file did. Second, after verification is successful, keep that file on server. I've removed it right after passing the verification, and after a while had to verify the ownership again, with the html file of the same name.
   
   
3. One final thing. After You submitted http://your.page.googlepages.com for indexing, only home page and pages linked from it will be crawled. So, in order for some page of yours to be indexed, it should be linked from somewhere. So, don't forget to make a link to every page of yours somewhere! Or - use site maps. Sitemap is a special file listing the available content of some website. You may add sitemap to your website from Google webmaster tools.
   
   The good news is that googlepages automatically generate a sitemap for your site, which is situated at http://your.page.googlepages.com/sitemap.xml . The bad news, however, is that everything is included there, and you have no control over it. That also means that everybody, just by downloading your sitemap.xml, can get access to all the contents you've put there. Keep this in mind - googlepages.com is not for sensitive information. So, assuming that everything you put on your googlepages is for public, just add the default sitemap to webmaster tools, and You'll be fine.
   
   If you want some customization, however, there's no rule prohibiting you from creating and uploading your own sitemap under different name, and adding it instead of sitemap.xml.

Bažnyčios Pergalė pamokslai

Pagaliau mūsų bažnyčios "Pergalė" pamokslus galima paklausyti (ir parsisiųsti) on-line. Aišku, puslapis, kur yra nuorodos, yra laikinas (nors nėra nieko pastovesnio už laikinus dalykus, ar ne?), tačiau patys pamokslai (ir visos nuorodos, atitinkamai) artimiausiu metu niekur keltis nežada.

Pamokslai yra MP3 formate. Vienas pamokslas trunka apie 50 min ir užima apie 15.5 MB. Kokybė tokio tipo įrašui tikrai gera. Girdisi pamokslas originalo (anglų) kalba su lietuvišku vertimu.

Kol kas patalpinta 16 pamokslų - pabandymui. Jau yra įrašyta žymiai daugiau, ir kas savaitę įrašoma dar po 3. Taip kad naujų pamokslų tikrai netruks - tik spėk klausyti :)

Official Blogger Song

Maybe old news for someone, but I've found it amusing. The original post where I found it is here at digital inspiration. Cool cool cool.

The song itself is here:

I'm a baby blogger

Being baby blogger that I am (about 1 month old), I came acrosss the site of John Chow. I liked it, honestly. Out of all the things he speaks about (his site is about making money on blogging), two seem actual for me as a newbie blogger:

• Be passionate about what You write
• Keep writing periodically

The second comes out of first. If it works, go learn various money making techniques :)

The worst forum I've ever seen

There's a latvian singer Laima Vaikule (used to be one of the most popular singers in soviet times).

She has an official website with a forum. Theoretically, the forum is in russian, but it does not matter - 95% of the messages are pornography spam (in english). The worst forum I've ever seen. Pity, pity, pity - the well respectable singer and person should not allow something like that to be associated with her.

yet another 31plus :)

It looks like I'm not the only one associated with the name 31plus.

Have a look at this: http://31plus.net/. Making customized clothes for dolls... I don't know if I'm fascinated by this (my 5-year old daughter may be), but this is a unique occupation, for sure :)

HTML image mapping free software

I was in a search for free HTML image mapping software, and found GeoHTML, version 2.1.

Generally speaking, I found it useful for my purposes. It is freeware, allows saving/loading of image mapping projects (for mappings that are too big to be done in one time), opens existing html files with image maps, has layers, and its guidelines saved me a LOT of time.

The greatest complaints (IMHO), are

• The software looks abandoned (latest version as of 20 March, 2000), however, image mapping didn't change much sinse that time, does it?
• Works only on Windows, linux version could be great. I wonder if it would work under Wine...
• Copy/paste does not work when entering parameter values!!!
  

Also, if you open existing HTML file with map image without width and height specified, it assumes them to be 0, and this is not what you want.

It seems like the authors tried to to create a full-blown HTML editor from it (You can set maaaany image map tag parameters from this tool, and it even has a complete HTML reference build into it). The result is a capable, but way to complex for a novice HTML designer software. And even if you understand all those tweaky parameters, entering them into simple edit box is not the best thing the industry can offer.

Besides the GeoHTML, I also had a quick look at Handy Image Mapper and Meracl ImageMap Generator. Although the latter comes quite high in Google search rankings, I'd recommend against it. It is old, buggy, and installs a lot of stuff on my machine that I feel very uneasy about. I liked Handy Image Mapper, it is simple (although featureless) and user friendly. It is, in fact, so simple and intuitive, that writing about it is like writing about notepad.

So, the final conclusion is:

• If you need to use client side image maps with one or two areas in your pages, go get Handy Image Mapper. You won't regret it.
• If you need to create complex maps occasionally, and are not afraid of complex software, GeoHTML is for you. However, don't try to solve all the problems with it. It is great for producing many areas with coordinates, but I prefer to do other stuff (like setting titles and hrefs) with other, more suitable software (vim and aptana for me).
• If you are working with complex image maps on a day-to-day basis, maybe you should search for some professional tools?
  

Bookmarklets

I've created and added some bookmarklets. You may find them at http://alex.jakushev.googlepages.com/bookmarklets.html. See there for more info.

Currently, there are 2 bookmarklets to simplify navigation. More may be added later.

transvestitofobia

Accidentally found this website - online shop for trans(-genders/-vestites/-sexuals/...).

Not that I'm planning to become one, but it got my curiosity. Especially I was stunned by this. Until now I was sure that I'm able to distinguish male from female, no matter how disguised he is. I am not sure any more, and I don't like it. I really don't like it.

Timer script 2

Added newer version of previous timer script. The new version is available here, or there's a direct link from my home page.

Visually, it is almost the same, except that now several timers are possible. Inside, however, there's a complete redesign, using such JS features as closures, prototypes, constructors and so on. The definitive guide book rocks!

Learning JavaScript

JavaScript is not just a browser's language, although this is the field it is most popular in. JavaScript may also be used to automate Windows tasks (through Windows Scripting Host), there are some server-side JavaScript, and so on.

Deciding to learn JS, I've set to find good resources to learn from. Here's what I found (that is good for me):

w3schools tutorials

This is a good starting place to learn a bit about JS to get you starting

JavaScript - the definitive guide

I've got this book and look no further. All You need to know about JS is there. Note that I'm a professional software developer. For me, it is more important to understand the core, then I'll be able to apply it. If you need a cookbook, You'd rather look elsewhere.