The Chatterbox

Just a quick little addition I've been meaning to get posted for the better part of a month now. This harks back to the Getting Windows XP x64 to work post of a few months ago.

One particularly maddening thing with my switch to XP x64 was that while Acrobat (version 7 in my case) installed and worked for the most part, it did so as a WoW enabled 32 bit application. This means it doesn't work as a browser plug in for the 64 bit version of IE7, which isn't a huge deal. It just opens PDF's in an Acrobat window instead, which is fine by me. Better in most cases actually.

The thing that was maddening is that the ability to pen something in Word or any other application then save it as a PDF failed to work on an x64 system. The issue is the print drivers (and a PDF Port) being unable to be installed by Acrobat on an x64 system. This situation still continues today, though there is a rumor that Adobe might finally be fixing the problem by making Acrobat 9 x64 capable. I have no clue on that one since I'm not about to pay that much to upgrade just for something this silly. I'd sooner dump Acrobat and use CutePDF, PDF Creator or a host of other options out there that are either completely free or very low cost. Which is why it makes no sense to me that Adobe allowed this to go on so long.

There is something of a workaround I've set up for now on my system, though I personally think it's silly to have to make it a two-step process. This works okay for me since I really don't need to convert that many documents myself. In case you're in the same boat I am, here's how I did it and got it to work.

First, you'll need to install a Postscript printer driver. Note that this doesn't have to actually be a printer you have attached to your computer since it's going to be a virtual printer for our purposes. To do this go into your Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel if you're using the Classic Windows start menu like me, or Start > Control Panel if you're using the newer start menu) and select the Printers and Faxes icon.

There select the Add Printer icon.

In the Add Printer Wizard select Local printer attached to this computer and make sure the Automatically detect option is NOT selected.

In the next window choose FILE: (Print to File) form the Use the following port dropdown list. We're doing this here so that we don't have to remember to choose Print To File each time we go to save a document.

In the Printer Software window select HP from the Manufacturer box and HP Color LaserJet 8500 PS from the Printers box. The PS is important, since we want it to use Postscript.

It would be wise for you to select No to the Default Printer question. This is just a virtual printer after all.

That's it, you're done with the driver set up. Well I did go back into the Printers and Faxes window, right clicked on the new 8500 PS printer listed there and renamed it to be Adobe PDF so that I'd know what it was.

Now when you're in Word or whatever and want to convert the document to PDF format instead of clicking on the Acrobat stuff up to, select File > Print and select your Adobe PDF printer. If you didn't set the Port to FILE: you'll need to make sure to select Print to file before clicking OK. If you set it up as above you shouldn't have to remember to do this each time.

This will open a Print To File window. Change the .prn to All Files if it's automatically selected and name your file with whatever file name you want along with a .ps extension.

Lastly back in Acrobat choose Create PDF, then From File and select your .ps file. Now it should be converted to pdf format, ready to be saved.

Like I said above, the two-step process would be a pain if you had to do this often. If that is the case you should probably check out some of the x64 enabled options for PDF creation I mentioned earlier. But for those like me who do this rarely, it works at least.

I've added a new API tool to the site, based first upon a request from Jill and then a request or two from members of her forum. The new tool is simply a quick way to get an idea of competition a site may have by allowing you to run an All In Title search on Google. Just like using the normal operand on Google, except the tool allows you to load it with multiple keyword phrases and get them all reported at once.

The new Google All In Title tool uses their old SOAP API of course. I'm not about to release a tool into the wild that scrapes their results like some others seem to do all too often. If you have one of the old SOAP API license keys please plug it into the tool so that the queries will count against it. If you don't have one you can't get one anymore, so the tool will attempt to my Google SOAP API key.

Remember though, Google API licenses are limited to 1,000 queries per day and mine gets used by a few tools when someone else doesn't have one. So if the tool errors out it's probably simply that the license queries are used up for the day. Be nice if you have a license key. Use your own so that others who can't get a license anymore can get the data they want by using mine.

The tool is pretty self explanatory. Simply put a semi-colon after each keyword phrase so that the tool knows where one ends and the next begins. And after you've run you're query download the CSV file of your query to refer back to later, rather than having to run your phrases through the tool again later.

Enjoy!

Someone asked me the other day how one makes sure conversion tests they've run produce conclusive, actionable data. The short answer is to review the Confidence rating of the results to make sure they reach a minimum threshhold you're comfortable with. Which is easy to say, but sometimes hard to do if the spreadsheet or conversion analysis tool you use doesn't give you a Confidence rating.

So, rather than have people guess (which is never a good idea!) I've php'ized a little tool I derived from my own internal conversion testing system and put it up on the site. It's here: Conversion Confidence Tool

This is basically the flip side of the Conversion Pre-Test Tool that tries to estimate how much traffic you'll need and how long it'll take to successfully complete a given test. The Pre-Test Tool is used before you start a test, and provides Best Guess information.

The Conversion Confidence Tool on the other hand is used after your test is done, where you enter in the real conversions and impressions data from your test, then it takes this data and runs it through several mathematical equations to tell you which treatment won the test, what the conversion rate on each was and how much Confidence you should have in the results being conclusive and repeatable.

I've also added a link to each of the tools to the main navigation to the left. Dunno why I hadn't done that with the Pre-Test Tool before...

Enjoy!