Day: March 7, 2006

NOTE: this is an obsolete practice, and should be removed unless you plan to support beta versions of MSIE6.

The story behind this tag is one of virtue. Microsoft, as they do TOO often, added a ‘feature’ in beta versions of Windows XP (MSIE 6.0) that enabled the browser itself to analyze the content on a given page, and insert links to other websites. This was "e;spun" as being good the the visitors of your website, because they could be exposed to related products or services. Unfortunately, the webmaster and site owners had no say in what content was being linked or to where… which could be a competitor!

This tag was added as a method to prevent these "Smart Tags" from operating on websites… in the end, Microsoft did not leave this feature (enabled?) in the released version of Internet Explorer 6!

BTW, there are some JavaScript libraries today that offer similar functionality, but they are not related to this tag.

Implementation:
Add the following to the <head> section of your webpage(s):
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE" />

REFERENCES:


GeoTags

To build on my recent post on ‘geoURL’, there’s also another system available known as GeoTags. Adding your site to their list is also trivial…

1. The “hardest” step – find your Latitude and Longitude, several sites like Google Maps make this simple if you don’t have access to a GPS reciever…

2. Add the following to the <head> section of your page(s):
<meta name="geo.position" content="41.937891;-88.142111" />
<meta name="geo.placename" content="Carol Stream" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="US-IL" />

NOTE: The above entries are my own, yours should be different.

3. After you’ve uploaded the change, submit your site at the following URL:
http://geotags.com/

FYI, It appears that they’ve also worked out a way to define your location in an RSS Feed… more on that later!

Blood Donation

As I’ve often done in the past, I gave blood recently. Since I’ve lived in the Chicago area, I’ve always done so at LifeSource Blood Centers. This time, however I was introduced to a new device/method this time. As I’m RH Type A+ (being pretty common in the US), it was recommended that I donate ‘red cells’ instead of just whole blood.

Other than taking only a few extra minutes, here’s how it’s different….

After the usual bureaucratic process and paperwork involved in giving blood, they hook you up to a machine called ALYX that runs the process.

It may sound complex, but the process is really simple…
1. A unit of whole blood is taken from you.
2. The blood is then separated into plasma and red blood cells.
3. The plasma is mixed with ‘room temperature’ saline solution.
4. The plasma/saline is returned to your body. (room temperature seems a little ‘cold’ when it returns).
5. Steps 1-4 repeat several times.
6. Remaining ‘whole’ blood, and plasma is returned to your body.
7. Done!

My first experience doing this was a pleasure, the worst part of all being the ‘stick’ they did in my finger to test my hemoglobin, which hurt like hell even hours later!

Added benefits of this process…
1. You actually give ‘twice’ the blood you would if you just gave whole blood. As such, you only visit half as often (16 weeks vs. 8, I think!)
2. With the addition of ‘saline’ to your body, you are slightly more hydrated when you leave.

I recommend that you all “save a life” by giving blood!

Ego searching – skotfred

So, here’s a little more about me… feel free to network with me if you’d like…

Direct linked to my profile:

Indirectly linked:

I’ll add more links as I become aware of them.

Pingomatic

I was looking through the WordPress admin screens, and found that it ‘pings’ http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ each time you update/add an article.

So, being the curious sort, I looked into this and found that it’s really and open input to update your Blog listing in several search engines.

To manually submit, you can fill in and submit the form available at http://pingomatic.com/.

They also have a Blog of their own at http://pingomatic.wordpress.com/.