In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Congress approved the wording of the Declaration on July 4 and then sent it to the printer. Whether John Hancock, as the elected President of the Second Continental Congress, or anyone else signed the document that day is unknown, because that document has been lost — presumably destroyed in the printing process. Hancock’s name and that of a witness do appear on the typeset broadside that was published within a few days. On August 2 in the following month, an engrossed document in script form was signed by Hancock and other delegates.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States, but is often also viewed as simply a summer festival, apart from its patriotic overtones.

A while back I DVR’d the miniseries “John Adams” on HBO. I’ve been watching one episode every Monday for the past few weeks with some friends. They did a really good job with the series and while some feel that it seems a bit slow at times, I have really enjoyed it. If you haven’t seen it and are interested in a bit of a US history lesson that is fairly enjoyable, I highly recommend it. While there are a few historical innaccuracies, there are very few of them, some of them simply being “this didn’t happen on such and such a day, but rather 3 days later”.

Katie and I will be enjoying Fireworks tonight at our county fairgrounds. While I was planning on helping a good friend in building his patio on Sunday, it looks like the materials won’t be there in time, so it will be a nice relaxing weekend. I think I’ll have to kick back with a brew and enjoy the weather.

It is pretty banged up and I am going to need to order a few replacement pieces for it, but it looks like it will likely still work. Good thing because I’m supposed to be grilling for friends tonight! In additon to the door being banged up, some of the knobs are broken, the starter button is cracked, and there is a big dent in the side of the hood (pictured right).

Tonight I’ll be making BeerCan Chicken and I’ll make certain post the recipe for the dry rub I use, cooking the chicken itself, as well as photos.

In addition to a banged up grill, my cable has been out since I woke up on Sunday. It sounds like my provider is having power issues, in about 25% of the cities they serve. Ouch!! So in order to work on my websites today I had to head over to a local coffee shop. This is one of the nice things about webmastering, you can work from virtually anywhere!

Well I started my adventure today by heading over to my Coffee House of choice, CornerStone Coffee. It is about 2 miles away from my home and a very quaint little place with wireless and comfortable sitting areas. To my surprise, they are closed. Not just closed, but out of business closed!

The next stop in my quest for some Internet Access (by cell phone GPS) led me to il Bacio Caffe. Also closed down!! It looks like the Starbucks and Biggby Coffee chains have run these great establishments out of business.

While the loss of these establishments is unfortunate I had quite a bit to do today, so I shot over to BiggBy Coffee in Lansing. Sure enough they were open and busy! Unfortunately for me though, they were having Internet issues completely unrelated to my ISP. LOL, I just couldn’t win today, could I?

No problem though, I spoke with those who were running the Coffee Shop and with a little bit of troubleshooting everyone was online again. With all the pitfalls I ran into today, I didn’t get nearly as much as I had hoped accomplished today, but it was a bit of fun. This type of thing would frazzle most people, and would have certainly frustrated me if I had anything super-pressing to get to. Luckily I didn’t, so I enjoyed my little trip around town.

Release Note Highlights

• Export statistics to CSV
• Spell check
• Drag and drop

Full Release Notes

Account statistics

• Export statistics to CSV: You can now export a CSV file that includes performance statistics. First download the statistics, then go to the File menu > Export to CSV.
• Update minimum CPC bids: To refresh the minimum CPC bids for your keywords, click ‘Get Recent Changes > Include Min. CPC Bids.’ Note that this option takes more time than the basic ‘Get Recent Changes’ option.
• Improved stats download: When you select an interval with ‘Choose Stats Interval,’ AdWords Editor downloads fresh statistics and displays a progress bar during download.

Editing tools

• Spell check: Check the spelling of text fields (such as keywords and ad text) by right-clicking the field and selecting ‘Spell check this field’ in the right-click menu. Available for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch.
• Append text: Add text before or after existing text in a specific column, for all selected rows. Select the rows you want to edit, then click the ‘Append text’ link at the bottom of the edit pane. For example, add the word ‘New’ at the beginning of the headlines in your selected text ads. Learn more about this tool.
• Drag and drop: Now you can drag and drop ad groups within the tree view. To move an ad group, select it in the tree view and drag it to another campaign. To copy an ad group, select it and drag it while holding the Control key.
• Use formula words in the Replace Text tool: Review these instructions before using this advanced feature.

