Steven Mooner Usher

In technology, or moreover, computer science, canonicalisation is the operation of transfiguring data that has multiple potential representations into a single, canonical representation.

In search engine optimisation, this refers to the avoidance of having more than a single representation of your data, ie; website. Millions of websites have two options to their website, firstly, website.com, and secondly, www.website.com. This may seem like a trivial point, but when it comes to the indexing of your website, the algorithm by which your pages are ranked may or may not choose the best option, and that is something out of your control, except for removing the options in the first place.

Avoiding canonicalisation is extremely simple to achieve, but many websites fall in to the trap of believing that having two sites indexed, two likely identical sites its worth mentioning, will improve their rankings, or at the very least increase brand/site exposure.

The fact is this just isn’t the case. If you’re a webmaster, or business owner with a website through which you wish to receive traffic and potential custom, it’s important that you correctly and clearly define the channels through which a search engines spider should travel.

This is unlikely to lead to any ‘duplicate content’ penalisation, but its good practice, and is ultimately one of the fundamental actions that should be taken upon the launch of any website, particularly one of significant depth.

If you are unsure whether your domain has correctly taken the steps to avoid canonicalisation, simply type website.com in to your browser (replacing website.com with your own URL of course). If this redirects you to www.website.com, then you are fine, but do not fear if it doesn’t, there is a simple procedure to ensure you communicate your site correctly.

Firstly, open your text editor of choice, and copy the following code in:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

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

Then, replace website.com and www.website.com with your own domains equivalents, and save this with the filename .htaccess, with which you can perform other techniques to improve your chances of ranking your site correctly, including rewriting your URL’s, but this is generally for smaller sites as you will need to include the code for each URL individually. For larger sites this is usually done through a combination of database category allocation and PHP (or similar) code.

Once you have saved this file, place it in your local root directory, save, then upload it to the root directory of your remote (hosting) server. Now, give it a try and you will find that if you type in website.com it will automatically redirect to www.website.com,thus avoiding canonicalisation and incorrect indexing of your sites information/services.

Try some examples. Follow the first link:
http://harrisfowler.co.uk - good personal injury site, you will find yourself at www.harrisfowler.co.uk.

Now, try the following link:
http://youclaim.co.uk - bad personal injury site, you will find you are at the URL originally shown.

Remember, if you have a website, let it serve it purpose.

My girlfriend Anna and I spent Saturday 22nd Nov at Paignton Zoo, and I’m pleased to say it was an awesome day. I won’t babble on too much, I’ll leave it to some images to do the talking:

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Two alien frogs that looked bizarrely like toys.

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Some rather phallic cacti.

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A couple eleflumps, one of which could only walk backwards, the other seemingly intent on cracking its face open on a rather large and solid wooden post.

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So, Jason Mraz has finally had his arm twisted and planned a release I’m Yours as a single, the only problem is, he allowed his nan to knit it a woolly jumper before giving it to the radio stations.

I’ve known about the song for some time now, and along with I’m At Peace by Justin Nozuka, and Use Somebody by Kings of Leon, is one of my girlfriends and I’s songs. Call me soppy, but every couple has them!

The original version of I’m Yours is a prepossessing love song, with delicately stretched vocals permeating a sincerity that both his adversaries and his very own redraft fail to deliver.

The same version that sweeps me in to a hazy delirium each and every time it projects my beautiful girlfriends face on to the canvas of my mind, was stripped down to a naked inflection of purity, just Jason Mraz, his classical guitar, and the veracity of the persona that oozes from his words.

Now, the problem Mr Mraz faces, forgetting the impossible-to-avoid questions regarding the pronunciation of his surname, is that in re-writing and subsequently releasing I’m Yours with such a cutesy, wishy-washy backing track, he has cornered himself in to a market that contains just Jack Johnson and himself (there are others of course, but not on such a commercial scale), and I have a feeling I’m far from the only person that’s grown a little tired of Mr Johnson’s perfect little life with his perfect little wife. I can imagine him tumbling down a flight of stairs only to land on a cushion his telepathic wife had laid down to mitigate his fall…made of platinum…with the cure for AIDS accidentally sewn in to the seam…by Elvis.

Its not a jealousy thing, my life is good, and I’m extremely happy with my lot, but do you know the guys at the first day of University who tell you all about their “Twin-Turbo Super Car with an amazing sound system with sub-waffles blah blah blah”, their model girlfriend, and the fact their dad came first in 15-to-1 ten years ago? Well, that was probably Jack Johnson’s modest cousin.

Now, back to Jason Mraz, and more to the point, his single I’m Yours. I do wonder what my opinion would be if I hadn’t of heard the original before, or if it hadn’t struck such a romantic chord with my girlfriend and myself, but ultimately, I believe the song has been weakened in trying to reach a wider audience, and perhaps, if he hadn’t taken assumptions about the wider audiences intelligence, they too would have preferred to buy the original.

