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If you are into SEO, you know how important keywords research phase is. I’m a very newbie in this area and always pay attention to what pro’s suggest. For a couple of weeks, I’ve been using Overture Keywords Inventory and Google External Keyword Tool for my research attempts. They are great tools and they are completely free.

As they say, there was a poll "Best Keywords Research Tools" recently and you can see the results below:

• Keyword Discovery (18%)
• Wordtracker (18%)
• WordZe (15%)
• Google Keyword Tool (14%)
• SEO Digger (12%)
• Overture Keyword Selector (6%)
• SEO Boook Keyword Tool (3%)
• KeywordSpy (3%)
• SpyFu (3%)
• Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool (3%)
• NicheBOT (2%)
• Hitwise Search Intelligence (2%)
• Google Suggest Scraper (1%)
• comScore qSearch (0%)
• AdGooRoo SEM Insight (0%)

(from: Winner Best Keyword Research Tool)

I don’t know what you think looking at the results, but to me it seems there’s a little bit of a conservative smell in the figures. I tried, I honestly tried to use Keyword Discovery several times both two years and a week ago. Guess what? They didn’t bother to update their interface. It still quite inconvenient, performs badly and employs approaches older than the world itself. I don’t know what they think, but it’s quite clear they get good money to let themselves not to bother with such minuscule and unimportant things as flexibility, ease of use and overall look.

Anyway, it’s their choice and their business. I just got the confirmation for myself that one shouldn’t follow the crowd blindly. For me, the WordZe was a discovery and it looks as a very good commercial product worth a try. I’ll give it a closer look later. For now…

Enjoy your Friday!

For a long time it was a huge pain in the neck to follow the blogs and threads I was ever commenting on. Most of the time I had to make a heart-bleeding decision whether it is going to be a fire-and-forget kind of comment or will I bookmark it somehow for the later returns. I realize everyone has similar problems, otherwise they wouldn’t ask us to add some kind of comments tracking to BlogBridge, so that I’m not alone in these sufferings.

It seems someone got to the point of being desperate, and finally decided to aid the community with an excellent comment threads tracker — cocomment.com. I discovered it by sheer accident noticing in my recent trackbacks section of the Wordpress administrative dashboard a reference from some new site. Quick check of the inbound link led to this amazing discovery. (BTW, it was you Markus, who “showed” me the way with your “IELTS: Done.” tracking.)

So how it is going to help? I believe they support some major blogging systems (Wordpress, Flickr, Blogger.com as I managed to notice from their guide) and use their comment tracking feeds and functions to get the list of recent updates. Then they process collected data and do notifications, organization and nice Web 2.0-ish display of threads in the inbox style. Nothing really complex, but they are the first (to my best knowledge) to turn it from a dream to a real thing. My kudos to you guys!

I personally, will give them a spin. It seems to be a good idea to finally organize my commenting world. It’s not too big, but still… One side-effect I noticed is that whatever conversation you take part in becomes visible to anyone in the world. I believe there’s something I can do to stay private as it’s definitely not in my plans to share a big chunk my personal life with “a community”. Let private stay private, I would say.

Anyway, good piece of news!

Update: I found privacy settings where they let (but not recommend) me hide my conversations from the world.

Recently Pito Salas of BlogBridge started a great new series of educational posts on Squidoo. These are intended to bridge the gap between geeky techies chirping with their awful terms, like ‘blogs’, ‘feeds’, ‘rss’ or even scarier stuff, like ‘aggregator’, and simple working bees surfing around.

Check his “The difference between a web site and a blog” to learn how different blogs and regular sites are, what they have in common and why it is important not to confuse them one for another. It’s all very simple, but there’s no doubt, you will be proud of yourself when finished reading as these little details are what makes people stand out.

The second article “What are the best news blogs?” is focused mainly on acquiring new blogs for your reading pleasure. It answers important questions: “where to look for blogs”, and “whose opinion matters” when looking for new sources.

Have fun, and don’t forget to bookmark these or Digg if you feel they helped you. Here are the Digg links for your quick reference:

• The difference between a web site and a blog
• What are the best news blogs?

