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Blog Details for "Brian Whaley's Pixelated View"
Brian Whaley's Pixelated ViewBrian Whaley's Pixelated ViewA blog about Web 2.0, Search Engine Optimization -SEO, Web Analytics, Team Management, Books, and Technology Articles
Generating sitemap.xml files in C#
2007-11-02 22:22:00 One of the things that I would like to tackle before the end of the year is including sitemap.xml files with all of the new sites that my team develops. We could generate these files manually, but this would be tedious at best. There are a number of tools that will generate these files for you. Some of them are stand-alone desktop applications (Sitemap XML). Some web-based tools are built in PHP (AutoSitemap), Perl (TM Google Sitemap Generator), Python (Google WebMaster Tools), etc., and you can use in your own local environments. There is even a web site that you can submit your URL and it will generate the sitemap.xml file for you (XML Sitemaps). My requirements for this feature are pretty simple: Something built in C# Something we can include in our projects Something that can be run as part of our build process Something that can be completely hands-free So far, the only thing that I have found is the GoogleSiteMapProv... More About: Files
10 Firefox Extensions That I Can't Live Without
2007-10-15 23:31:00 Firefox is the best browser available. It is easy to use, pretty fast response time, has tabbed browsing, rarely crashes, and the extensions capability is fantastic. I thought that my list of favorite extensions would make for a good topic. Firebug - A great way to debug JavaScript, view the HTML source of the page, examine the page's CSS, step through the page's scripts, navigate through the DOM, and view all the HTTP requests the page has made. Invaluable for any web developer. HTML Validator - "A Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing." Great to easily see if there are any HTML validation errors, and what they are. Page Validator - "Validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the current page. Opens the... More About: Firefox , Extensions , Live
3 Indispensable Tools for Candidate Review
2007-10-09 23:01:00 Tools are a great way to shorten time to complete tasks and improve quality in a process. Hiring, Candidate Review , and Performance Review are no different. Here are three tools that I have founds myself using while reviewing candidates. SkillSurvey So I got an automated email last week. Big surprise, eh? If you are like me, you get dozens of these a day. This one was a little bit different. It was from a company asking me to provide a reference for one of my old consultants. That piqued my interest. I opened it up, followed the link to SkillSurvey, and filled out the questions. The simple instructions walked me through the process, and reassured me that my comments were anonymous and would be aggregated. There were less than 10 questions, and were simple radio button scales. I had the ability to put in freeform comments, and send it off. 360Metrics Every other year, I have been encouraged ... More About: Tools
Windows Live Search Gets an Upgrade
2007-10-06 19:42:00 On the Live Search Blog this week, Microsoft's Search Team announced that it has released an upgrade to its Live Search engine. The enhancements to the search engine include: Improved Core Relevance - Improved search results for the searches you do day in and day out Reduced Spam - Constantly improving to stay ahead of the curve to filter out sites that use illegitimate or malicious SEO techniques Dramatically Improved "Snippets" - The site summaries have been improved and expanded in the search results page Much Bigger Index - The index has grown to 20 billion pages - 4 times larger than before Smart Logic to interpret some keywords - for example NW and Northwest are the same Take a look and see if you notice the difference. Leave feedback about your Live Search experiences here. More About: Windows , Windows Live
TouchGraph Google Browser
2007-10-05 22:39:00 Pandia reviewed a new tool called TouchGraph Google Browse r . This tool allows you to visualize the connections between sites. You can read the initial review on the Pandia web site, and you can check out the TouchGraph Google Browser on the TouchGraph site. The TouchGraph team is a group of interface designers who are exploring better ways to visualize information. In addition to the TouchGraph Google Browser, they have also developed TouchGraph Amazon Browser and the TouchGraph Facebook Browser using the same visualization technology. This has some really interesting implications for Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics, and Web Site Development. Optimizing a site to have each of its pages appear in a graph like this could have its site map generated dynamically. Having a Web Analytics Dashboard where you could click on each of the pages, or series of pages, and view data relationships between them would be very powerful.&nb...
