Computer Science Stuff

Recently this week I have been tracking my alexa ranking and I have been recognizing a slight decrease in my rank and my traffic has been increasing alot. For people that don’t know what Alexa is, it is one of the largest Web crawls which processes massive amounts of data about traffic ranking and website information. So I decided to do some research on Alexa to find out the problem because one thing that any system has is a margin of error either more or less.

After researching this is what I found (this is from their website you can check here under some important disclaimers):

The traffic data are based on the set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. To the extent that our sample of users differs from the set of all Internet users, our traffic estimates may over- or under-estimate the actual traffic to any particular site.

As you can see there is a margin of error in their system but this paragraph gives the reason I’m experiencing slight decreases in my alexa ranking (this is from their website you can check here under some important disclaimers).

Sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa. Alexa’s data comes from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users and other traffic data sources; however, the size of the Web and concentration of users on the most popular sites make it difficult to accurately determine the ranking of sites with fewer than 1,000 monthly visitors. Generally, traffic rankings of 100,000 and above should be regarded as not reliable. Conversely, the closer a site gets to #1, the more reliable its traffic ranking becomes.

As you can see Alexa ranking are not reliable but its purpose is to guesstimate how popular a website is and how much it costs. I use Alexa to find up and coming websites, to track website trends and analyze data. I’m not discouraging people from using Alexa but to be mindful that everything is not 100% accurate. On a sidenote if you really wish to accurately track your stats of your website consult your website hosting providers for tools they provide. I personally use awstats.

Also here is a random fact I found from Alexa website that readers might find interesting.

Question

Why are there so many Chinese sites in the top 500?
Category: Traffic and Site Stats
Answer

Because Alexa’s traffic data reflects the usage of the entire global population of Internet users, large members of that global population, such as China, will be heavily represented in that data. Many Chinese sites do receive very large amounts of traffic, which is consistent with their inclusion in our top 500 list.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Yesterday, I was trying so hard to make sure my website was meeting w3c standards, but one thing stood in my obstacle, a embedded youtube video.

This is why I was trying to pass w3c standards:

1. Helps ensure accessibility for the disabled.
2. Makes your web site accessible from a number of devices, from different browsers to the growing number of surfers using mobile devices.
3. Regardless of the browser, resolution, device; etc., your Web site will look and function in the same, or at least a very similar, fashion.
4. A site that has been created using W3C standard-based code performs generally better in the majority of browsers, be it (IE) Internet Explorer, (NN) Netscape Navigator, (FF) Firefox or Safari.
5. Saves both time and money. A site that has been programmed to W3C standard has two advantages: it is downgrade-able (able to be viewed correctly) in older browsers; it is viewable and will look nearly the same across newer and continuously updated browsers (i.e., Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.)
6. When upgrading or maintaining a website this can save an enormous amount of time and research for the person performing the updates, base on you following these standards.

After further researching it came to my amazement that google, yahoo, facebook and youtube did not meet the standards of w3c! You would think the moguls of the internet would abide by such a code! I guess the oddball in this case is msn, because they actually passed the test. I actually pass the test on my homepage but I probably won’t in the future because of youtube.  It always some case in which you have to deviate away from a standard but make sure you are still on point with your infomation and delivery. The most important thing with website design is making sure you end your html tags, no hanging loops and optimize your webpage to load within certain times. So if you want to abide by it you have to make a choice avoid google, yahoo, facebook widgets and youtube videos on your page and meet w3c standards, or break the standard and entertain your viewers!

If you want the link to check your website go here and type in your url.  Also try out google, yahoo, facebook and youtube to see for yourself.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Lately I have been getting a lot of questions from users and friends in college and entry level positions on how to get raises and what kind of a raise is acceptable.  Now there are several topics that need to be addressed in this question so I am going to address them in parts This being part 2 on how to get the raise or promotion you want.

So how do I get the raise that I want?
(part 2 for those who just want to get a higher raise in their careers)

This is one of the more frustrating things for a lot of professionals, but I want to stress that raise and promotions work differently for every company. With that in mind I write this post making only generalizations that will work for just about anybody in just about any company. Now the first thing to understand is how raises work in most companies. No matter what kind of grading scale your company has they all come down to 3 basic things that can be split into many subdivisions. Those are not met standards, met standards, and exceeded standards. I know I know there are some companies that look beyond these but look at personal conduct issues as well but I will address those later. Next you need to realize that most companies when doing raises, which usually happen every 12 months, start with a base line rate between 2% to 3 %.  Its from this starting point that you will either go up or down in percentage which usually ranges from 0%(not met standards) to 5%(exceed standards). This may seem low but that is the reality at most jobs that no matter how well you do your job and overly exceed everything your bosses want from you in most cases the highest raise you will get is 5%.  That not true for all companies especially smaller companies which tend to invest more in their employees as oppose some larger companies.  In order to ensure that you get that 5% or higher raise you want to