The long-awaited results of our IELTS test I was writing quite a bit about are finally on the table, unwrapped…

They look great with all these watermarks around, but what makes them really shine is the marks. Kate, and she was studying the language for only two years from ground zero, got 4.5 (Listening), 5.5 (Reading), 6 (Writing) and 5 (Speaking) which averages at 5.5. I got my fair 8.5 (Listening), 8.5 (Reading), 8 (Writing) and 7 (Speaking) with the average of 8.0.

The IELTS scale is from 0 (Did not attempt) to 9 (Expert user). Below is the detailed explanation of what each grade means.

9 Expert User

Has fully operational command of the language: appropriate, accurate and fluent with complete understanding.

8 Very Good User

Has fully operational command of the language with only occasional unsystematic inaccuracies and inappropriacies. Misunderstandings may occur in unfamiliar situations. Handles complex detailed argumentation well.

7 Good User

Has operational command of the language, though with occasional inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings in some situations. Generally handles complex language well and understands detailed reasoning.

6 Competent User

Have generally effective command of the language despite some inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings. Can use and understand fairly complex language, particularly in familiar situations.

5 Modest User

Has partial command of the language, coping with overall meaning in most situations, though is likely to make many mistakes. Should be able to handle basic communication in own field.

4 Limited User

Basic competence is limited to familiar situations. Has frequent problems in use of complex language.

3 Extremely Limited User

Conveys and understands only general meaning in very familiar situations. Frequent breakdowns in communication occur.

2 Intermittent User

No real communication is possible except for the most basic information using isolated words or short formulae in familiar situations and to meet immediate needs. Has great difficulty understanding spoken and written English.

1 Non User

Essentially has no ability to use the language beyond possibly a few isolated words.

0 Did not attempt

No assessable information provided. Candidate may have failed to sit for the test

I checked with current regulations, and it seems I need only 5/5/5/5 to be eligible for application, and for 6/6/6/6 I even get some little bonus. Kate still needs the average above 4.5. As we all see, the life is great and with our marks we can do two immigrations in a row. The marks are valid for a one-year period, so I have to keep a good pace not to expire them before the actual application.

Yesterday we visited the Linguist Center, where we were learning and polishing the language all this time before the test, to thank everybody with champagne and flowers. They did a terrific job there and should be proud of themselves! We all did, and especially Kate, who showed extreme determination and diligence. I’m truly proud of you, Kate!

Fine, the next move is skills assessment. I will be sending the recommendations I collected over the years to the ACS to confirm that I am an experienced programmer. They will be giving calls to all / some of the people I mention to have their opinion from first hands.

It’s a lengthy process, and I don’t really want to make it longer with my mistakes in documentation, that’s why I’m looking for a good immigration agent to take over the routine. So far, my focus is on Wib-immigration.com which is a Sydney-based MIA (Migration Institute of Australia) and MARA certified immigration agency that is very flexible with prices and the services package. I filled their free Skilled Immigration assessment form with all details and expecting the answer soon. We’ll see if it works out.

And by the way, the comments are open for congratulations. I’ll keep you posted!

Note: This post contains an embedded flash-video which can be not shown in the feed reader of your choice, so please get down to the site to see it.

I wrote two or three posts ago that I played at the TechnoSphere 2007 pre-party live with my new MIDI controller console and it was spectacular. Now you can see it with your own eyes.

The first part is the very beginning of the performance. Experimental beats, lots of effects, and my nerves are still not really cooled at the moment.

Next comes the extract from the middle of the set. It was a stomping percussive track with rich bass back end. In the middle of the track the pattern and the whole scheme changes radically so that after a minute or so, you forget what was before the change. I started these experiments some time ago and quickly fell in love with the two tracks rolled in one structure.

The last part of the set was put together from the tracks of some Techno-gurus I deeply respect. I broke the tracks into pieces and constructed into a 45-minute long song. Here’s one of the scenes from this segment.

I don’t make any audio recordings of my performances for two reasons: a) they aren’t professional enough, b) I don’t want people sit in the comfort of their divans and criticize. If you want to hear me, come to parties; if not — it’s completely up to you.

Hope you liked the video. I was told that someone was processing another version and it’ll probably show up on the horizon soon. If it’s true, I’ll post it here. In the mean time, let me know what you think.

