Google just released their “2008 US Voter info” section on google maps.  You can see it at http://maps.google.com/vote.

Basically what it does is gives the user a visual reference of various voting information items and provides links to the following items:

• Where a user can register to vote closest to their home
• Instructions on how to register in their area
• How to get an absentee ballot
• The main election site if there is one for your location

The new tool also provides useful information such as:

• How many days there are left to register by mail in their state
• The voter hotline number for their area

By mid-October the site should have voting locations in there as well so that you can find the closest voting booth to your house.

Also head over to the Google election page for more information about the elections.

Recently had a problem where the old web guy for a site decided to restrict all search engines in the robots.txt.  This obviously isn’t very helpful when you are trying to grow a client’s business.

So I updated the robots.txt to allow everyone but still google webmaster was telling me that the robots.txt file was not allowing access.  I thought this was weird since I just changed it to allow all.  Turns out that google only downloads a new robots.txt file about once a day.  So even if you request to add the sitemap in google webmaster it will still use the old one.

A good way to check that your robots file is ok is to go to the tools section while in google webmaster and analyze robots.txt .  This will let you know about any problems with your robots.txt and show you the current version that google has cached.  You can also make temporary changes to the cached version to ensure what you are doing is what you would like to happen with spiders.  None of the changes made in that form will change the cached version, that can only be downloaded by google from the site. Modifying the cached version though and retesting it ensures that you have made the correct changes.

Happy 10th Birthday google! Go check out their timeline to see how they have grown, new applications launched, and logo changes.  The original name of the compmany was “backrub” not google, funny name.  Good to see Android is finally out and sort of in celebration of your 10 year but probably not related.  Also check out their new $10 million dollar contest that just wants to hear your good ideas to help the world. While you’re at it you might as well check out their crazy google patent to float data centers in the ocean.  With this patent the servers will be self cooling and reduce latency to other countries.  Servers in water is still a pretty scary thought for me.

Recently I have become pretty addicted to google reader as my primary source of news for all things in the web world, more specifically web development.  Out of my subscriptions my 3 most read blogs are consistently Lifehacker, Engadget, and DZone.  Below is a basic list of all my subscriptions with a downloadable version that can be imported into google reader. Feel free to download the full version and import them into your google reader and then delete the ones you don’t like or add on from there.  Thought this would be a good start for someone new to google reader.

A List Apart, Adaptive Path, Ajaxian, AppleInsider, Design Float, Design Reviver, Digital Web Magazine, DZone, Engadget, Gizmodo, John Resig (wrote Jquery), Lifehacker, Macworld, Rails Envy, Railscasts, Ruby Programming Language, Sharebrain, Slashdot, Smashing Magazine, Springwise, Techdirt, Technology, Vitamin, Wake Up Later, Web Designer Wall, Wired News, Woork, Woot, A design and usibility blog, WebAppers, Web Resources Depot, Happy Coder’s Daily Digest, Nuby on Rails, PSDTUTS, Rails Inside, Riding Rails, Ruby on Rails Workshops, Style Grind, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, Kevin Rose, NETTUTS.

Related Document: google-reader-subscriptions

When first posting your feed to igoogle it takes a little while for it to pull in new posts that you write. Unless you are digg, engadget, or some other already well known and highly visited site and often updated site. When you first put your site feed on igoogle it can take anywhere from 4-72 hours and then as time progresses you should see faster updates to your igoogle rss widget for your feed. Just make sure that the url you are using for your feed is getting updated when you have new posts to your blog/cms/application.

• How to add an RSS feed to your igoogle home page
• igoogle