• Make sure you met or exceeds all deadlines
• Helping a project finish under budget or have ideas that will impact the budget
• Go beyond your jobs expectations to have the best deliverable possible
• Improve the skills your job requires so that you have the ability to exceed expectations
• Keep all office relationships cordial. This might seem odd but if you an a co-worker don’t get along your boss and everyone else will notices that. It could play a roll in the decision on how big of a raise you should get.
• Minimize any negative things anyone can have to say about you. Now were not all perfect but being the nice person of the office helps. Or, you could just be the person who comes and does their work well and give no one any problems
• When your boss ask for volunteers on a task be one of the first to take it on. Now don’t take on more then you can handle as that can back fire.
• Make an effort to help co-workers when they are having trouble with a task.

In the end if your doing your job well and finishing task on of schedule and or of a high quality while marinating a pleasant work environment, then you will see raises on the higher end. Now some of you may be saying to yourselves that a 5% increases isn’t enough for you. Well if that’s the case then the best way to quickly raise your salary by 10 to as much as 35 percent is to move to a new company. When ever you move from company to company if it’s by choice the company hiring you will do what they can to exceed your current salary or make it on the level of your peers. This is especially true for people who under sold themselves in their current job and started with a salary far below what they feel they should be making. In my own experience I have seen that it’s a good move to switch companies every 4 to 5 years as to get that pay increase you are looking for, unless you have plans to part of upper management at your current employer.  If upper management is your goal then you need to invest time in a company and the pay you want will come. Also remember when switching companies make sure you get exactly what you want because it’s no point in rushing at the first offer you get. Instead take your time and find what you want and if you ask for too much the only thing they can say to you is no while you go back to your current job.

In conclusion you can get the raise or promotion you want if you put forth a little extra effort at work and maintain a pleasant working environment. Or, if you move to a new company that will gladly compensate you for your work experience and skill set beyond  what your current employer may be willing to pay. Now If you are reading this post and have more questions or are looking for advice, then send your questions to me at  me_conwell@compscistuff.com

Popularity: 16% [?]

This is an email I received yesterday that shows that people in the computer science field are still in demand despite economic state that is in this country. It seems as though the demand for Ruby and Java developers is slightly rising at an interesting rate. I receive these types of informative job emails all the time but I’m putting this one out there for anyone to take advantage of it.

Hi,

I would like your help with what is a surprising surge in job openings here in DC, despite the economic climate.  If you know someone please let me know.  A few of these have referral rewards attached to them so there may be something in it for you if you help.  Here is the list:

1. Lead/Architect. downtown DC, requires Senior level Java person with web services experience.  Possibly some work involving MySQL or Oracle.  2 month contract, very good rate.  Start ASAP.  Requires that work be done on site (no telecommuting) and full time hours.
2. Java/J2EE Enterprise developer, Annapolis Junction, MD, requires Secret Clearance.  Working on a document management system for the government.  This is with a 7 year old solutions and engineering company (not a staffing agency) based in Baltimore, MD.  Requires that work be done on site (no telecommuting) and full time hours.
   
3. Ruby on Rails Web Developer, downtown DC, requires heavy UI experience (AJAX/Javascript/CSS/HTML).  This is with a great team full of smart people – a great opportunity to have solid peers.  Full time on site, no telecommute.  This company is a startup and the founder has been through the routine before and came ahead – join in their success this time around.
   
4. Ruby on Rails Web Developer, Columbia MD, requires well rounded Ruby on Rails developer or someone with solid Java web development experience who is interested in making the leap to Ruby.  This company is a startup and the founder has been through the routine before and came ahead – join in their success this time around.
   
5. Adobe Flex or ActionScript Developer, McLean, VA.  This role is working on an application that will not be on the web, but one that is on the cutting edge.  The ideal person would be someone who has experience with Flex experience, but ActionScript and MXML experince would be an acceptable substitute.  There is a $3500.00 referall reward for this one.
   

Thanks in advance,

Bob Neelbauer
Principal
staffmagnet
Here is his email: team@staffmagnet.com

Popularity: 12% [?]

During the summer time I was struggling alot with Calculus 3 and physics, and I needed something to turn the tables in my favor. So one of my friends told me about this website called cramster.com. Cramster gave me the edge in the classroom to turn around my grades drastically.