You know, I’m fond of reading books. My true obsession is books by English and American science-fiction writers. William Gibson, Philip Dick, Arthur C Clarke just to name some of the favorites. I read all of them in original and, being non-native language speaker, face some problems with new words, idioms and phrases. I have several huge dictionaries bi- and mono-lingual as well as five desktop dictionaries on my laptop (Cambridge Advanced, Oxford Concise, Macmillan Advanced Learners, Collins Co-build, Oxford Collocations), but imagine how inconvenient it is to jump from a page to a laptop or a paper back then back to the page. This is why I seriously considered buying some good voluminous pocket electronic dictionary.

Two days ago I purchased it. We took a deep breath and scanned the net together with Kate inside-out looking for something ergonomic, with good amount of words, phrasal verbs support, synonyms, idioms and long battery life. I hoped to find one with the feature to save the words I looked up into a list for the review, but none of a hundred devices we managed to dig out possessed it. We narrowed our search and finished with ECTACO Partner ER300T.

(click for bigger)

I gave it a couple of days to show himself before writing this short report, just in case something unexpected pops out, but it seems everything is smooth so far. Kate and I, we both are satisfied and happy readers now. You wouldn’t believe how pleasant it makes the whole process. I spend more time on the page and learn more words simply because I don’t lose the context for long periods of time any more. I do need time to record the word in my paper notebook though (for a later review), but it’s incomparable to the expenses we had to take before. Just to give a hint, I finished the second half of The Alien Factor by Stan Lee yesterday, while it had taken more than two weeks to swallow the first. You see my point?

Now just a few words on one innovation we stumbled upon during the research — Quicktionary Pen. It’s a dictionary with an LCD screen with a pen-like form (slightly bigger though). It has a scanner on its tip that picks up the words as you move it over the text. It supports several text styles, including but not limited to inverted text, italics, bold and underlined letters. The thing must be extremely convenient and robs of even less time, but unfortunately we didn’t have the gadget in any shops around to test and make up our own practical opinion; we can only make guesses. Hope this little pointer helps someone in their pocket electronic dictionary research and purchase.

Here’s where I leave you today. Cheers!

We called British Council on Friday and I forgot to leave a note here for those who follow our little adventure. They promised to send the results to us on Monday, and put the special emphasis on that even though the marks will be ready, they won’t share them with us over the phone.

Well, as I think about it now, it’s quite a judicious move, isn’t it? Anyone could learn my results by simply calling them, and I don’t really like anyone to do this. So, let’s see what arrives. I wonder how long it is going to take, but it shouldn’t be more than a week for sure.

This Saturday I played live for the first time! Certainly, I tried it in the past, but it wasn’t a real thing — just some simple toying with the software. This Saturday thing was different.

It wasn’t a huge rave that would be definitely over the top for the first-timer, however they put together a small yet convenient stage, added some lighting equipment and sound. There were about 200-300 people when I was performing and it’s more than enough to see how it goes and get the idea of what has to be improved and how. I liked the audience. Many of them didn’t know what “live” means and came asking the same question. It’s good when people care to ask if they don’t understand; it shows they wish to get the picture, learn something new… It was my pleasure to educate them a bit and show how it’s going to be on fingers.

Here I am in the middle of my hour and a half long set. I had huge butterflies in the stomach until the last minute, but eventually it went very well. You can see, I was playing from the HP notebook though the TC Electronic Konnekt 8 firewire audio interface (Andrew, thanks for a hint on this hardware, it’s a dream even though it has some driver problems) and controlling the setup from my custom-built 8-channel midi controller board. The sound was crisp, bright and very clean as the interface is capable of 192kHz/24bit. I didn’t use this much as the CPU in my poor old laptop was almost overloaded, but the potential of the interface is unlimited and I wish to find a way to record the stuff next time for your “offline” listening pleasure.

I would say, my compositions went great and much better than I expected. People were cheering and jumping all around me and the dancefloor. That definitely gave me an inspiration, new ideas and the willingness to go on with performing.

That was a nice start indeed! The next step I’m planning is to create more material for another, better set and climb on a slightly higher stage.

