Month: September 2011

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Bitcoin price drop 9 September 2011

Wow!

I just looked at Bitcoin Charts and its a sea of red. Prices are at around USD5.45 per BTC!

Wondering what the heack caused this recent plunge I take a look at MtGox and notice the following post.

“Dear Mt.Gox Users,

Due to an intermittently active node in the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin withdrawals are currently unavailable. Users will receive an error message of “invalid bitcoin address” when trying to process their withdrawal. Mt.Gox is currently investigating alternate node pathing options. It will be fixed as soon as possible, and updates will be announced when Bitcoin withdrawal is available. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Thank you,

Mt.Gox Support”

I could be wrong (I have not followed the trials and tribulations of Bitcoin recently) but perhaps that “spooked the horses” and everyone is trying to cash out fearing the major exchange has taken a hit or somehow will not be able to transfer out BTC – the above announcement doesn’t read that way to me but I’m an amateur really.  How strange people are.  I am guessing there are a bunch of pre defined sells set up that are triggering, what the bet when people realise things are OK the exchange rate will rise again.

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Google Authorship and rel=auth

Have been battling with getting my websites and blog set up so that authorship of the blog and website pages points to me Google+ profile which in turn creates some proof of ownership of my website and blog because of the link. A side effect is that when you search Google for something and I happen to have written something about it (or if in fact you are searching for me website via Google) a little picture of my mug will come up next to the search result – which I recon is kind of cool.

I had some problems getting the blog set up. The two major problems I had were:-

  1. Understanding the significance/difference between rel=author tag and rel=me tag.
  2. Making sure the web-link in my profile were available to be viewed by anyone.

So what were the lessons learned I hear you say?

  1. The rel = author tag basically tells Google search engine that the page with this tag in it is a very important page and (in the case of a wordpress blog) to look at the page with that tag to then look for the html tag rel = me.  In turn, the rel=me tag points the search engine to my Google profile which as a result “connects” my blog to my Google+ profile. I guess a parallel are some of the sites that allow you to “claim” website as your, e.g. claimID.com or the Verisign VIP service (via OpenID)
  2. One of the steps in the process is to make sure that your Google+ profile has a website link that points to your website (or blog) that you linking to your Google+ profile from, ie, the website that you have just added the rel=author or rel=me tags (or both) on.  Just make sure that the links on your Google+ page are available to be viewed by everyone, not just those in your circles (like I did).  If you restrict visibility to only those in your circle you will not obtain the full benefit of Google Authorship.

There are a few sites to look at about all this.  The main ones I used for my WordPress blogs were:-

  1. Google site about it all – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1408986
  2. and most importantly, in relation to WordPress blog – http://www.ryantmalone.com/seo/google-authorship-markup-verification-tutorial-for-bloggers/

These two sites should get you on yor merry way.

Enjoy your head next to search results with your site in it!

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Google TV – Meh….keep Mythtv

I bought a Logitech Revue with Google TV the other day from Amazon at a knock down price of USD99.99.

I really wanted to like Google TV but in the end, when I received the package I didn’t even get it out of the box, instead I sold it on eBay unopened. It’s a shame I had real hope of being able to make the box fit into my life somehow but even I could not justify it.

Why, I hear you ask, bare in mind I am in Australia:-

  1. Have to pay for a VPN subscription to circumvent geo-blocking on US content providers like Netflix and given there is no option except DHCP networking on the box had to hack a work around for DNS providers for the unblock-us.com service.
  2. Have to pay for content providers like Netflix, Amazon instant videos or some other services like that.
  3. Doesn’t record TV.
  4. Can’t access network shared media unless you are prepared to set up a DLNA server.
  5. Netflix doesn’t have the most recent TV episodes in any event, looks like they are 1 season behind or something.
  6. Can’t access Hulu to watch the most recent TV episodes as they have blocked GTV’s browser.
  7. No integration with any cable TV boxes here in Australia (that I am aware of).
  8. Can’t get content through GTV that you can’t get “elsewhere”.

So basically, its the lack of anything new and of content providers that make it easyier to watch stuff that is going against GTV.  For anyone that already uses some thing like Mythtv (like I do) I can’t see any reason to get a Google TV.

I’m not sure how the much talked about Honeycomb upgrade will change things, perhaps it does which would be great and perhaps I sold it to soon but I can’t justify this box over Mythtv.