Tuesday, August 17, 2004 #

Help Make Blogs More Visible!

There are by some estimates more than a million weblogs. But most of them get no visibility in search engines. Only a few "A-List" blogs get into the top search engine results for a given topic, while the majority of blogs just don't get noticed. The reason is that the smaller blogs don't have enough links pointing to them. But this posting could solve that. Let's help the smaller blogs get more visibility!

This posting is GoMeme 4.0. It is part of an experiment to see if we can create a blog posting that helps 1000's of blogs get higher rankings in Google. So far we have tried 3 earlier variations. Our first test, GoMeme 1.0, spread to nearly 740 blogs in 2.5 days. This new version 4.0 is shorter, simpler, and fits more easily into your blog.

Why are we doing this? We want to help thousands of blogs get more visibility in Google and other search engines. How does it work? Just follow the instructions below to re-post this meme in your blog and add your URL to the end of the Path List below. As the meme spreads onwards from your blog, so will your URL. Later, when your blog is indexed by search engines, they will see the links pointing to your blog from all the downstream blogs that got this via you, which will cause them to rank your blog higher in search results. Everyone in the Path List below benefits in a similar way as this meme spreads. Try it!

Instructions: Just copy this entire post and paste it into your blog. Then add your URL to the end of the path list below, and pass it on! (Make sure you add your URLs as live links or HTML code to the Path List below.)

Path List
1. Minding the Planet
2. Luke Hutteman's public virtual MemoryStream
3. JayBaz_MS blog
4. Michael Teper blog
5. (your URL goes here! But first, please copy this line and move it down to the next line for the next person).


(NOTE: Be sure you paste live links for the Path List or use HTML code.)

OK, so the above is the direct copy/paste of this meme. I wasn't sure I wanted to participate in it, but in the end decided to just just go ahead and give it a try. I am convinced, however, that it will do absolutely nothing for the popularity of this blog. See, the major flaw in the design is that someone has to read your blog in order to propagate the meme. In my case, my blog has very limited readership, and those hits that do come in are mostly directed to specific posts (either from other blogs or google). So, the likelyhood of anyone actually seeing this post is pretty low.

The other reason I was hesitant about participating is that this meme feels too much like a chain letter. There is little purpose to it beyond than making me feel better for passing it on and getting new viewers. I am giving it a shot as an experiment, but I doubt I will try this again in the future even if it brings in traffic against my prediction above.

posted @ Tuesday, August 17, 2004 3:27 PM | Feedback (4)

Example – An ASP.NET handler that returns a dynamically generated image

This is a verbatim excerpt from a Microsoft employee post on changes in ASP.NET 2.0 from Beta 1 to Beta 2:

 

<%@ webhandler="" language="C#" class="ImageHandler" %="">


using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;
using System.IO;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Caching;


public class ImageHandler : IHttpHandler {


 public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) {


 // Get the image ID from querystring, and use it to generate a cache key.
 String imageID = context.Request.QueryString["PhotoID"];
 String cacheKey = context.Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath + ":" + imageID;


 Byte[] imageBytes;


 // Check if the cache contains the image.
 Object cachedImageBytes = context.Cache.Get(cacheKey);


 if (cachedImageBytes != null)
 {
 imageBytes = (Byte[])cachedImageBytes;
 }
 else
 {
 // Get image from business layer, and save it into a Byte array as JPEG.
 Image im = PhotoLibrary.GetImage("PhotoID");


 MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();


 im.Save(stream, ImageFormat.Jpeg);
 stream.Close();
 im.Dispose();
 imageBytes = stream.GetBuffer();

 // Store it in the cache (to be expired after 2 hours).
 context.Cache.Add(cacheKey, imageBytes, null, 
 DateTime.MaxValue, new TimeSpan(2, 0, 0), 
 CacheItemPriority.Normal, null);
 }


 // Send back image.
 context.Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
 context.Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.Public);
 context.Response.BufferOutput = false;
 context.Response.OutputStream.Write(imageBytes, 0, imageBytes.Length);
 }


 public bool IsReusable {

 get {


 return false;


 }
 }
}



Thanks, 



Shanku Niyogi 
Group Program Manager 
Web Platform and Tools Team
posted @ Tuesday, August 17, 2004 9:34 AM | Feedback (0)