The Interview Killer - What Goes in the Head Tag?
2007-09-27 23:12:00 As a department that designs, develops, and constructs web sites and web applications, one of the skills necessary is HTML development. There are lots of other technical skills that are important - database development (i.e. Oracle or SQL Server), SQL and PL/SQL, C# .Net, ASP.Net, JavaScript, CSS, Java, Struts, and so on. But since this is web development, it is critical to be able to understand and develop HTML that is interpretable by modern browsers. To that end, it is important to ask technical questions about that technology. And it is always good to start at the top. So, one of the questions we typically ask in our interviews is, "in an HTML page, what goes in the Head Tag?" Now, you would think that technical professionals with over 10 years in the industry would be able to answer this basic question with ease. We have struggled to get an acceptable answer with this question. Here are some of the ones we have heard: "You put ta... More About: Interview , Killer , Goes
Week(s) in Review - Test, Test, Test!
2007-09-26 19:16:00 It has been a bit of time since I have posted, and over that same period of time, I have been lax in reading the blogs I am subscribed to. The last 2 weeks the team has spent lots of time implementing Watin UI tests on one of our new sites. We have started to flush out a shared reusable library and leveraging that to develop site-specific unit tests. Roy Osherove has written three articles over these past two weeks that are very interesting, and directly relevant to the realm of Automated Unit Test s. One article is about A New Unit Test Platform called XUnit, which has many improvements over nUnit. The second article is about Code Reuse in Unit Tests. And, the third article is about Throw Away Test vs Tests That Last. Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman have also written two great articles in the Continuous Integration arena. ScottGu's article was regarding Automating Environment Speci... More About: Review , Week
The 6 Test Styles of Google Website Optimizer
2007-09-13 21:35:00 So I attended the Googl e Website Optimizer webinar this Tuesday afternoon. I did not know too much about the feature set of this particular tool, so I thought the webinar would be a good way for me to find out more. The class was moderated by ROI Revolution. They are a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant and AdWords Qualified Company, and offer webinars and training classes for Google products. You can find more information about them on their web site. Essentially, Google Website Optimizer is a tool designed to track results of content changes to your web site before you commit to them. It works in a similar way to Google Analytics - you tag your pages, your content blocks, your action items, and your goal pages. Google Website Optimizer will then randomize your content or your page to test it how you choose. There are 6 different types of tests that you can use: A/B Test ing - this is essentially a test to determine if&nb... More About: Styles
The Truth About Plurals in Keywords
2007-09-10 14:38:00 So I was reading through some forum postings on SEO and came across a question on highrankings.com about plurals in keywords. Everyone agreed in the forum posts that including plurals in your keywords will give more accurate search results. They recommend testing it yourself. if you search for "search engine" and search for "search engines" you will get completely different results. I poked around some more, and found this great article on searchengineguide.com about plural vs. singular keywords. Sumantra Roy outlined how each search engine handles the difference between singular and plural keywords. And all twelve search engines reviewed have different results for singular and plural keyword searches. So there you have it. When building a list of keywords, include singular and plural versions of keywords. More About: Truth , Keywords , Ural , Ruth , The Truth
Google Reader Gets an Upgrade - Search!
