Google are making significant changes to their ranking system. The changes have recently been entitled the Bourbon Update and a Google employee spread (leaked) the following information:

Here’s the advice that I’d give now: take a break from checking ranks for several more days. Bourbon includes something like 3.5 improvements in search quality, and I believe that only a couple are out so far. The 0.5 will go out in a day or so, and the last major change should roll out over the next week or so. Then there will still be some minor changes after that as well. So my “weather report” would be a recommendation that rankings may still change somewhat over the next several days.

Considering the date of this message, the search engine’s behaviour should have stabilised by now.

Google take their satellite maps service one step further:

…trucks would drive along every San Francisco street using the lasers to measure the dimensions of buildings, to create a 3D framework onto which digital photos can be mapped…

One wonders if they can acquire full-colour information. Perhaps their 2-D, top-down pictures can be mapped onto 3-D surfaces. We shall wait and see.

In other news, Google Maps have come under fire recently.

There are fast and automated ways of backing up *NIX servers. Backups should include databases as well as home directories, of which there can be many.

Compressed Archives

If backups can be downloaded via links (e.g. under cPanel), a browser can have its default action for .gz files set to “save in home directory”. A little script can then timestamp all the archives and put them ‘in storage’:

    # Once back-ups have been put in home directory, move all
    # to a time-stamped directory in the back-up area
cd /home/user/
mkdir `date +%Y-%m-%d`
mv backup* /home/user/backup/Home_Directories
    # move home directories
mv *.gz `date +%Y-%m-%d`
    # move databases to the new directory
cp -rf `date +%Y-%m-%d` /home/user/backup/Databases/Recent
    # merge if required
rm -r `date +%Y-%m-%d`
    # clean up, NOTE: mv cannot merge

FTP

If your webspace host offers FTP access alone, there is no simple solution. Command-line ftp might be of use though.

SCP

Copy files from the server to your local machine. This step must be invoked from the server’s side. The form of the command resembles the following:

scp -r ~/public_html your_user_name@machine.domain.suffix:/home/user/backup

mySQL Dumps

Set up cron jobs on the server, e.g.:

0 23 * * 1,4 mysqldump --user [DB_username] --password=[DB_password] [DB_name]> ~/tmp/mydatabase1.dump
0 23 * * 2,5 mysqldump --user [DB_username] --password=[DB_password] [DB_name]> ~/tmp/mydatabase2.dump
0 23 * * 0,3,6 mysqldump --user [DB_username] --password=[DB_password] [DB_name]> ~/tmp/mydatabase3.dump

The code above keeps a stack of 3 databases, which can be used to rollback data shall something catastrophic happen. Databases can then be snatched along with home directories. The above code can be extended so that dumps are compressed and file destinations are remote.

Google search sometimes requires the ‘scanning’ of many entries. There is no need to step page by page looking at just 10 results at a time. The following will display 100, which is the maximum number:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Your_Search_Term_Here&num=100

To get a more concise view containing just the page titles:

http://www.google.com/ie?q=Your_Search_Term_Here&num=100

It truly is a powerful option.

Several sites are running an article on the recent statistical figure: laptops sales surpassed desktop sales in the States.

Will it take another 5-10 years until PDA‘s outsell laptops? Hardware is becoming smaller and cheaper; CPU speed increases rather slowly; RAM matters very little at this point where the O/S just doesn’t require it. So, smaller units might be equally good. To get a convenient workspace, one can attach an external monitor and other peripherals to the PDA while having the choice to just pull the PDA out of the pocket.

Where there’s smoke, there must be a fire. The streets of Manchester are full of smoke at the moment so there must be a large-scale wildfire. There was no evidence of a fire while I was walking home for breakfast; only half an hour later (now), the streets are foggy with smoke.

As it occurred around 5-6 in the morning, there is no word yet from the BBC. Google News can indentify no source either.

9 AM update: there is no longer a trace of smoke. Good riddance.

his entry does not concern spam, but rather the management of mail which belongs to a different ‘classes’, e.g. academia, work and play. It is a simple efficiency tip.

Experience has taught acquainted folks and I the value of possessing several E-mail addresses (7 in my case), which can be checked at different intervals (varying from minutes to days or weeks). Different accounts are designated for mailing lists, subscriptions, people and so forth. This reduces the number of disturbances since there is always a choice as to which account/s to check.

Broader E-mail messages often have labels such as [Linux-Group] which ease the process of flitering. Several mailing lists can reside on the same E-mail account; by defining rules for re-direction to boxes, all messages wind up in the right place automatically.

click image to view in full size

Above is an example from Horde. Messages initially appear in Inbox and only new ones get listed. Once read, a single click on the filter icon will archive them in the right box. Messages marked as spam will wind up in Trash. With this strategy, one can read the subject of — and archive dozens of messages in just a few seconds. Personal messages go to separate accounts which can be checked every 1 minute using POP.