I love the song, in both formats, but the revision and addition of generic drums etc has been detrimental to the overall ‘feel’ of the song. Whereas with the original you felt like you were a voyeur, sneaking through his garden bushes to watch him serenade his girlfriend, now it just feels like you’re watching him play a gig at a festival, with no girlfriend in sight, and his PR boss telling him to pull his jeans up.

When you’re thinking of business names, try to think of the impact it may have on customer influx!…

www.wrighthassall.co.uk

Kings Of Leon have always held a large appeal for me, from their first album proper Youth And Young Manhood, they set out a sonic intent to engineer beautiful music that although largely radio-friendly, also had the ability to polarise opinion instantaneously. This can be accredited to a quirky, off-par public persona, both from the sounds they created and the image they portrayed. One memory I have of their early months in the public domain is of the band adorning their once trademark long hair and Nirvana t-shirts. The first single, Mollys Chambers, from their debut 5-song EP Holy Roller Novocaine, achieved some considerable airplay given the age of the band and the nature of their sound. Commercial success was a distant second to the sound at that point, which adds weight to the argument that their new album, Only By The Night, has been engineered to line their wallets rather than maintain and please the staunch set of fans they’ve accumulated over the years.

I could go in to a discography and break down the bands rise to their current status, but I think we’re all getting a little tired of hearing about the band in general, all we really want to know is ‘how good is this album?’, and the answer depends, ironically, on where you have come from to be with the band right now. As only a part-time follower for the last 5-6 years, I can listen to Only By The Night without thinking Kings Of Leon have let me down. The band owe me nothing, they don’t have a debt to feed my musical taste.

But what for those that have followed the bad since day one? I fear they may reflect upon the album as a failure, a departure from their original sound too drastic to justify a natural progression of their sound.

That said sound is glorious, it’s coated, it will stroke you to sleep and occasionally slap you back out of your slumber for 3 minutes of fun, as with Sex On Fire, which, to the contrary, 3 minutes would not an On Fire Sex make. Thats talking from experience.

The opener, Closer, starts the album off as it means to go on. A delicate gem of a track that oozes confidence in their ability to put together sounds, as is the prerequisite for any band entertaining thought of longevity. A soft, dreamy intro, that I cant work out whether its played through an FX pedal, or a keyboard, either way, its delicious, and sucks you straight in. And once you’re in, there’s little chance of getting out as soon as Caleb Followills’ (full band line-up below) visceral vocals tear a strip out of your ears.

Full Band Line-Up

• Caleb Followill (lead singer, rhythm guitar)
• Nathan Followill (drums)
• Jared Followill (bass)
• Matthew Followill (lead guitar)

Caleb’s voice has the unique quality of sounding like a grit-coated ten-pin bowling ball, even in the bands most delicate moments, of which Closer is certainly one of them.

The second track, Crawl, is unfortunately the albums weakest, and would have been better served as an anonymous track placed somewhere about 9th in order, so I wont waste any more time on it, but its worth mentioning that if this had appeared on, say, a Razorlight album, it would be a stand-out track, its just hard to be a stand-out track in an album already bursting at the seams with them.

Never fear, however, as the next track that steams your way is the arresting Sex On Fire. A track that eventually proved to be the launch pad for the current lofty perches they assume in the musical landscape. This is one of those ‘instant’ success songs, a song that has no patience for the hard-to-please, so it decides instead to rip their face off and spit pure pop brilliance in to the bleeding cavity.

Unless you’ve got a psychotic Austrian father with a penchant for basements, you have no excuse for not being aware of this track already.

And the same applies to Use Somebody, the track that I think everyone will consider one of their favourites of the year, and will surpass Sex On Fire for appeal, if it hasn’t already. On a personal note, it is one of my girlfriend and I’s songs, so it will always have a great amount of fondness in my eyes.

Audibly when I hear Manhattan I hear Closer, which is not to say its not a fantastic track, but here is the point in the album that the lack of diversity and eclecticism in the delivery rears its minimal head. A decent track, a nice bass line, but sonically akin to eating white bread, on a monday morning, in Runcorn.

Lets surge through the album now and find ourself at Be Somebody, as I feel this track offers us the greatest clue as to the bands aspirations as they sat in that recording studio in 2007 devising their world domination. I can almost hear the dialogue now, as they dissect those bands that have resurfaced stronger, more polished, finely tuned and ready for an assault on the ‘big-time’.

I can guarantee one band name popped-up more than any other, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The way the Chilli’s, and perhaps more notably the Foo Fighters have made themselves relevant in an age of younger, tighter, more beautiful bands is to be admired, and in Kings Of Leon’s case, replicated.

The sound is not too dissimilar, but in particular on Be Somebody, with the almost tribal style drum intro, there are clear signs that this rise to the top has been crafted, and not thrust upon them.