2007-09-07 18:36:00 Google Reader now has a fantastic new feature - the one I have been waiting for - Search ! It now is just as good as any desktop feed reader. The only drawback is that it can only search what is in the RSS feed. If the feed is a partial feed or title only feed, that is all the search feature sees. But that is better than nothing. Yay Google! Check out the post on the Official Google Reader Blog. More About: Google , Googl
Free Google Website Optimizer Demo
2007-09-01 15:49:00 I read about this in an article on Kathy Scott's Unofficial Googl e Analytics Blog. This webinar is hosted by ROI Revolution on September 11th at 2pm ET (1pm CT / 12pm MT / 11am PT). From their web site: This 60 Minute Free Webinar on Google Website Optimizer Will Cover: How to overcome the odds -- continual website improvements you can do to slingshot past your competition. How to set up a test with Google Website Optimizer in 3 simple steps. 6 tests to run on your site with easy to follow example layouts. Key questions to ask yourself in order to use Google Website Optimizer for valuable improvements. Special Google Guest: Tom Leung Tom Leung is Google’s Business Product Manager for Google's Website Optimizer. He was also a Business Development Manager for Microsoft from 2002 to 2004, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Don’t miss out on this special opportunity to hear Tom Leung speak live about the Google Website Optimizer tool! Space is li... More About: Demo
Infragistics shows off their .Net Wares
2007-08-30 14:54:00 Infragistics came to the office yesterday to show us their shiny new products and to talk about their roadmap for development. We scheduled the meeting as part of the .Net Working Group series, and was the first working group meeting of 2007. Jack Schwinn, one of our Sales Reps, brought in Devin Rader and Andrew Flick, Product Managers for Web Client and Rich Content respectively. The demo was led by Tony Lombardo, their Infragistics Evangelist. They covered a wide variety of topics and did a great job answering our questions. Here is a run-down of my notes from the demo: ASP.Net Controls Tony walked us through the controls that we have not seen since our last volume release. He walked us through the Excel, XPS and PDF Exporters, with support for formulas and multiple tabs. There is also an Excel Importer control. I think we will have a lot of use for these controls in our internal projects. They explained the Cal... More About: Ares
7 Sources that Laugh at SEO and Web Analytics
2007-08-29 15:12:00 Everyone needs a little comic relief. So I have compiled a list of funny Search Engine and Anal ytics sources here for your amusement. Take a break and laugh a little. Video - The Break-Up Dilbert Comic on Web Analytics Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO Web Analytics According to Captain Kirk SEO Comics SEO Refugee - Cartoons SEOs and Lawyers - It's a Joke Plus, here's a bonus one I found... not really SEO related, but it pokes fun at Google and its search results. Google Mistakes Do you have any sources of SEO / Search Engine / Web Analytics Humor that I missed? Post a comment and add it in! More About: Sources , Laugh
26 Definitions from the Web Analytics Association
2007-08-27 21:25:00 A Press Release from The Web Anal ytics Association announces the delivery of 26 Standard Definitions to Promote Consistency across the Rapidly Evolving Web Analytics Community. These were released at the much-hyped Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, California. This is a follow up to their release of their Web Analytics "Big Three" Definitions in 2006, where they standardize the definitions of Unique Visitors, Visits/Sessions, and Page Views. In their newest edition, the WAA Standards Committee has provided 26 definitions (including the original 3) in 4 different categories - Building Block Terms, Visit Characterization, Content Characterization, and Conversion Metrics. I recommend downloading the PDF, reading through it, and including this in your library of SEO and Web Analytics documentation.
Microsoft Has Entered the Building!
