Blogger Pages Views

Here is a chart of page views for the year. This chart does not include people that only view the news feed for the blog. That last dip in hits that lasted 2 months may indicate low page rank.

When blogger came out of Beta and I switched to the live version my page rankings went away. I do have a page rank for the main page, but anything posted before 2007 does not. So it appears that any post made during 2005 and 2006 has a zero page rank. Of course any 'one' post made in the last three months also does not have a page rank, but that's expected.

Here are a few examples:
CableCard; Oct 05/2006
AMD Processor Socket; May 12/2006
VME Bus; March 31/2006
IDE Hard Drive Bus; Dec 27/2005
Removing Standards Bodies from the PC; Dec 10/2005
DDR SSTL Interface; Nov 15/2005 ... This does have a page rank

One sentence was removed by the editor......

Google Sitelinks

Out checking my Google Sitemap report [Webmaster tools]. I noticed under the Links tab .. Sitelinks, that Google has included sub pages that will show up in a Google search for my site. The pic is an example they use to show people what they are talking about. I did a few Google searches but I don't see the additional links showing up. Looks like they picked the major site pages, which happen to be located at the bottom of each page of the site.
Components - http://www.interfacebus.com/Components.html
Buses - http://www.interfacebus.com/Interface_Bus_Types.html
Reference - http://www.interfacebus.com/Reference_and_Information.html
Equipment - http://www.interfacebus.com/OEM_Equipment.html
Design - http://www.interfacebus.com/Logic_Design_Descriptions.html
Standards - http://www.interfacebus.com/Standards_and_Publications.html
Software - http://www.interfacebus.com/Software.html
Distributors - http://www.interfacebus.com/Parts_Distributors.html

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Sitemaps reports pages that have internal and externals links pointing to any one page. Looking at pages with external links, I've taken note of the pages with only one external ~ which would be coming from the site map, which happens to be located off-site. Pages need external links to get a page rank from the search engines.

Cable Ferrites Manufacturers,
Charge Pump IC Manufacturers,
Computers Laptop Rugged,
D-Sub Connector Mechanical Dimensions,
Convoluted Foam Manufacturers,
Desiccant Manufacturers,
Design Termination, Signal Reflections,
ECL Logic Manufacturers,
EMC Mezzanine Board Pinout,
Ethernet 1000KX,
Ethernet over VDSL,
Federal Aviation Regulations,
Floppy Disk Drive Manufacturers.
ICMB; Intelligent Chassis Management Bus.
This does not represent all the pages with just a single external link. I only scanned the first 400 pages in the list, of 975 total. I'll check it again in a few months when it occurs to me again. Giving time for the list to be up-dated.

Remember that external links help a particular page, but also any other internal page that it links to.

Getting the word out on the site

Commenting on a few news group posting's today, leaving the web site address behind. Also went out to a few other sites leaving posts. It may help to get more people coming into the site. 4,462,055 page views so far this year

Working on two of the pages in the to-do list of pages that really need to be updated. I keep a list of a dozen or so pages that were up-loaded but never had any content provided. Two military style D-Sub connector pages; MIL-DTL-83513, and MIL-DTL-32139.

From the connector on the FCT site, D-sub right angle adapter. I'm not sure I've seen one of these before. The main page for D-Sub connector manufacturers.

Oh, this is posting 307 to this blog.

New Google Site Map Upload

Using GsiteCrawler, I'm generating a new site map. I have also up-dated the on-site sitemap. Which is really located out on my Google pages site to save band width, plus that would give me an external site that points to my pages, helps with page rank.

The local site-map is used to help people find pages or to show the structure of page links on the site. When this map is generated it comes with a large number of duplicate page listings. Tonight I removed some [a few] duplicate listings and added links to the pages that have been generated within the last few weeks.

While the Google site map is used to inform Google of the pages that exist on the site. For Google's version, duplication does not matter ~ just that the spider sees a list of all the pages on my server.

I think it worked, I'm up-load the site map now, then clicking the button to indicate to Google it has a new site map.

Recommendations; always have an on-site site map This helps pages that are linked more than 4 levels down from the home page. With a site map off the home page, all pages are 2 levels down regardless of what they really are. A site map located off site [like mine] also makes it appear that an external page points to all your pages, that helps in page rank. Being off my server also helps with down load speed, as the site map which is still over 200k bytes is on another server.

Morse Code Requirement

The FCC has dropped the requirement to know Morse Code for all amateur radio licenses. I guess this occurred in Feb of this year, but I don't remember reading about it. I'm not sure but I think the navy may still use Morse code for ship-to-ship signal light communications. Looks like the International Telecommunication Union [ITU] dropped the Morse code requirement in 2003.

SOS: Contrary to popular notion, the letters S.O.S. do not stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls". They were selected to indicate a distress because, in Morse code, these letters and their combination create an unmistakable sound pattern.

This page shows the web site version of Morse Code.

Google Trends does not show any steep decline in the number of people searching for the term "Morse Code", but there is a decline.

Vista Speed Improvement Tweaks

I made a few changes to increase the speed of MS Vista booting up. I always open the same programs when starting my computer, such as a web browser or e‑mail program, you might find it convenient to have them start automatically when you start Windows. Programs or shortcuts placed in the Startup folder will run whenever Windows starts.

