Software utilities

Google researchers announced at the International World Wide Web Conference held in Beijing the development of an algorithm to rank images, called Visualrank (pdf available). Google engineers claim this new image search results in much more relevant image results. This algorithm get the first images returned by a standard query and then analyzes them, finding the more similar ones, using a similar approach to the one used for Pagerank (the algorithm for ordering web page results). The paper shows image search results for some sets of images, such as Mona Lisa (on the left), grouped and linked (the two big ones on the center are the more relevant ones).

The old image ranking algorithm was based on text associated to images on the page, leading sometimes to inaccurate, or also completely wrong, results.

The algorithm has been developed by focusing on the top 2000 searched products on Google, such as iPod, XBox or Zune (the Microsoft MP3 reader).

This has not yet been developed, but you can have a look at the Google image search to see for example the face recognition feature, try it and check if it is enabled on your website.

I publish an email received from Ecocho, visit this post and spread the word!

Hi guys!

Most of you have expressed great enthusiasm for the Ecocho project and have asked if you can help – well, today Ecocho needs your help!!

Google chose today – Earth Day, of all days – to pull their feed from Ecocho. They claim that Ecocho has broken the adsense rules, but Ecocho has never directed users to click on ads (as Google suggests) and Ecocho has not only always respected the adsense rules but also believes strongly in them for Ecocho to succeed. We need genuine Ecocho users to make the project work!

If you love Ecocho and enjoy searching using Google on Ecocho, please go either here:
http://ecocho.wordpress.com
or here:
http://www.ecocho.com/blog.php
and post a comment in support of Ecocho!

Please email Google from the email address on those pages (there are petition letters on the page also) to voice your concerns. Please tell your family and friends also if you think they would care about the Ecocho cause.

We really hope that the Google people change their minds and come round to the idea that Ecocho can be good for everyone. We have been as transparent and as above board as we could be with our actions (enlisting KPMG to audit us and buying only government-issued credits) so we hope this will shine through.

If you love Ecocho, we’d love to hear from you!! Thank you!!
We hope you can help!

Alex and all the team @ Ecocho

Ecocho is a Sydney-based company which runs a zero emission search engine. Yes, it’s true! They plant 2 trees for every thousand searches performed on their website (which uses data from Yahoo and Google). The international website seems down now, their servers couldn’t support the traffic (they planted more then 2700 trees by now!)

From the Ecocho website(www.ecocho.com):

What’s Ecocho?

Ecocho is a new search engine trying to make a difference for climate change.
For every 1000 searches users make on Ecocho we’ll counter balances or “offset” up to a ton of greenhouse gases. We do this by sponsoring two trees via advertising on the site.

See below for more details.

Key Facts about Ecocho
Supporting the growth of trees is an effective form of carbon offsetting

Imagine searching the web and saving the planet at the same time. How does that work? Glad you asked.

Ecocho is a free service, and it’s one of the easiest ways people can change everyday behaviour to make a positive impact on the environment.

It allows you to search the web using your favourite search engine technology (Yahoo or Google) and reduce greenhouse gases as you do it.

* Each time you use ecocho as your search engine, you’ll be helping to slow climate change.

* How? For every 1000 searches that users make on ecocho.com, up to two trees will be grown to offset carbon pollution emissions

* Switching to ecocho.com doesn’t alter or slow your search. Search results are displayed via technology you already know and trust – Yahoo and Google

* ecocho.com is the world’s first known search engine that enables users to offset their own carbon emissions for free

* ecocho.com is an international initiative to reduce global warming. The service is multi-lingual and is being rolled out globally.

* Trees are grown via official Government-accredited projects.

* KPMG will run quarterly and final year-end audits on the amount of carbon credits purchased and “retired” by ecocho

* Yahoo and Google have both given their support to the project, contributing the search results for the site

* ecocho.com aims to contribute 70 per cent of revenue back into carbon offset credits, for the growth of trees

* Now everyone can help reduce global warming by switching to ecocho.com as their internet search engine

Sowing the seeds of ecological change

A thousand searches on Ecocho allow us to buy enough carbon offset credits to remove 1 ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. This works out at two trees spending a year sucking CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow, which makes us very happy.

So what about you? We understand it can be hard to make significant lifestyle changes to help the environment. This is why we’ve made it totally easy to make a difference:

Make Ecocho your Internet search engine

Get the usual Yahoo and Google results

Offset your carbon emissions for free

We know that much more must be done long term than just planting trees. But if we can make the way people search the Internet not only help the environment but also take no significant initial adjustment on their part, Ecocho can gently increase participation whilst sowing the seed of ecological thinking for greater change to follow. Ecocho could start the ball rolling.
Eco-searching: You search. We grow trees.

What is 301 redirect ?

A 301 redirect is a way of telling a broswer (and a search engine spider too) that a page has moved (301 http code means permanent redirection). This is useful in case you moved a website to a new domain or if you want to hide your dynamic page extension (i.e. show mypage.htm instead of mypage.php or mypage.aspx).

When do you need 301 redirect ?

As already stated, 301 redirect can be useful for moved pages, to redirect users from yoursite.com to www.yoursite.com, to hide extensions, to redirect from for example page-1.htm to index.php?page=1 (if you want to remove long urls and let them appear as plain htm pages) and more!

How to 301 redirect in PHP ?

To redirect a single page to a new localtion:

<?php
header(’HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(’Location: http://www.yourdomain.com/newpage.php’);
?>

If you want to add the www at the beginning of the site url

if (substr(getenv(’HTTP_HOST’),0,3) != ‘www’)
{
header(’HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(’Location:http://www.’.$_SERVER[’HTTP_HOST’].$_SERVER[’REQUEST_URI’]);
}
?>

How to 301 redirect in .htaccess file?

To redirect pages you cal also use htaccess file, only if you’re using n Apache webserver. In this case, simply create a file namd .htaccess (note the dotat the beginning) and put it in the root directory of the website (note that your FTP client may hide this file, so check the docs and find out how to show all files, usually adding -aL to the FTP client options).

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I was searching on the net and found out this nice website, SUExchange. This basically lets you exchange StumbleUpon votes to better rate your website on that newtwork. Does not seem very ethic to me, StumbleUpon was made to rate good websites, so this is basically cheating. I started using it a bit, and found some good sites in it. If you want to try it out, could you use my referral code http://suexchange.com/r.php?u=cbn81? Not too much ethic, but sometimes I like having traffic boosts!