That is not a derogatory stab at the band. It is my personal opinion that if the guys wish to make their bank balances correlate to their talent, then good luck to them. They deserve commercial success, if only for the years spent around the periphery constantly pushing quality music to limited reception.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t say anything as he flanked President-elect Barack Obama during his first post-election press conference. He didn’t have to.

The image alone of Schmidt standing elbow-to-elbow with Obama’s top economic thinkers was enough to send shivers up the spine of Google’s competitors.

“This terrifies Microsoft,” said a Democratic lobbyist familiar with the industry. “There’s a reason why people are scared to death of Google.”

Last Friday’s press conference Friday came just two days after Google threw in the towel on an attempted Internet advertising partnership with Yahoo, the older, but struggling Web company. Google said that the prospect of an antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department was the key deal breaker. Yahoo, which needed the deal more than Google, had said it was willing to fight the government, but Google didn’t have the stomach for a protracted legal battle.

So an open question for Google is whether the search-engine giant’s newfound closeness with the Democratic president-elect will give the company the muscle it needs to win disputes with the government over deals such as the Yahoo partnership.

Google says that Schmidt was acting on his own, and his politics don’t reflect the company’s official stance.

“Eric’s endorsement of Senator Obama was a personal matter, and as a company Google was neutral in the campaign,” said Adam Kovacevich, Google’s senior manager of global communications and public affairs. “We look forward to working with the new administration and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to keep the Internet open and to promote economic growth.”

Obama’s transition team declined comment.

Some insiders, though, say Schmidt is inevitably identified with the company he leads. And they say that could benefit Google, not on the big decisions in Washington, but on the accumulation of smaller, less-visible matters. “A lot of decisions are made in the gray areas and at the low levels,’ explained the Democratic lobbyist.

“From the staff attorney all the way up the line, everybody now knows that Google is close to Obama,” the lobbyist said. And that could subtly affect the policy playing field in Google’s favor.

Beyond the perennial antitrust battles, Google has a host of other issues pending in Washington, from broadband access and net neutrality to privacy rights to patent reform and copyright policy.
And it hasn’t gone unnoticed in the lobbying community that Google has been quietly upping its participation in the Washington scene for nearly a year.

Not only was Google’s Schmidt on the campaign trail and on Obama’s economic advisory committee, but he also assumed the role of chairman of the influential New America Foundation early this year. Google didn’t donate money as a company, but Schmidt wrote a personal check of $1 million, single handedly financing a healthy portion of the foundation’s $12.9 million annual budget.

The New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy think tank, will clearly be at the center of the new administration’s thinking on economic issues: Schmidt and two other of its board members were among the 17 influential economic thinkers who stood behind Obama Friday.

“We’re looking forward to having more friends in the next administration,” said New America Foundation Vice President Rachel White. “But as an independent foundation, the chances are good that we’ll swim against the stream of some of the policies that the Obama administration puts forward.”

Anticipating the problems that can come from having prominent people with multiple agendas serving on the foundation’s board of directors, New America drew up a conflict of interest policy in June, saying, in part: “New America’s conflict of interest policy is not designed to eliminate or exclude relationships and activities that might create a duality of interest, but rather to encourage transparency and careful deliberation in those cases where conflicts or perceived conflicts may arise.” Source Unknown.

Google pulled out of a search advertising partnership with Yahoo due to regulatory objections, causing Yahoo shares to rise as investors hoped the move could lead to a resumption of deal talks with Microsoft.

Yahoo denied rumors it was in talks to sell itself to Microsoft for between US$17 (S$25.43) and US$19 a share but its shares were over 8 per cent higher. ‘Not true’ said Yahoo spokesman Tracy Schmaler, who also denied a rumour that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was on his way out.

The US Justice Department said on Wednesday it had told Google it planned to file a lawsuit to block the deal, under which Google would have placed its more lucrative ads on Yahoo searches.

‘Had the companies implemented their arrangement, Yahoo’s competition likely would have been blunted immediately with respect to the search pages that Yahoo chose to fill with ads sold by Google rather than its own ads’, the government said.

Yahoo regretted Google’s decision, saying it was ‘disappointed that Google has elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court’.

Between them, Google and Yahoo had more than 80 per cent of the web search market in August, according to comScore.

Microsoft had lobbied hard against the partnership which Yahoo initially struck with Google as a way to fend off an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft.

‘They didn’t want the Yahoo-Google deal to go through because they wanted to be in control of Yahoo’s assets instead of Google being in control’, said Mr Youssef Squali, an analyst at Jefferies & Co.

Yahoo shares were up 8.5 per cent to US$14.49 in afternoon trading while Google was down 4.3 per cent at US$351.18. Microsoft was down 3.6 percent to US$22.68. All three trade on Nasdaq.