First I added the programs and files I use when working the web site to open on boot-up:
1. Click the Start button , click All Programs, right-click the Startup folder, and then click Open.
2. Open the location that contains the item to which you want to create a shortcut.
3. Right-click the item, and then click Create Shortcut. The new shortcut appears in the same location as the original item.
4. Drag the shortcut into the Startup folder.
The next time you start Windows, the program will run automatically.
Note; You can also make an individual file, such as a word-processing document, open automatically by dragging a shortcut of the file into the Startup folder.

I set up the Firefox browser to open up with each of the tabs normally used:
Open the tabs like you want them when you open Firefox. Then, go to Tools/Options/Main and click the "Use Current Pages" button.

I also setup MS Explorer to open with all it's tabs that are normally used:
IE7 is to have the same tabs open up next time the browser opens. To do this close the browser containing the tabs you want to open again next time. This will bring up a prompt asking you if you want to 'Open these the next time you open Internet Explorer'. Check the box!

Of course I added both Explorer & Firefox to open on startup. I also checked msconfig to see what else was loading at startup, but it did not look to bad. That's 'start' / 'search' / 'msconfig'.

Do not use "msconfig" to disable services, type "services.msc" in the Run box instead! Service settings are global, meaning changes apply to all users. All of these services are "Standard" with Windows Vista. If you discover a service that is not listed here, another application, driver or program

HDTV Spectrum

Here is the new spectrum allocation for the 700MHz band. The one you may be reading about in the news, being bid on by Google and others for an estimated 15 billion dollars. Google is interested in the 'C' band and is willing to pay 4.2 billion dollars.

The digital switch narrows the spectrum needs of broadcast TV. All the stations that now use channel 2 through channel 69 for analog signals will broadcast their digital signals in the spectrum space now used by channel 2 through channel 51. Most stations will keep their original station number. The switch over from analog to digital happen in 2009.

This blog post shows the older frequency spectrum. This web page show the new DTV Channels and their frequency bands.

Remember TV stations had to switch to digital transmissions, but are not obligated to transmit in High Definition. They can use their entire band to transmit in High Definition or just transmit in normal digital and run two or three different programs at the same time.

Relating topics;
High Definition Television Technologies, just a few terms.

Webmaster Tools Sitemaps

Google added a few new things to their sitemap tool. Under Diagnostics / Content Analysis, they indicate meta-tag issues. The tab shows pages that have duplicate meta descriptions, and then long or short metatags.

Unfortunately, under the 'short meta descriptions', it indicates that I have 208 pages with issues. Most of the pages look like 'don't cares', their just Dictionary pages. Other than to say it's a dictionary page of letter what-ever, what more can you say.

I'll check it again next month, as I try it get that number lowered.

In the Google Blog I saw that, for people that run the Google tool bar, 404 not found pages will show a suggestion from Google as to what page they may be looking for. That's good news because interfacebus gets a lot of mis-spelled incoming hits.

Physical Page sizes

I can't remember if I've blogged about this or not, but I really regret updating my pages to XML. It increased the size of all my pages, increasing the download time and really hitting my bandwidth.

The so-called 'strict' coding approach is "BS", all those spaces that were added. On many pages the down-load time is doubled if your on a modem. Who came up with this idea?

Any way, the page still indicates it complies:
DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd

But, as I edit a page, I'm deleting some of those spaces ~ 1 byte per space. Maybe save a few 100 bytes a page [not removing all spaces, just a certain type]. What 130,000 visits x 2 page views x 300 bytes = 78,000,000 [78MB/month].

No wonder the internet is slow ~ it was conceived to be so

Still playing with Windows Vista

So far the only thing I don't like about the Velocity Micro PC is the Keyboard. The keyboard doesn't use printed letters on the keys, instead it uses LED light. The LED light just doesn't seem to be bright enough. Worse still is that the keys get darker as you go off angle, so you really have to sit just above the keyboard. I also seem to be hitting the Caps Lock key a lot, which is annoying.

The USB Mouse is great.

The computer did not ship with any unneeded software or sign-up programs [AOL]. I did see 3dMark on the desk top, guess it tests the PC's gaming speed ~ it's gone.

I like the Sidebar in Vista, but not how Folders and Directories work, or layed out.

New Computer Software updates

I booted up the new Velocity computer over the last half hour, picked it up today over lunch.
The PC seems pretty fast so far.
I stated with a Microsoft OS update patch which was 20MB.
Followed by the Mozilla Firefox browser.
Than, downloaded the Google Tool Bar for Explorer, followed by the Google Tool Bar Firefox ~ both very small programs.
Next came Open Office, a free version of an Office suite by Sun Microsystems ~ 120MB.

While that was going on, I turned on the second monitor and set each to 1280 x 1024 resolution ~ while deleting and preforming a defrag on the Alienware PC. The 'C' drive was over 50% full and heavily fragmented, while the 10,000 rpm 'J' drive was 3% full ~ I worked off the 10,000 rpm drive soon to move to this PC.

Now installing Ulead PhotoImpact 10 ~ looks like an upgrade CD, and I don't feel like loading Ulead 6.0 tonight.

Maybe I need to figure out if serial ATA 2.0 x 7,000 rpm is faster than SATA 1.0 x 10,000 rpm's anyway.

Hmm, I don't really like Ulead PhotoImpact any longer, many of the graphics are on their server and always refuse to download. You get this nice lib of pic files, but you don't have access to them.