Cramster provides:

1. All the answers and step by step process for odd and even problems in the back of the book.
2. If you ask a question on the website they have experts to monitor users responses and deliver quality answers.
3. You can request for a textbook to be supported on the website.
4. Even if you have the magnificent mathematical abilities you can earn karma points on the website in which you can buy today’s top consoles (PS3, XBOX 360) on the website buy just solving problems.

You can get all the answers to the odd problems with a step by step process for free, but to get the full benefit of the website I would invest 39.95/year.

I have and it definitely saved me, do you need saving?

Popularity: 14% [?]

At a glance

Google Page Rank
Marketing
Communities
Forums
Having a Product

Google Page Ranking

Google Page Ranking is a system developed by the CEOs of Google when going for the PhD at Stanford. The Page ranking system is set up, so that when you search for a keyword on Google it determines the best website for you base on how many people have links on their website to it. Page rank numbers are from 1-10, 10 being the highest.

In order to boost up your page rank you need to be able to have people link to you in different ways:

1.    Marketing
2.    Communities
3.    Forums
4.    Having a product

Also to boost up your page rank you need to update your website with information on a daily basis. Google Pagerank looks at the longevity of your site and how much you update.

Marketing

The most common way of having someone link to your website, is paying a website that usually receives a lot of traffic to place your ad on their site. Usually top websites have over a couple 1,000 people come to their website on a daily basis. Another way is submitting an article on a very popular topic to a website that collects articles and posts them for everyone to see. A good example is www.digg.com. If you managed to get your article on digg.com you will have approximately over 50,000 people coming to your website to read your article.

Communities

9 times out of 10 you are not the only person trying to raise his/her page rank. If you were to form or join a community of people trying to do the same thing and all links to each other’s pages, you will automatically raise up each other pages ranks in some type of way.

Forums

Forums are discussion groups that anyone can sign up for to discuss any particular topic or solve a problem. When people search on Google to find a solution to a particular problem usually forums come up first. If you are able to give someone a solution to a particular problem with your link under the solution you will be able to draw more attention to your website and increase traffic.

Having a Product

The top website on the internet usually has some type of product or something that people constantly need. For example www.yahoo.com is number one is terms of traffic, because its search engine, email system, games, website hosting, news, etc. This type of system was developed by yahoo keeps individuals constantly coming to the website and potentially even leading them to buy the products over competitors.

Also submit your website to google, yahoo and msn if it is not already in there, so it can be indexed and found by other users.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Lately I have been getting a lot of questions from user and friends in college and entry level positions on how to get raises and what kind of a raise is acceptable.  Now  there are several topics that need to be addressed in this question so I am going to address them in parts This being part 1 on how much should you ask for salary wise coming out of college.

So how much do I ask for when getting a new job?
(part 1 the student looking for their first job)

Well the answer to this depend on your skill set and your experience, so I’ll assume that you have some form of technical training in either database development/management, web development, software development, network security, or any other form of specific IT work.

For those right out of college this is one of the biggest questions you have. I know because it was for me and I made the classic mistake of low balling myself.  Now how to avoid the same mistake

• Don’t be afraid to ask for a high salary. Now there will be those who tell you that $65,000 is a good number out of college. Well I say hat nice but ask for no less then 75,000 and a signing bonus (the hiring process is the only time you get to feel like a first round draft pick)
• If you made the choice while in college to get certification or two know that you can ask for more money
• If you had meaningful internship where you did a considerable amount of coding and have a reference on hand to back that up then take that into account too.
• If you were in a co-op program, which is a program were you work for a company every other semester and then school every other semester, then you can use that as full time experience. That would make you a college student with a year or more of actual experience so then you should look at the next section
• If you went and got a co-op or internship that gave you a clearance, secret or top secret, and you decide to go into the private sector know that that clearance is golden. With that clearance you can ask for at least $15,000 more then the average college computer scientist.
• Don’t jump at the first opportunity that comes your way. You should take the first offer you get and use that for leverage to get a larger offer from the next opportunity. You might be surprised how far some companies will go to beat out a competitors offer.
• If you have started your own projects/applications/websites while in school then you can use those as work experience too. That is as long as you can show off that project and it is along the lines of the kind of work you would be done in the position you are pursuing. If it’s not along the same line then use is as example of you entrepreneurship and creativity.

These are all thing to consider when applying for that first job out of college, and my advice weather any of these points apply to you or not is to ask for $70,000 or more. Remember not to be afraid to ask for more because all companies can say is that that’s too high and then start a negotiate you. If you follow that advice you won’t fall into the trap of low balling yourself like I did.  If you are reading this and have more questions or are looking for advice then send me your questions at me_conwell@compscistuff.com

Popularity: 14% [?]