As you may know, we cherish the idea of immigration. Immigration to the sunny and sandy Australia. Last Friday (May 31, 2007) we flew to Kiev to take our IELTS examination, which always takes place in the British Council.

IELTS test is an indispensable part of the process as we have to prove our language abilities along with technical skills and other stuff when applying to the Skilled Immigration Visa. According to the requirements, I need a pretty high score (somewhere around 7 of 10) and Kate’s needs to be at least 5. One interesting fact that puzzles everyone I speak to is that if your spouse (non-primary applicant) fails to get above the threshold, you are to pay approximately USD $2000 for him/her to study the language there in AU upon arrival. Interesting!

As usual, we were extremely careful with preparations and booked the tickets and the apartment long in advance. Kate managed to find the place to stay right across the road from the British Council building! It was so amazing to feel that under no circumstances we won’t be late for our exams as it takes only two minutes to get from our front door to theirs.

Booking the plane tickets was also somewhat fun. The air tourism is quite an expensive pleasure here in Ukraine, but those days the discount system was in full swing and they were giving the tickets out left and right for a miserable price, so that we managed to get our four tickets for under USD $100 in total. (Can you believe this!?) The funniest part though is that the plane was a healthy Boeing 737-300, and not some coffin with wings.

We came to Kiev one day in advance to look around and have some fun in the city, to relieve some stress and prepare for the important event. One thing I figured out immediately is that it was a great opportunity to drop in on a couple of book supermarkets to look up some English prose (mainly sci-fi and humorous stuff). Six ours later I was on the sofa in the silent coolness of a conditioner with the Stan Lee’s The Alien Factor. The other titles I picked up are The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur Clarke, McNally’s Risk by Lawrence Sanders, and Stout Mama by Sibyl James. You know I’m a big fan of English language and sci-fi; enough to have some serious fun!

The examination day started with the power outage. We had a quick snack and rushed to the Council. After a quick registration they broke us into three groups which is quite reasonable considering there was about fifty participants on the list.

The examination usually consists of the four parts in this specific order: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. All participants take it in the same groups without the level separation. As the complexity of the modules within the parts increases, the lower levels stop understanding what’s going on, while the stronger move on improving their marks. It’s quite fair and mature approach in my opinion.

The Listening consists of about four modules with increasing complexity. The module is an audio recording of a conversation with the questions in the booklet. It’s played once and you have to pick up the meaning and answer the questions either by filling the gaps or choosing the correct choice from the given.

The Reading test is the set of texts with the questions, where you show the level of comprehension. The time limit is very strict, so that you don’t have forever to answer all the questions. It has to take no more than an hour to run through everything, understand and give the right answers. The types of questions vary from “fill the gap” to “choose the right answer from the given” again.

The Writing module assesses your ability to put words together in meaningful sequences, but not just this. There are two absolutely different tasks to complete. In our case it was “write a letter to a friend who is coming to your place; tell him where is the key; describe the equipment; outline some entertainment options” and “speculate on the importance of the creative subjects (arts, music, drama etc) in the school program”. The first is clearly informal writing and it had to be at least 150 words, whereas the last is a formal 250-word essay. Truth be told, I started to jot down the ideas first, but quickly realized that as a programmer my handwriting is, to put it mildly, poor and I won’t have time to transfer my ideas to the answer sheet. As they give an hour for everything, I gave up sketching and streamed everything right on to the paper. To my surprise, it looked fun, was moving and quite impressive at the same time. I had a great time, indeed!

The Speaking part was scheduled after a short break. To the honor of the staff, foreigners were assigned to pass it first. In fact, Kate and I were in the head of the list. The interviewers are native language speakers — very professional: no interruptions, corrections, waiting patiently for us to finish our songs. The first “exercise” was to introduce ourselves by answering the questions, then they gave a topic to think a minute about and to express the opinion on it for a minute or two non-stop. The last part was a short discussion around the topic. I loved it! I wasn’t speaking much lately and it seemed my fountain was finally open wide. Now as I recall it, it might look like I showed him all of my eloquence.

To conclude, we are quite satisfied with how it went. The results aren’t known yet, and will arrive in about a week, but it feels like we had a great time. It wasn’t as scary as we imagined at all… well, at least as I imagined.

Let’s wait for the score list!