Velocity Micro Desktop Computer

Order a new computer today from Bestbuy. The Velocity Micro - ProMagix Q6600. The Q6600 contains a quad core Intel processor, an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS graphic card and 2GB of DDR2 memory, and or course Windows Vista.

The Quad processor is clocked at 2.4GHz, but the ad does not display which DDR2 memory [Speed Grades] is used and I didn't see the system listed on the Velocity Micro web site.

The Video card comes with 1 S-Video port, and 2 DVI-ports ~ I use dual monitors so I need both DVI interfaces.

The system has 2 Firewire interfaces and 6 USB interfaces, and a built-in media reader.

Of course the Hard Disk Drive [HDD] is Serial ATA [SATA], but it does not indicate which specification version.

Spare expansion slots include 1 PCI slot, 1 PCIe x1, and 1 PCIe x16 slot. So I can still add another video card, a digital tuner card, and a 7-to-1 digital audio card.

I purchased this system from Best Buy so I could just drive over and pick it up. However my first issue is that my order did not make it off anyones desk. I came home to a call saying I have to confirm the order..... what's up with that.

I never used the HP system purchased last year from Bestbuy, I didn't see any speed improvment so it just sat around and collected dust ~ until I gave it away a few weeks ago.

Web Site Status

The server numbers are in for November, not to bad considering the holiday. There were 202,078 visits, viewing 337,154 pages. The attached chart shows unique visitors [143,950 for Nov.]. Server Bandwidth was 12.71GB.

A unique visitor is counted only once regardless of how many times they may hit the web site during the month.

The posting on Declining PC Interface Buses provides one reason why the site seems to have plateaued ~ as a large number of PC buses are no longer being used.

HDMI-1.3 Specification

Been reading up on the release of version 1.3 of the HDMI standard. HDMI stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. Seen many comments on the major changes and how it renders the previous versions obsolete ~ HDMI 1.3 is backward compatible.

The High-Definition Multimedia Interface is provided for transmitting digital television audio visual
signals from DVD players, set-top boxes and other audio-visual sources to television sets,
projectors and other video displays. HDMI can carry high quality multi-channel audio data and can carry all standard and high definition consumer electronics video formats. HDMI can also carry control and status information in both directions.

I checked each of my Digital Audio/Video Receivers, both made by Sony. I have an STR-DE485 which is a 5-to-1 system, and a STR-DE995 7-to-1 system. Neither of these 'control centers' have an HDMI port. And I was worried I had an earlier version than 1.3. Both of these units are still 'like new', what now I need this HDMI interface? Component review; I like both AV systems.

I didn't bother checking the HD TV because I wouldn't mind changing that out for a larger one. Same for the DVD players, I'll change them out for a newer Blu-Ray, or the other one when things calm down in the DVD wars.

XML Site Map

I noticed over the last month of adding pages [about 28 new pages] that Google has not cached any of them. Normally I except a month delay without up-loading a site-map, but I'd been adding those new pages to the"what new blog" ~ blogger, run by Google.

Hmm, Google should be out there spidering those pages as I up-date them, not sure why they are not showing up.

I also noticed that GSiteCrawler reports the same number of links as last month [Nov 8]. Not sure what the crap it's checking ~ I hit the re-crawl button. This will be a hit on the server bandwidth. The program now reports a 239K file instead of a 236k file, like before. Also 1603 URL's now instead of 1563 URL's ~ you always have to run it twice, or the program stats aren't updated? It forced me to run the program a second time ......

Althought you can find all the new pages by a product search, by going deeper into the icon tree, they do not show up in a search. Of course the internal site search and external Google search are the same. So even if you perform a local site search, the page will not show up until Google has spidered the page ~ that's not so good.

Google now reports that 1603 URL's have been submitted via the xml sitemap

Declining PC Interface Buses

Following the previous post on the decline of the RS232 bus, I checked the other common PC buses found on computers. Because the article contains a number of graphics I up-loaded it to Google base as a holder for the pictures, the text is duplicated below. Simply mouse over the pictures to see the search trends: Interface Bus Search Terms.

The attached files show the search trends for a number of PC interface buses. The graphs show the number of searches on the terms indicated, all were common PC buses over the last decade.

The SCSI bus shows a large decline in search traffic. SCSI was always an expensive interface to implement and really used mostly by high-end or enterprise users. So it's understandable that when Serial SCSI [SAS] came out users would quickly migrate to using the faster SAS bus.

The RS232 bus used as the main serial interface on the PC for years, is now being left off new computer systems in favor of the USB port. There are a number of reasons to drop the RS232 interface, the size of the 9-pin D connector is just one reason, speed is another.

The term Printer Port also shows a decline in searchs. Printer Port is a generic term used to describe the connector located either on the printer or a PC. A Printer Port may refer to a Centronics interface, IEEE-1284 interface or another other interface used on a printer. However; now that USB and Ethernet connections are showing up on printers it's safe to assume that the searches are being done using those terms.

The Centronics printer port was used on computers almost from the beginning of the PC age. However in the mid 90's the centronics bus started to be replaced by the IEEE-1284 interface which happen to be a better well define standard. By 2005, the IEEE1284 was being left off printers in favor of an Ethernet and/or a USB port.

