The lighter side
So my last few posts have been ultra serious and fairly long so I thought I would take this opportunity to go the other way.
The other day I caught myself frozen on the Google home page with my hands poised on the home row and a blank expression on my face. It certainly wasn’t the first time this has happened so now I am looking to find something to blame, after all it can’t be my fault. I certainly can’t have forgotten what I was going to search for that is just crazy talk.
Let’s see here… Hmm. Ok got one.
I blame the austere whiteness of the standard Google search page! I hit the page and get lost in its snowy emptiness. Why can’t they fill it up with lots of Ads, links, tools and other stuff. The distracting page would then make me focus on the search box and I would be more productive. Alright, I admit this is BS. Firstly, I use iGoogle which has lots of boxes with RSS feeds, dictionary words and famous sayings. Secondly, my iGoogle page is pimped out with the Tea House theme. Hmm. Something else must be at fault. Ah ha!
My focus is drawn in by the most beautiful small “g” in existence. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but flanking the “g” are the most boring “o”s and the ugliest “G” and “e” I’ve ever seen. The dichotomy is the distraction. Google, please get the artist who does the holiday logos to add an artists touch to the crappy normal logo. My productivity needs a boost! (Note, I don’t even consider switching search engines).
I’ve done that before. I open up a Firefox window which takes me to Google, I place my fingers on the home row and just sit there. I don’t think I necessarily forgot what I was searching for; in most cases, I probably didn’t have anything to search for in the first place. I just opened Firefox because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I’m thankful that Google has continued to provide us users with their standard non-cluttered search page. I used iGoogle for a while but recently switched back to the plain ol’ Google because it loads much faster (and is less distracting).
A recent study said that Yahoo! produces more relevant results than Google. I found this hard to believe, but apparently it’s true. Google needs to shape up!
In other news, I’ve recently become acquainted with the Google Webmaster Tools utility. It’s really handy for figuring out referrers to your websites.
I’m looking to create a “professional” page at my other domain. Any tips? It’s going to be mostly static, so I don’t think using a CMS like WordPress is necessary.
On a side note, I noticed you switched to tags. Are you still using categories, as well? What happened when you switched? Do you recommend that I switch?