‘(Yahoo) investors are reacting favorably to the news (that the Google deal is off) as it might open the door to a possible deal with Microsoft, including a possible outright takeover of Yahoo’, said Mr Frederic Ruffy, options strategist at New York-based website WhatsTrading.com.

Google and Yahoo, No. 1 and No. 2 in the Internet search market respectively, announced the planned partnership in June but delayed implementation to allow the Justice Department to review it.

Google said it pulled out of the deal rather than face a protracted legal fight.

‘After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement’, Google legal officer, David Drummond, said in a blog posting.

‘We’re of course disappointed that this deal won’t be moving ahead’, he said.

A source close to the deal said that Microsoft’s decade-plus-long legal battles with the Justice Department over antitrust matters had been a lesson for Google. ‘Most observers would say that they (Microsoft) did allow themselves to get distracted,’ the source said.

Advertisers hotly opposed the search partnership, arguing that Google and Yahoo’s dominance of the market could mean they would raise prices.

But the source said regulators were more concerned that Yahoo ‘over time would become overly reliant on our system and would over time exit the search market’.

Mr Squali, the analyst at Jefferies & Co, said some sort of deal with Microsoft now seemed inevitable.

He said it was unlikely that Yahoo could grow organically and deliver high profit margins. ‘(It’s) not in the picture right now’, he said.

Yahoo could have gotten cash by selling its Asian assets, but Mr Squali said it was unlikely given the state of the capital markets.

Needham & Co analyst Mark May said Yahoo remaining independent was the ‘worst possible scenario’ for the company.

Sources have told Reuters that Yahoo is in talks about buying the content and advertising operations of Time Warner’s AOL unit.

Source

I have never been one to complain, particularly in restaurants or the such, but after a visit to the Blackbrook Tavern in Taunton on Sunday evening with my girlfriend I’m afraid I am compelled to report the establishment to the Environmental Health department of Somerset County Council.

We decided to stop for food on the way home after a rather arduous day, feeling that at least we could relax, have a bite to eat and go home far more relaxed than how we had entered. But ultimately the decision cost me Monday at work, and resulted in me having to visit the toilet no less than eight times to vomit.

I opted for the Aberdeen Angus Burger, ironically because I thought it was the safe choice, and although extremely tasteless, and accompanied by an acutely stale salad, given my hunger I ate it nonetheless. To compound our misery, my girlfriend ordered a pasta dish but was told moments before it was due to be served to her that they had run out of garlic bread, so she had to make-do with regular bread, which they didn’t even have the courtesy to offer her some butter for, and even more disgruntling was the fact that they returned yet again, with the news that they had ran out of the sauce for her pasta, and could only offer her some pesto! Again, given our hunger, and the general frustration with the restaurant that had now become so manifest, we decided to eat-up and get out.

If the quality of the food was poor enough, which it truly was, I can only assume they advertised their staff vacancies in the back of Nuts, for all their decorum and manners displayed. I mean that not as a stereotype as such, but their service was genuinely abysmal, and as I said, I have never once complained in a restaurant before, which for anyone that knows me, will add absolute conviction to my disgust. When we first walked in, I went to the bar to order a drink for us both, and stood there for a few seconds when a chap walked up to the till in front of me, I waited for a “How can i help?”, or at the very least a “Hi”, some kind of acknowledgment of my existence, but it never came, he just looked up at me in absolute silence as if I had had the audacity to interrupt his busy day doing shit-all behind the bar. Throughout service he had the manner of someone who didn’t want to be there, and given that it was a Sunday evening, I can quite understand that, but if you decide to work in the public sector, you understand the responsibilities that go with that, and the nucleus of that is courtesy.

I don’t expect every restaurant worker to be the epitome of grace and cordiality, but I do expect my £20 worth of custom, £20 that helped to pay the little fucks wages, to be accompanied by a measure of consideration.

I am awaiting a response from environmental health, but I have every faith that if an investigation were to take place, they would recognise fundamental errors in their food hygiene practices. And, were it to result in a fine and/or closure, I would not feel a moments guilt.

Update!
I have now spoken to a lady at environmental health, and she informs me that if I wished to take the matter further, there would need to be evidence that 1) it was food poisoning, and 2) it was food poisoning resulting from their kitchen. And the only way to achieve that? A stool or vomit sample! Pardon my ignorance, but the last thing I thought of at 4am on Monday morning as I lay folded up in tears on my girlfriends bathroom floor was saving some for examination.

Given that my stomach is still in a lot of pain, I have a mind to send them a sample now, plopped straight in an envelope, without the paying the full delivery charge.

Still, if there’s any good that I can recruit from such a vaudeville farce, it would be that I am now a full half-stone lighter, which, if I were a girl, and there’s little evidence to suggest otherwise, would mean a successful month at Fat Club.

If only engineering justice for a shoddy meal were as simple as losing weight.