The PCI bus still exists on PC Motherboards, but is slowing being replaced by the newer faster PCI Express bus [PCIe]. But the decline of PCI has been slower than other interface standards due to the slow implementation of boards using the 1x PCIe interface. While the 16x PCIe slot started to replace the AGP expansion slot by the very first year of release. Note the large increase in searches for the term PCIe.

The AGP interface seems to be hanging on in the PC upgrade market. Not sure how many motherboards are still shipping with an AGP interface.

The Firewire interface doesn't seem to be popular any longer.

The ISA bus [ATbus] also is showing a decline, but not as great as expected. The ISA bus was rendered obsolete by the PCI bus years ago. It could be that as long as industrial legacy computers continue to function they don't require replacement.

The main interface between PC motherboards and Hard Disk Drives [HDD] use to be the IDE [ATA] interface; however most newer models shipped are now using the Serial ATA bus [SATA]. Serial ATA is much faster than normal ATA. Note the increase for the term SATA

The old Floppy Drive is also in decline. With the low cost of USB thumb drives there is no longer a need for a floppy disk drive. Many new computer systems no longer ship with a floppy drive. But you can always purchase an external Floppy drive, normally with a USB interface to the computer.

So, all these buses were common terms just a few years ago, but don't even exist on most new personal computers shipped today.

The demise of RS232

Back in Dec 05 I posted a blog about the future of RS232. I Indicated that RS232 was basically obsolete. Early this year some one commented on that post with their disagreement and rational.

Of course I was referring to the commercial usage of RS232, there are just to many legacy systems deployed for the military to drop RS232. However, I still don't think new systems should use an RS232 interface. RS232 is specified to drive 10 meters while USB only travels out to 4 meters, but you could use a hub to extend the USB cable. For longer distances without a hub I'd recommend using RS422, or RS485.

Still most computers are not shipping with a RS232 connector on the rear panel any longer. This post shows one style of the newer version of a motherboard I/O panel. I think Dell computers dropped the RS232 interface last year, while Apple dropped it 3 years ago. Users always have the option of adding an expansion card to there computer to add RS232 capability.

Any how, the graphic is google search history for the term RS232. The original post follows:

.... The picture shown above depicts the back panel I/O found on some newer mother boards. Comparing that picture with the one at the bottom of this post and the difference becomes obvious. The RS-232 and IEEE-1284 connectors have been replaced by a heat sink. The video interface has also been removed.

It makes perfect sense to remove the RS232 interface and the other two connectors from the back of computers. The video interface is normally found on the video card, so the 15-pin D-sub connector is not required. Many video cards ship with a DVI and VGA connector, so why have another one the mother board. The 25-pin parallel port connector is out dated. Many new printers ship with an Ethernet port which is much faster then the IEEE-1284 interface bus. With over 6 USB ports to handle any required peripheral, and 2 circular DINs to accommodate a keyboard and mouse the RS-232 interface is just not required.

When you add all this up, the benefit to removing these out-dated interfaces translate to higher speed peripheral connections, reduced cost by eliminating 3 large connectors, and the better use of the motherboard back panel.

In the three different mother boards I looked at the free space was taken up by a heat sink and fan. Both used to vent heat from the chip set ICs

The Apple computers removed the RS232 bus and IEEE-1284 [Printer Port] bus some time ago. The RS232 interface is dead and should not be used for new designs. The IEEE-1284 interface is dead. The 15-pin VGA interface is dead on the newer mother boards. These interfaces should start to disappear next year ...

Anonymous said...

I disagree. While RS232 may be dying in the consumer world, it is found everywhere in industry, even in new designs. I bought a laptop three weeks ago, and one of the primary factors in deciding what to buy was having an onboard serial port so I wouldn't have to carry around an often unreliable USB to serial adapter. RS232, and especially RS485 and RS422, while possibly not even on the radar anymore in the consumer world, are guaranteed to be alive and kicking in commercial/industrial/military applications for years to come. Sure, it makes sense to save the space on a piece of crap off the shelf computer from Emachines... but doing so means you're effectively cutting out a segment of the market. The same applies for 1284, though admittedly to a lesser extent. I watched a company buy 17 new computers for employees who each had their own printer at their desks without checking if the computers came with 1284 ports. They ended up buying 17 USB to parallel adapters because it made more sense than throwing away all the older printers that still work great. Sure, it works... but that's just annoying. Let's never take anything out of Apple's playbook. If people want a Mac, they'll buy one, and they'll be so preoccupied with the things Apple tells them they can do on it that they can't think of the things Apple won't let them do.

Web Site Maintenance

The server for interfacebus.com provides two statistics generators or counters; one is AWSTATS, and the other is Webalizer.

Webalizer has a chart that shows the top 30 files being downloaded - or taking up the most bandwidth. A few weeks ago I moved a jpeg off this server to another server I use [server bandwidth post], saving 700MB/month. That particular pic no longer shows up in the top 30 list, reducing the strain on my server.

Now I'm looking at some of the other files in that same chart. I optimized a few css files and few html files. The css files are relatively small, but get download regardless of the page being displayed. One html page in particular for example: AWG Wire Chart was 42,116 bytes. Now that page has been optimized down to 27,388 bytes ~ by removing non-text related spaces in the HTML code. That's a saving of 14,728 bytes per download. Not including web spiders, that page was viewed 13,211 times over the last 30 days ~ That's a reduction of 194,561,608 bytes!

