OK, maybe I do have too much time on my hands. I am nearly done with my any language to any language plugin, I am nearly done with the newsletter, I am nearly done with the articles that I an ghostwriting, but I am really a bit too nuts for numbers.

I started a list about 7 weeks ago of how many Google countries have hit my site. Google.com is common. Ever get a Google.vi? Google.lk?

Actually kind of funny because I assumed I knew all the top level domains, but I really don’t.

If you like the code then sign up for my updates - they come out about monthly.

Right now this sidebar widget works from any language to the destination language. Flags were the best way to set it up. I am making it a plugin, come back at the end of May to pick that up.

I have 2 rows of 12 will have to do; it looks like the graphic just above, in fact it is the graphic just above!

You can get the code here.

You can stick the code in your sidebar or a widget panel text box. [Read more →]

I just came back from Google and they have updated their translation tools.

Less than a month ago the options were English to 10 languages and those same 10 languages back to English. 20 options, and to be honest I was happy with that. I went on the site when I made my widget and we were up to English going into 14 languages and those 14 going back to English, and the occasional second language.

Today I went to the site and it appears that there are 23 languages - 24 if you count the 2 versions of Chinese. There is also the time saving option that they should have as the default “Detect Language”. This means if you are on a site and you have no idea of the language but like the pictures you can tell Google to translate the page even though you don’t know the language. OK, I am a bit too geeky, but this is really cool stuff.

I have a simple testing process to see if something translates and it worked in all the languages so far. Everyone should do this if translating. Take you text and translate it. Then take the tranlsated result and bring it back into your original language.

Translating “what does this do?” English to French results in “qu’est-ce que cela?”

Translating “qu’est-ce que cela?” French to English results in “what is this?”

Translating “What is the purpose of that? ” English to French results in “quel est le but de cela?”

Translating “quel est le but de cela?” French to English results in “What is the purpose of that?”

The difference is important and it is best that you do something link this. If you are using a translation tool for business, translate sentence by sentence, and then the full paragraph. There are times when the tool will change something based on the context of a paragraph.

All things considered, this is a great tool.

The reason this is so important to me is I am building an article directory in French. I want to make sure that I get things right.

BTW, the languages are:

1. Arabic
2. Bulgarian
3. Chinese (Simplified)
4. Chinese (Traditional)
5. Croatian
6. Czech
7. Danish
8. Dutch
9. English
10. Finnish
11. French
12. German
13. Greek
14. Hindi
15. Italian
16. Japanese
17. Korean
18. Norwegian
19. Polish
20. Portuguese
21. Romanian
22. Russian
23. Spanish
24. Swedish

I was looking for a way to replace a horizontal image on a site with a very similar image that allowed translations. I could not find what I wanted so I made a widget, the tall one on the right hand side of this page. Interestingly, it worked, but was not what I was looking for. So I made another. The second one to the right that has 2 rows of flags. Finally I made the one that appears at the top of each post, that was what I wanted in the beginning, but was dense and could not make it work.

Now these are just widgets, which I assume any programmer can make ( I have not typed a line of code since the early 90’s) and I want to make it a plugin. Time to find a php for idiots book, I suppose.

Anyone wants the widget, let me know. I have just corrected the mistake where I had the word German instead of Hindi. Apologies to Hindispeakers of the world.

Technorati Profile

I am trying out some new social media sites and I am going to write it up. Know the first thing, I can generate 700 visits a day on almost any site. You know what else? They don’t convert.

I have heard about stumble advertising, but I feel I have the process down so well that I would not even consider paying for advertising. One test I just did, no results yet, is to generate traffic to a French site. Big difference when you hit different languages, less of an audience to go to the site.

Given, I am a bit nuts for numbers.

I started a list about 6 weeks ago of how many Google countries have hit my site. Google.com is common. Ever get a Google.vi? Google.lk?

Actually kind of funny because I assumed I knew all the top level domains, but I really don’t.

What to do When Someone Takes My Work?

I have recently seen a lot of things that I have put online magically appear in other places. When this happens, what can we do except laugh it off. Take it as a compliment that someone took the time to copy you, it’s greatest form of flattery, right?

There are other options. You can ask the copier to remove what is yours; they probably won’t.

You can report them to the Search engines (or their Mommy and Daddy) but that is slow.

• Google
  

  

• Yahoo!
  

  

You can figure out their IP address and contact the host. This is my favorite because I saw the results when I worked for Disney back in 94 - 95. People would make porn images out of the Disney characters and our lawyers would write a letter to their host explaining that legal actions will be taken. I did like this enough to copy a letter (wish I had kept a copy) and instead of going through the slow process of contacting legal I did the letters myself.

If your work is on a blogger.com or wordpress.com site you can contact those sites.

What works best is to comment thanking the thief for republishing your work on their site, and you link back to your original copy. Still take the other actions above, but when you find your republished work you may as well do something.

A Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan can be created for anything. Natural disasters, business plans, infrastructure projects, daily operations of a business, sports teams, really anything that has the possibility of not running right can have a plan. For this article the term will be project, which is open to your interpretation on what a project actually is.

Who takes the kids to schools when the primary driver has the flu? That is the most basic BC plan.

What do we do when we get a flat tire? That is the most basic DR plan.

These 2 examples may not be written out, but they are just as valid as any other plan, and there is usually a plan in place. And yes, you can have one half without the other or call the plan DRBC if recovering from the disaster is a higher priority than continuing business.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans are developed for certain circumstances that have the probability of occurring. Spending years of work and millions of dollars to secure a data center in the Atacama mountains desert region against flooding [Read more →]

WordPress Permalinks, Making sure your post can be Found.

WordPress is a wonderful too, but there is one default that I almost find funny. The way each blog post is named after your .com/ is a question mark followed by p= and a number. Your 128^th post will default to .com/?p=128 – the 128^th page.

Logical. Clear. Translates into any language that recognizes numbers.

Absolutely no use for readers, nor for search engines unless I happen to be searching for ?p=128. Just for info Google list 1.3 million ?p=128 results and Yahoo over 2 million.

Customize Your Permalink Structure

Which of these two links tells you something about the topic of the post that is presented on the website?

http://cindyking.biz/?p=128
http://cindyking.biz/information-products-can-save-your-business-in-a-slow-economy/ [Read more →]

Entering the computer age, a disaster recovery plan was a concept and not much else. The idea was that a plan would be in place for the day when things went wrong. This worked at the time when computers in world numbered in the 100’s - there were not more computers than people in an office.

Organizations got bigger and computer departments were suddenly as big as the sales department, more IT consultants were bringing in more hardware and software and no one really noticed the day that computers had a greater value than the people in the office.

In that first phase when there was a mainframe, a form of backup was done on a regular basis, [Read more →]