Note From The Editor | featured news

Netflix’s streaming service is great for parents with toddlers. Sometimes, you just need something to distract them for a little bit - like when you need to crank out a blog entry quickly, or when you need to prepare breakfast.

I had resisted upgrading Mozilla’s Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4 because I wasn't sure if all of my add-ons were available for the then newest release. Fast forward a year or two, and I'm five versions behind.

I finally took the plunge when Firefox 8 was released last week because I didn't want to fall too far behind. 3.6 was getting a little sluggish and was no longer the most widely used version of Firefox.

I just noticed this morning that the MGID link exchange widget wasn't loading up on Wopular's subpages, so I temporarily disabled it. The widget was keeping those pages from fully rendering.

I just noticed today that there's an option to sign in to multiple Google accounts. I have a personal Google account and a couple business accounts. Now, I don't have to sign off from one to use the other. There's an option to switch accounts next to your username at the top right corner. I mostly only use GMail and Google Docs. I wonder if they just launched that today, or I've just never noticed it. Anyway, it's awesome.

I'm finding that StumbleUpon has been the most effective social button on the site. I've been consistently sharing my blog entires on StumbleUpon and other content sharing sites like Digg, Reddit, Twitter, Linkedin, +1, Facebook, and maybe a couple other ones. It's mostly a waste of time except for StumbleUpon.

Demand Media, a content farm targeted by Google's Panda Update, is shifting focus from text to video. On its flagship site eHow, it's producing less written content and more how-to videos, moving from one ecosystem into another.

Last Thursday, Google launched another algorithm change to their search engine that rewards “fresher” content. For example, if you’re searching for a current event, the latest news articles would pop up to the top of the page. 35% of the search results are affected. I was thinking this should be great for a news sites like Wopular. I checked Google Analytics on Thursday and instead of getting a traffic boost, I got the opposite - a dip.

Talk about getting its ass-kicked by Google’s Panda Update, Mahalo’s been hit pretty hard. Jason Calacanis, the founder, has never been shy about how his site gets traffic - by paying writers cheaply to crank out content for the top Google keyword searches. In other words, an SEO play - a content farm.

The Madoff family’s in the news again. Ruth Madoff, wife of notorious swindler Bernie Madoff, did an interview with “60 Minutes.” Bernie was also interviewed in prison. Coincidentally, there’s a Madoff book coming out at the end of the month and one was released about a week ago. I’m not sure what to make of the two books, released within two weeks of each other.

Because Google’s Panda Update 2.5 has taken away a chunk of Wopular’s traffic, I’ve decided to try out web 2.0 link exchange programs. I read that they’re significantly more sophisticated than their previous incarnations. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never tried them with Rotten Tomatoes.