The CanBus page was reduced 5k bytes for a savings of 49,385,000 bytes per month!
The DVI Bus page was reduced by 4k for a reduction of 311,520,000 bytes per month!
The USB Interface was reduced by 3k for a reduction of 229,560,000 bytes per month!
Final savings in server bandwidth = 785,026,608 bytes per months.
Add that to the jpeg moving off the server and you end up with a reduction of bytes served by 1.5GB of data.... Plus faster down loads.

I assume the extra spaces were brought in when the pages was upgraded to XHTML. Anyway, next month I should see a new group of pages in the top 30 list from the page counter.

Engineering Dictionary

I took a look at how a section of the web site was doing, in this case the Electronic Dictionary section.

Here are the page views by month:




Jan: 8,254
Feb: 8,046
Mar: 8,814
Apr: 8,584
May: 7,974
Jun: 7,183
Jul: 6,707
Aug: 7,427
Sep: 9,270
Oct: 11,269

I can't tell yet if the increase in page impressions is due to adding additional pages to that section, or what. This month has 5,914 page views so far from about 279 different pages. I didn't take the time to look up how many pages made of the Glossaries section in previous months.

Update [9/23/09]; I'm not really sure what I'm counting here? There is a very small section that uses the term 'dictionary' in the address but that only amounts to a few web pages. A much larger section using the term 'glossary' in the web address is out there, but those pages do not add up to the numbers listed above either [as in Engineering Glossary].

So I no longer know what these numbers represent, maybe the addition of all the different dictionary sections? I really don't know! lets disregard this posting from now on........ Editor

Oh, the graphic is copied from the Dictionary of Capacitor Terms..

Super Bright LED diodes-

Ever see those traffic signs that use dozens of LEDs instead of an incandescent bulb. Well you should expect to see them more and more. As of Jan 2006 the government imposed a maximum wattage the traffic signal could use, 17 watts, which is much less that a comparable 130 watt incandescent lamp. Many of the traffic signals were traded out years ago

These Bright LED modules cost more than there incandescent counterparts, but also last ten years instead of the two years for incandescent's.

Energy Policy and Conservation Act.
Any traffic signal module or pedestrian module manufactured on or after January 1, 2006, shall meet both of the following requirements:
(a) Have a nominal wattage no greater than: [only higher wattage for 74C is shown]
12" Red Ball ........................................... 17 watts
8" Red Ball ............................................. 13 watts
12" Red Arrow ...................................... 12 watts
12" Green Ball ....................................... 17 watts
8" Green Ball ......................................... 13 watts
12" Green Arrow .................................. 12 watts
Combination Walking Man/Hand ...... 16 watts
Walking Man ......................................... 12 watts
Orange Hand ......................................... 16 watts
(b) Be installed with compatible, electrically connected signal control interface devices and conflict monitoring systems.

Pedestrian module means a light signal used to convey movement information to pedestrians.
Traffic signal module means a standard 8-inch (200 mm) or 12-inch (300 mm) traffic signal indication that—
(1) Consists of a light source, a lens, and all other parts necessary for operation; and
(2) Communicates movement messages to drivers through red, amber, and green colors.

LED light sources for traffic signals offer significant energy savings over incandescent lamps. LED signals also last much longer than incandescent signals (7 to 10 years instead of 2 years) and fail less frequently. The additional benefit is the reduced power consumption (10 to 22 Watts) for LED bulbs compared to the typical energy consumption of incandescent bulb (135 Watts); the savings from the low energy use of LED signals can be 80% to 93% and will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

... If all of the three million traffic signals in the United States were converted to LEDs, some three billion kilowatt-hours of electricity would be saved annually ..... Electricity is generated by coal or nuclear plants, so oil imports aren't effected.

You can also find these bright LEDs in flash lights and in normal 'light bulb' configurations [Edison Screw Base]. However many still insist that fluorescent bulbs provide a better alternative to an incandescent bulb. The amount of light given off and it's relative color are two reasons why a Super Bright LED lamp does not fit well in some in-door light applications. LED bulbs also cost more to operate than fluorescent bulbs.

FeedBurner Subscribers

Feedburner is the feed used so that a newsreader can be used to view this blog.

The graphic shows which reader is used as the news reader. Most use Firefox [50%], which is interesting because, most people that visit the web site use Internet Explorer [69.47%].

Feedburner is just another way to get the word out about the blog

Xenu's Link Sleuth

I ran Xenu today checking for bad links. Here is part of the full report:

ok	5758 URLs	99.21%
user skip	1 URLs	0.02%
no such host	11 URLs	0.19%
not found	8 URLs	0.14%
no info to return	1 URLs	0.02%
server error	2 URLs	0.03%
no connection	9 URLs	0.16%
no object data	1 URLs	0.02%
forbidden request	7 URLs	0.12%
timeout	4 URLs	0.07%
the resource is no longer available	1 URLs	0.02%
auth required	1 URLs	0.02%
Total	5804 URLs	100.00%

Memory size boards

I added a few pages tonight. One new page included DIMM form factors, or DDR II card sizes. In addition to that page, a number of pages were also added which may be found at the site's new up-dates page.

Because of the dozen new pages over the last few weeks, Google was informed with a new up-loaded site map. GSiteCrawler reported 1202 pages to be crawled, with 1562 pages included in the site map.

