Kevin Harrison

I don't know why Google changed the colors of the categories in Google news but it looks like they actually regressed.

Each major category in Google News had their color changed yesterday. Each category is a variant of their classic Google color scheme.

The news categories now make the website look like it was produced for (or by i can't say) an 8 year old. If you don't read the actual news headlines you may thing it is a page for kids.

If memory recalls, the categories in Google News used to have a solid background greyish color. The only colors in the category was a top border which used the Google colors.

Perhaps it's just because it's new change, but the colors just seem too distracting, keeping the user's eyes from the actual news content. If a color wheel is fired up, the colors don't even match the same scheme. The UI team really goofed on that.

Google finally revealed to the public what their servers are like on the inside. Surprisingly, from a technology standpoint, their servers are using x86 chips with a mixture of AMD and Intel chips. I guess from Google's perspective, they would rather have quantity over quality. Not that x86 chips are bad but with x86-64 available, x86 systems are the most cost effective.

Attached to each Gigabyte GA-9IVDP (The motherboard's model number might actually be GA-91VDP I can't say if it is a 1 or a capital i) motherboard are two hard drives, which look to be Hitachi Deskstars, eight chips of memory, maximum of 4 gigs each server since the operating system is x86, and a 12 volt battery as their own Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

Google explains that designing their servers with their own UPS battery is more efficient then having ten on one single UPS. Pretty interesting...

The real question with the hardware is whether or not Google's servers actually use the same exact parts. Do they know something most of us don't know about the reliability of Hitachi Deskstars? Or how about the Magnetek Power supplies? Perhaps it's time to dig up some stats for this hardware. Thanks cnet for the info.

I just noticed google is not notifying users when a url is being redirected to another url.

I noticed this with my como te llama search.

The first url is a wikipedia.org page. According to google's result, the url points to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hammond,_Jr.'s_second_album.

When the link is clicked, Google stops the redirect and asks the user if they would like to be forwarded to the new url.

I hope this change doesn't stick. A lot of seo is built around redirects.

Tax season is just around the corner and for many people Google adsense is a very popular income strategy.

Here is a list of ideas that you can use to help offset your income for tax write offs.

• Domain name

Most people who use adsense have their own domain name. This is a necessary expenditure for your website.

• Website Hosting

Who is your website host? Calculate your yearly hosting costs and this should take a nice bite out of your taxable income.

Did your website go crazy more then one month or billing cycle? Did you have to pay for extras such as bandwidth overages or high CPU utilization? Many hosts charge extra when you use more then your fair share of server resources. Keep these in mind for preparing your taxes.

• Cost of equipment

How much money was invested in the past year on physical items for your adsense website? Did you purchase a camera to produce images for the website? Did you have to make upgrades or repairs to your computer during the year? Any of these costs can help you significantly for tax write offs for adsense.

• Cost of content

How did you acquire the content for your website? Did you pay someone to write articles? Do you have employees writing online brochures? All of these are excellent write offs as well for your adsense earnings.

• Cost of traffic

Do you use Google adwords, yahoo search marketing or any other PPC? If you spent any money to drive visitors to your adsense site, this can also be deducted from your taxable earnings.

These are just a few ideas to help out a website that has earned a nice sum of money with adsense. If you have another idea for write offs for your earnings, please leave a comment.