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October 2008

View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools

A few days ago I posted a feature request for Google Webmaster Tools to provide some nofollow information on external links. More or less right after I posted the request, I started putting together my own Greasemonkey script to provide the functionality I was seeking. When I was nearly complete with my Greasemonkey script, I revisited my post in Google Groups and saw that someone mentioned a Firefox addon that provides PageRank and nofollow status for external links in Google Webmaster Tools. The Firefox addon does exactly what I was looking for plus it also provides PageRank information.
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Microsoft to Improve User Access Control in Windows 7

I was just reading a Slashdot article about Microsoft improving User Access Control (UAC) in Windows 7. In the cited PC Pro article, Microsoft engineer Ben Fathi says:

We’ve heard loud and clear that you are frustrated. You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience.

It seems that Microsoft engineers do have a good grasp on the issues that users have with Windows Vista. On the other hand, CEO Steve Ballmer doesn’t seem to have a clue:

the biggest trade-off we made was sacrificing security for compatibility. I’m not sure the end-users really appreciated that trade-off.

Ummm, yeah… Mr. Ballmer, you sacrificed security for usability not compatibility. I suspect he’s probably still running Windows XP on his desktop, so he really has no idea what he’s talking about. The compatibility issues with Vista have little to do with UAC. Vista’s compatibility problems pale in comparison to the usability issues that UAC introduced.
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