I also removed a few Linkshare banners. I'd received an e-mail indicating an ad campaign had come to an end ~ didn't know if that ment the banners would go away or what, so I just removed the banners. This site is not making any money from Linkshare any way, so no harm done.

Norton Anti-Virus Review

I use Norton on one of my computers to work as anti virus software.

There are defiantly two things I don't like about Norton Anti-virus.

First, the computer takes forever to boot up. Norton always wants to down load it's latest virus definition each time I turn the computer on ~ well sometimes I would like to get some work done. I run only high-end computers, and I would always like to have the most up-to-date software. But I would sometime like to sit down and use the computer.

Second; many times norton upgrades it self, it wants a re-boot. Well I'm five minutes into working on the computer after waiting 5 minutes for the boot up time. Than I get a message, Norton want to upgrade ~ well ok. When you say yes to the up-date, you get re-booted. I canceled out buy hitting the 'x' on the window, not saying yes, but the system still started to reboot.

Who thinks this crap up? Maybe it time to look around for another software package.

AWSTATS

Not much going on, just normal site up-dates.

I did start a new blog to handle site updates, to indicate when new pages are added. It's another blogger site called serial interface buses. I had been using a blog out on windows live called interfacebus.com updates. I'm not sure if I'll keep updating the MS site or not.

The chart shows data collected from AWSTATS.

Unique Visitor:
A unique visitor is a host that has made at least 1 hit on 1 page of your web site during the current period shown by the report. If this host make several visits during this period, it is counted only once. The period shown by default is the current month. Average = 138,158
Visits:
Number of visits made by all visitors.
Think "session" here, say a unique IP accesses a page, and then requests three others without an hour between any of the requests, all of the "pages" are included in the visit, therefore you should expect multiple pages per visit and multiple visits per unique visitor. Average = 198,380
Pages:
The number of "pages" logged. HTML files. Average = 344,807

Server Bandwidth

I took a look at webalizer, one of the counters located on the server.

I notice that the header pic used for the Dictionary section and Alphabetic Manufacturers sections of the web site used 738949 kBytes or 756,683,776 bytes! The jpg is a 112 kbyte graphic. So I loaded the graphic up to Google pages and changed the CSS file controlling those sections to grab the file from Google pages and not from my server. That should save my server from down loading 700 MBytes each month.

The Dictionary section had 9,941 page impressions, and the Manufacturers section had 1,860 page impressions last month. I think the How-To Design an Equipment Chassis section also used that format, another 1,158 impressions. Any other section that used the same CSS file will automatically switch over.

I also change this blog template so that the icons shown at the bottom of these pages come from Google Pages and not from my server.

The server provides 50 GBytes of bandwidth, and the site only uses about 15 GBytes, so there was no danger of being fined for exceeding the bandwidth limit. However what this does is take the strain of the server, so files are coming in from two different servers making the page show up faster ~ assuming both servers are working correctly.

I also changed the HTML code on each of the main Dictionary sub-sections so they grab there navigation icons from Google, there are several sections covering different topics.

Site Visits

October's data is in:
146,700 Unique visitors
219,642 Total visits
350,920 Viewed pages
2,981,629 Hits

I'm not really sure what the difference is between Hits and Page views ..
Total unique visits for the year: 1,381,584

Page views are twice this number, see the Nov 4 post.

Serial Bus Page

So I've added 41 pages up to serialphy.
As of today there have been 291 page impressions.
The site is using Google Analytics to track visitors. I up-loaded a site map to Google, but it's not reporting any data yet. I also used the Add a Site link for Google.

And, I added a link from interfacebus.com to the site, and added the site to Yahoo's index.
I tried to add it to MSN but the page would not let me, must be broke. So I'll have to wait until the MSNBot reads this blog.....

Domain Registration

So the guy from China got back to me. They registered those domain names, "it was his duty". The company that wanted to purchase them was not mentioned in the e-mail. It appears the Server company got them, and than parked them ~ he sent in the Whois data.

It's a scam and I don't expect to hear from him again. A company wants my domain name, via a registrar, but instead the registrar purchases the names and parks the page; Hmm.

It's only a few hundred dollars to start an ICANN protest, some day when I have time I'll close these bozos down.

On the up-side ~ people see the domain generating a great many visits!

Topic update [9/23/09] As I figured I never got another email from these guys. I'm not about to check out any site with out a dot.com on the end of it, so I never went out and checked if they are using the site or just parked it. Ya know, I never touch a site that does not have a dot com or dot net. Of course I'll check out a dot org, edu or gov website...... I assume people living in those countries don't have an issue going to their own web extension, but I sure do.

Photo credit; US Military government, a B1 bomber.

Domain Name

I received an e-mail early this morning from a registrar in china. They indicated that a company [who they named] wanted to purchase interfacebus.com, .net, and .org all with the .cn suffix [interfacebus.com.cn]

Of course I wrote back and indicated that interfacebus was my trademark and business name and should not be used. They followed with an email that said I misunderstood, they were giving me a chance to purchase those domain names prior to the other company registering them.... Translated, you buy it now [at what price] or we will use it.

In May of 2006 I received a similar email regarding interfacebus.eu, except that they had already registered it, placed ads on the page and wanted me to purchase the domain name after the fact. "we're making money running ads, so you may want to purchase your tradmark in the .eu domain.....