AdWords feature support

• CPC placement targeting: Create a new CPC placement-targeted campaign or edit your CPC bids for placements. Placement CPC campaigns are labeled [Placement CPC] in the tree view.
• Conversion Optimizer campaigns: You can download Conversion Optimizer campaigns and edit their contents (keywords, bids, ads, and ad groups). However, it isn’t possible to enable or disable the Conversion Optimizer in AdWords Editor. Learn more about support for bidding options in AdWords Editor.
• Ad group negative sites: Add and update negative sites at the ad group level.

Duplicate keywords

• Select duplicate keywords: After running Find Duplicate Keywords, you can now quickly select all the duplicates that meet certain criteria. Click ‘Select duplicates by’ in the tab tool bar and choose one of the menu options. For example, select all the duplicates with the lowest CTR, then edit or delete them as needed.
• Sorting duplicate keywords: Now when you sort duplicate keywords, the groupings are preserved. AdWords Editor sorts within each group, and also sorts the groups themselves.

AdWords Editor settings

• Diagnostic logs: Diagnostic logging is a troubleshooting mode. When enabled, it creates reports that can help our engineers better understand technical issues you may encounter. Go to the Tools menu > Settings.
• Show posting progress: When this option is enabled, AdWords Editor displays a progress bar when you post changes. You can also disable this option to help decrease the time it takes to post your changes. Go to the Tools menu > Settings.

Other updates

• Advanced search: Add and remove restrictions for your advanced search. In the dialog, click ‘Add’ next to the Settings or Performance Statistics fields. Once you’ve added one or more restrictions, click ‘Remove’ to remove them.
• Tab structure: The four tabs for ads (text, image, local business, and mobile) are now grouped under a single ‘Ads’ tab. This update was also included in version 5.0.1.
• Backup archives: AdWords Editor automatically creates a backup, including unposted changes and comments, when you re-download an account with ‘Get Full Account.’ You will also be prompted to back up accounts before upgrading from version 6.0 to a subsequent release.
• Updated keyboard shortcuts:
• Replace text in selected items with Ctrl+H (formerly Ctrl+F).
• Append text to selected items with Ctrl+Shift+H.
• Move to basic search box with Ctrl+F.
• Open advanced search with Ctrl+Shift+F (formerly Ctrl+Shift+S).

ICANN has sent enforcement notices and notices of concern to certain registrars, including those reported this week as being the registrars for the majority of websites advertised in spam emails.

Earlier this week, an investigation by KnujOn, widely reported online, publicly identified 10 registrars as being the companies used to register the majority of domain names that have since appeared in spam email messages.

More than half of those registrars named had already been contacted by ICANN prior to publication of KnujOn’s report, and the remainder have since been notified following an analysis of other sources of data, including ICANN’s internal database.

For the full article, visit: “Worst Spam Offenders” Notified by ICANN

This is great news! At the same time, I’d like to point out a danger in “Spamvertising”. Some sites that get spamvertised aren’t getting spamvertised by the site owners. One such site is a certain affiliate program that I’ve run across before, which was being spamvertised by one of its affiliates. Some RBLs will block e-mail from those websites due to spamvertising and this brings me to an important point: What about an attack being performed in this way? I mean, if you really wanted to be hurtful to someone, you could begin spamvertising their website, then RBLs like SpamCop would then put pressure on their ISP to cancel their webhosting. This could be utilized as a DOS (Denial of Service) attack and outlines the danger that some of the RBLs can pose. While everyone hates Spam and we want to see everything done to stop it (such as shutting down spammer sites), Spam can also be used as a weapon against Webmasters. Just something I’ve had on my mind for a while (I’ve processed Abuse claims for an ISP before) and thought I’d bring it up in light of ICANN’s announcement.

I’m sure its a joke, but didn’t find anything on Snopes. Either way, its good stuff.