2007-08-26 16:41:00 Microsoft came to the office today to walk us through their Technology Roadmap. David Solivan, our Architect Evangelist, came in and spent 4 hours walking through the future vision of Microsoft and their products and services. His presentation was split into two sections - Enterprise Product Roadmap and Enterprise Developer Roadmap. Below are my notes from the meeting. Enterprise Product Roadmap Office Suite The focus in the mid nineties was on productivity. Now that vision has been achieved, the focus has shifted: Collaboration Content Management Search Business Intelligence Streamlined Processes Portals Windows Mobile The Windows Mobile team is working on delivering the following new features and functionality for the Tablet PC, Pocket PC, and Smartphone platforms: Maps - Pocket Streets, MapPoint Development Tools - Visual Studio, .Net CompactFramework Security - ISA Server Data Management - SQL Server CE, Notification Services Content -... More About: Building , Microsoft
10 Steps to Conduct a Successful .Net Job Interview
2007-08-22 20:00:00 This is a follow-up post to my posts on .Net Hiring Manager Resources and on Preparing for a .Net Interview . I will be interviewing a number of candidates next week for open positions in our department. I thought it would be good to review the process that we have typically followed, and get feedback. 1. Introduction Someone should meet the candidate at the receptionist's desk. It is a good idea to have the hiring manager do this. Look them in they eye, introduce yourself, and shake their hands firmly. On the walk to the interview room, share some small talk about the weather and the drive. This gives you an idea if they will mind how far they will have to drive to work. It also gives you the opportunity to check out how they dress and how they carry themselves. Once you are in the interview room, let them know that the interview will be about an hour long. Ask them if they would like something to drink, and to get more comfortable. Introduce them to everyone that they... More About: Steps
7 Steps to Prepare for a .Net Job Interview
2007-08-20 22:00:00 Our department has gone through some changes lately; some changes have affected the process we follow when interviewing. Since I know I will be doing lots of interviewing this month, I have been thinking a lot about what we have done right in our process, and what can be improved. Here is the process that we go through in our department to prepare for interviews. 1. Define a Process As an interviewer, one of my objectives throughout the interviewing process is to provide as much consistency as possible. Define a process that is consistent and repeatable. Then, when comparing one candidate to another, you will be comparing them win the same questions, with the same process. It will also mean that you are always prepared for the next interview cycle with little effort. 2. Write A Great Job Description The Job Description that you write is what will let your recruiters, consulting companies, and candidates know exactly what you are looking for. It is important to list everythin... More About: Interview , Steps , Pare , Prep
Gatineau Beta is Open for Applicants
2007-08-18 17:46:00 Ian Thomas is a Microsoft employee in their Digital Advertising Solutions group. He is "responsible for bringing Gatineau to market," as his blog states. Gatineau is in essence a Microsoft Competitor to Google Analytics. Microsoft already has adCenter, just as Google has AdSense and AdWords. You can read all about his work and his perspectives on web analytics on his blog called Lies, Damn Lies. I am a frequent reader, and his articles are insightful and informative. His recent post announces "Gatineau beta access request form online." Now you can go to his online form and request access to Gatineau Beta . You will need to have an adCenter account. If you do not, don't worry - you will be able to register for one as part of the Gatineau Beta, but you will need to pay a $5 one-time fee. I have signed up for a beta account, and want to try it out on my blog Pixelated Views. It will give me lots of great insight as to ... More About: Open , Cant
The 3 Different Hats of a Search Engine Optimizer
2007-08-13 15:35:00 Optimizing your page for search engines is risky business - one wrong move, and all of a sudden your site is de-listed. There are three lines you can walk while optimizing your site, each with an increasing level of risk - White Hat, Gray Hat, and Black Hat. White Hat SEO experts that follow the path of the White Hat are abiding by the recommendations laid out by the search engines, such as Google's Webmaster Guidelines , Yahoo's Directory Help, and MSN Live Search Site Owner Help. By following these guidelines, your site will slowly climb through the ranks , and there will be no risk of being de-listed. Most techniques for optimizing content, keywords, and meta tags fall into this category. Typically White Hat optimizers focus on content and customer first, then optimization second. Black Hat Black Hat SEO is on the other end of the spectrum. These techniques, if discovered by search engines, will have your site removed from their index. ... More About: Search Engine , Engine , Hats , Optimizer