I've been out to the ICANN site a number of times [Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy]. The two most common reasons for someone losing a domain address;

1. Infringing on another's Trademark [which both of these companies do].
2. Purchasing a domain name in bad faith; trying to resale a domain name once it's purchased to harm another company [which both of these companies are doing].

So if you purchase a domain name thinking, I'll sell it to company 'x' because it looks like this other companies name. Well, you just purchased that name in bad faith and will lose that name with no profit.

The e-mails go like this;
Incoming: we want to or will use the term interfacebus
Outgoing: That's my trademark and business names
Incoming: Want to purchase your name in the dot-what ever domain
Outgoing: Don't register my trademark as your domain
Than the emails stop coming in...........

ESD Details

I added a few pages to cover ESD terms. Definitions for many Electrostatic Discharge terms, much more than what is ESD, or what does ESD mean. The following links are the main new ESD pages;

ESD Terms, A to C
ESD Terms, E to El
ESD Terms, Es
ESD Terms, H to Z
ESD Military and Commercial standards that cover ESD issues
Static/ESD Label Manufacturers

Because of the additional ESD pages, a number of other pages also changed:
Listing of Dictionary and Acronyms pages
Acronyms, EME to EOW, cut the page in half
Acronyms, eP to Ex, Added link to ESD
Glossary of Terms E to Ed, cut the page in half
Glossary of Terms Ee to El, cut the page in half
Glossary of Terms Es to Eu, added link to ESD
Mechanical Supplies, added link to ESD Labels

So any way I counted the number of pages related to interfacebus.com and came up with this:
Web Pages: 1310, located on interfacebus.com
Google pages: 14, up-loaded to Google page creator
Blog posts: 268 posting to Interfacebus Blogger
MS Blog posts: 21, blog just lists new page additions
Orphan pages: 75 page addresses no longer used [never delete an address]
Bad Address: 116 pages used to capture mis-spelled page addresses
Total pages: 1,828 related to interfacebus.com
1,458 URLs submitted via the sitemap to Google
10,623 External links to interfacebus.com from the web
854 External links to interfacebus.com from the Google Groups
127 External links to interfacebus.com from Blogger

External Links per Page

Here are a few pages that only have one external link. One link from a page other than from its own web site. Normaly the one out-side link is from the sitemap. Listing the page addresses here will provide yet another external link, to support the page.
Power IC's
AMC Mezzanine Board Pinout
ASIC IC Manufacturers

ATCA Chassis Manufacturers

Obsolete Apple buses;
Apple Computer AUI Pinout
Apple IIc Joystick Pinout
Apple RS232 DB9 Pinout

Industrial Board Formats;
COM-144 Board Manufacturers
COM_Board_Manufacturers
COM-ETX Board Manufacturers
EBX Board Manufacturers
ECX Board Manufacturers
EPIC Board Manufacturers
ESB Board Manufacturers
ETX Board Manufacturers
ETXexpress Board Manufacturers
miniITX_Manufacturers
nanoITX_Manufacturers
These are pages from the first 100 out of 1201. So 16 out of the first 100 only had one link pointing to them. All the 1201 pages have 10,623 combined pages pointing to them. Of course there are a number of pages with 100's of external links coming in, but most pages just have a few dozen.

Site Up-date Rate

Web Page Update rate:

So how do web site pages get up-dated. There are a number of reasons a page may be up-dated; however if the update is to a hidden HTML error, or a new Ad format, the "Last Modified" date at the bottom of the page may not change.
The "Last Modified" text is only changed if a visitable portion of the content is updated.


E-mail comments may cause a page to be up-dated immediately, or if I happen to read it but take no action, stay in the cue for months.

Documentation errors will definitely result in a page being up-dated.

Low page visits may also cause the page to be updated. The server counter provides this data.

Under construction pages: I keep a list of about 20 pages at a time. I add this page type to get the page address indexed by search engines because it takes 3 months to get a page rank. Of course there is a disclaimer at the top of the page indicating a "blank" page. I don't see an issue of adding a holding page as long as it's kept to 20 of 1,200 pages.

Old Pages: Pages that have not been up-dated in a while. Just sort the html files by 'Data Modified'. A few years ago I noticed that as a page dropped in the rankings, one way to increase it's ranking would be to increment the saved-as date.

So some days I may work on new content, while other days work on pages under one or more of the above topics.

The cycle time is more than a year to work through all the web pages.........

Quantcast data

The data from Quantcast is coming in now. Some of the numbers look low, so I'll add the code to the top few pages ~ that receive the most hits:
AWG Sizes, 9797 hits in Sep.
CAN Bus, 7345 hits in Sep.
USB Bus. 6873 hits

Along with the 10,263 hits from the index page Quantcast should start to see better results. I don't really care, but any one else can check that data so I would like it to at least be in the ball-park.

Oh, last month had 136, 218 hits for the month, with 3,210,056 page views.

Quantcast Site Tracking

I found a new traffic counting web site yesterday called Quantcast. Just like Google Analytics which I already use, Quantcast tracks site visits. Quantcast had already been gathering information on interfacebus.com so I went ahead and signed up for the free service. They must have gathered the data from people that use the service, or purchased the information from other servers. But they did indicate that data on my site was an estimate of some total, because they don't really have complete access to the site visitors.

