Category Archives: Internet

Web Traffic From Portland Oregon

Computers & Electronics, Internet

As website developers we have a number of websites on the go right now and it seems that something strange is happening in the Google Analytics stats. Quite a few websites have been showing increased views so I did a bit of investigating on why this might be and found something strange.

A number of websites have a bunch of direct traffic from Portland, Oregon, US. This traffic is direct (i.e. not coming through a search engine) and it has a 100% bounce rate and zero time spent on the site. This leads me to believe that this Portland Oregon web traffic is being sent by some kind of automated system. By why would anyone bother doing this? What would be the point and what would they achieve by doing it? Maybe it is some kind of testing.

Also is it only a small number of websites that this is happening to or are there other people that are affected? Maybe if you have got to this page then you are experiencing the same weird direct traffic from Portland, Oregon. If you are then please let me know by leaving a comment and if you have any idea why this might be happening we would be interested to hear from you.

How To Add a Network Place

Computers & Electronics, Internet,

When Microsoft change things with each new edition of the Windows sofware it can sometimes be difficult to find how to do something that you thought was pretty simple and commonplace in the past. One example of this for me was to use ‘Add Network Place’ when you wanted to connect to a folder that was on a website where you had documents or images stored – previously this was a pretty simple thing to do.

But now in Windows 7 I have found that it seems to be hidden in the depths of things and is not immediately obvious.

Anyway, to add a network place in Microsoft Windows 7 you need to do this:

Open Windows Explorer
Click on Tools
Map Network Drive
At the bottom of the next dialog box you have the link to ‘Connect to a website that you use to store your documents and pictures’
After that you just need to enter the website address and you are sorted.

You will then find the link under the Computer section in the left hand folders menu.

Google Translate

Internet

Among the many and expanding services that Google offers is Google translate. Not only can you get a web page or section of text translated into many different languages but you can also use the Google translate API to translate large amounts of text for you.

However, what you have to remember about Google translate is that it is an automated tool. It is never therefore going to give you a translation that sounds like the spoken word in a foreign language, unless the sentence is short and easy to translate.

So if you are looking for a real life translation of something then you cannot get any better than the human brain, and someone who speaks both languages fluently.

If you only want to know what something means though, you can use Google translate – at least this will give you a grasp of what is being said and you can reword it if it is then in your own language. So although useful, Google translate has its limitations.

Google translate now covers over 50 languages and the translation can take place between any two languages while passing through an English translation if necessary.

Some languages that are included in Google translate are:

French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Arabic

This is just a selection and more languages are constantly being added.

Driving Directions – Mapquest

Business, Internet, ,

Gone are the days of having a mapbook in the back seat pocket of your car and getting it out whenever you needed to find directions to where you were going. Also gone are the days of stopping and asking for driving directions as it seems that these days there are much better ways to find a map for your route.

Not only do a lot of cars now have satnav installed where you can just program in your destination and be guided there by a softly spoken voice, but also now, if you don’t have satnav then you can just look up the route in advance on a website like Google maps or mapquest.

If you need driving directions, particularly to anywhere in the US, then all you have to do is type in your start and end points on mapquest or Google maps and it will tell you the route instantly. However, the problem for mapquest is that with Google being the biggest search engine, Google maps is also getting the most use for driving directions. Even more so when Google started putting a map thumbnail using Google maps into relevant searches.

Although Mapquest have been around since before Google even existed, coming up against a giant like this is always going to be a tricky situation. Mapquest are now venturing into the Android market, going head to head with Google maps.

It would be good to find that small players with good products could still compete with the likes of Google but the next few years could be the crunch point for Mapquest.

Clip Art on Yahoo and Google

Internet, ,

If you use either of these big search engines to look for clip art then you will come up with a lot of options. Sometimes you can come up with huge clip art directories for free – or even if they are not free you can buy a large quantity of clip art pictures for a very small cost.

Within Yahoo they have a directory of services and in the clip art yahoo directory alone you will find over 70 websites listed that are offering different types of clipart images, either for sale or for free.

If you are looking on Google for clipart then you might want to use a Google advanced image search to find the kind of clip art that you are looking for – especially if you want to find a particular image, say of a dog or something, then you can go to the Google advanced image search and you can select the option ‘clip art’ rather than a photo or a drawing or the straightforward search will will bring up all images whether clip art or not.

Be careful when you use any clip art images though, as you need to check whether they are copyrighted or you have the right licence to use them.