To gain full access I'm required to place a small piece of Java code on each of my pages that they can read [just like Google]. Well I'm not inclined to do that to 1,400 pages just yet, but I did add the code to my home page. Having the home page tracked will at least improve the data they have about the site. I should see improvement in their tracking data in a few days when they update my statistics, they call it ~ Quantification in Progress. I can always add the code to the top ten pages of the site to provide even more data. The attached graphic is what they show now ~ a small segment of the charts and tables of data.

Quantcast indicates; "... Quantcast helps web publishers of all sizes understand the composition of their audiences and attract higher advertising rates ..."

Webmaster Tools

I uploaded yet another sitemap to the server last night, than let Google [webmaster tools] know. Google indicates that 1445 URLs were submitted via the sitemap. About 15 new pages.....

The point of up-loading a site-map is to let Google and other search engines know that there are new pages to be indexed.

The new pages were really just larger pages that were reduced in size by breaking the page into two smaller pages. The hope is that the smaller pages will help reduce the number of keywords on a page so ads will better target the page. However, the reverse is that the smaller pages will have less key words so they may not show up high on the search engine list. That's the trade off between a large and small page ~ better ads, worse search engine ranking.

Not sure which is better, but if the 'reduced' pages were never showing up on page 1 of a search engine any way than smaller pages are better.... interfacebus.com
Graphic is Visits from Japan.

Visits increasing

This is the same graphic I posted a few days ago, updated. Visits for the week are all above 8,000 to the web site. The increase is coming to late in the month to help, but this should turn around the slide in hits over the last 4 months.

Current visits are at 94,558 for the month, 129,612 total visits, or 1,849,578 Hits... Year to date Unique Visits: 1,193,224

Bandwidth: 10 to 12GB per month.

Referrals

I just blogged about this the other week, again last night I checked, 21,000 page impressions with zero to no income.

I run Referral ads from a number of companies, 21,000 ad impressions and a larger number of clicks but they generate no income. Well so much for free advertising, I deleted them from four or five pages last night. At first I was adding them to the larger pages, as a banner or page filler, not any more. They will be deleted as I run across them.

Somebody must make money from running these Referral ads? The number above is from one company, taking into account the others and the ad impressions reach into the 100,000's.

The graphic shows visits/hits per day for September. The numbers are down a 100 or so a day. Any day lower than 8,000 is a bad day ~ most are below 8000, so it's a bad month..

Video Interfaces

Just how many different types of video interfaces are there, and which ones should reside on my gear? Of course there's VGA, or really SVGA, which still gets supplied with most monitors and computers. However I oped for DVI on the last video card I purchased.

HDMI came out last year and it's competitor DisplayPort came out this year. Of course there are others, but most interfaces are out-dated ~ as well as all the analog interfaces.

The pic is just another map showing visits by city from China....

Page Impressions

Hits to the web site are down a few hundred a day. It's not uncommon for visits to rise or fall 10,000 a month. From looking at the graph, hits are down for months now, and that's not good.

Of course fewer site visits means fewer page impressions. The chart shows page impression from Jan. 2006. As pages are optimized people will hit the new page rather than hit some other page on the site and click over to the correct page. So, as the site gets more and more topic specific I expect to see fewer page views, but I also would like to see more people hitting the web site. More visits translates into more page impressions, unfortunately I'm not seeing that.

There's a 3 month lag between a site up-date and when Google picks up the change.....

Once the graph drops to all black ~ that's the week ends. The dip in the middle of the chart ~ server went down.

Robot Visits

Out looking at Google sitemaps and I grab a picture of the spider visits to interfacebus from GoogleBot. Seems over the last few months the minimum number of pages spidered per day is on the increase. Not sure why more pages are being checked, but at least that means that Google has the most current version of my pages.

Here is the previous blog about Google Crawl Rate. That page shows the crawl rate from January to June 2007.

So far this month the robot using the most server bandwidth was Google Adsense, followed by Yahoo Slup, Voila, and MSNBot. GoogleBot was the eight down the list. Looks like the Voila robot is from France. A total of 76 different spiders have hit the site this month.

Low page hits

So I took a closer look at pages that are getting very few hits via Google Analytics. I did find a few pages that were generated but never developed. I added those pages that still need content to my to-do list, about 20 odd pages. I didn't add any additional contents to the 'blank' pages but I did try to up-grade the other pages, about 30 additional pages.

The attached graphic shows visits from India to interfacebus.com. The cool thing about these graphic reports is that you can mouse over the cities to get a name and the number of visits coming in from each city. Not that it matters but you can also tell the location of the industrial centers in a country.....

Why Blog

Here are some of the major reasons why I blog, spending time here instead of up-dating the web site. The attached graphic depicts visits per city for the United Kingdom [UK] from Jan 01 to Sep 11, 2007.


Top ten reasons to blog if you run a web site:

1. Increase the number of external pages pointing to your web site.
2. Generate pages that are search-able from Blogger.
3. Generate pages that are search-able from the Google Blog index.
4. Add content and topics that do not fit into the 'facts only' website.
5. Add web 2.0 content via the comments button in the blog.
6. Forum to discuss website topics [hits, SEO, site issues....]
7. Add graphics that have the site name embedded within the gif.
8. Increase the # of pic files that are search-able via Google image search.
9. Blogger allows RSS Feeds.
10. Space to highlight troubled pages ~ low hits, no page rank, new pages ......

The blog does not take any of my server space or server bandwidth, and its free.....