7 Resources that .Net Hiring Managers Can't Live Without
2007-08-10 20:07:00 Hiring quality developers is the key to any great application development organization. In our department we have experienced the joys of a great team that has jelled to produce high quality projects, and experienced the pains of bad coding practices, bad spaghetti code, and bad attitudes. Our team has very high standards, and our interviewing process is rigorous (and will be the subject of another blog post later). These resources are some of the tools we use to ensure that we get a candidate who can do the job and do it right, whether they be Junior, Mid, Senior, or Architect level developer. 1 and 2 - From Scott Hanselman Scott Hanselman has two fantastic articles on .Net interview questions. One is called ASP.Net Interview Questions, and the other is called What Great .Net Developer Ought To Know, and the subsequently posted list of answers. This is basically version 1 and version 2 of the same idea. His second post breaks out his question ideas into increasing degrees o... More About: Resources , Live , Hiring , Managers , Ager
7 SEO Tip Articles That You Need to Read
2007-08-09 21:32:00 While I have surfed the web, trolled the forums, and read the blogs, I have compiled this list of SEO Tip Artic les that have guided me in the right direction. 1. The SEOMoz article Beginner's Guide - What is SEO outlines the following topics: why a company would need SEO, how search engines operate, some basic design and organization mistakes to avoid, a discussion on relevance and popularity, some top content tips, the anatomy of a hyperlink, paid placement, Overture, keyword terms and targeting, usability, design, content authoring, community building, metrics to watch, pro vs. do-it-yourself SEO, and an enormous list of resources. 2. Big Oak Inc's series called 52 SEO Tips releases a tip a week for all of 2007. Topics range from tech tips, tools, reviews, content guidance, SEO community terminology, techniques to avoid, and new perspectives. 3. SearchEngineLand wrote 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques on June 28. The article is targeted at small companies, and covers lo... More About: Read
The Truth About Organic Search (SEO) and Paid Search (PPC)
2007-08-07 17:29:00 In a recent New York Post article, Google claimed that, "its own research shows surfers look toward natural search over paid search by a ration of 4-to-1." A recent newsletter by respected SEO company iProspect claims that their research shows, "[60.5 percent] of Internet users found natural search results more relevant than paid search advertisements." Either way, surfers, consumers, SEO experts, analysts, and the search engines themselves have demonstrated that Organ ic Search is more effective than Paid Search. All of this research would seem to indicate the downfall of Google, as this is their primary source of revenue. Google is not in trouble. A balanced approach to Search Engine Marketing is necessary for a healthy site, and I will show you why. The Differences To understand the difference between organic and paid search, read this great article by Adido Solutions, and this article by eWhisper. They show you how to tell the difference ... More About: Truth
7 Easy Steps to Improve your Blog Content
2007-08-05 21:37:00 Getting people to your blog is only half the battle. What do you do then? You need to hold their attention. As the old adage goes, Content is King. Here are 7 steps to keep your content focused. 1. Pick a specific topic Your blog should already have a general topic. Now you must narrow your topic and deliver a persuasive blog post. Ways you can employ to be sure your post is by following these steps: Ensure your post adds value Make your post stand out in the crowd with a great hook and headline Ensure you go beyond the what and give the reader the how Use lists to deliver materials as they are easy to digest Tell you persuasive story as a problem with a solution and positive results 2. Pull them in with a great headline Great headlines take time to write. You should write your title first. It is the lynchpin for your post. Or, instead of writing your own, you can use swipe files (a common prac... More About: Blog , Improve , Easy , Tent
10 Web Analytics Resources You Can't Live Without
2007-08-05 04:23:00 Avinash Kaushik recently posted an article listing the Top Ten Web Anal ytics Blogs for 2007. His selection method, based on Technorati and Feedburner rankings, received a lot of heat (don't mind the pun) across the analytics blogosphere. Turns, out there is a bit of overlap between Avinash's list and my own anyway. I thought it might be interesting to post my own personal list of Web Analytics Resources , including the web sites and the related blogs. The Official Google Analytics Blog - URL and Feed Web Analytics Association - URL and Feed WebConfs SEO Toolset - URL and Feed Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik - URL and Feed Web Analytics Demystified - URL and Feed Web Metrics Guru - URL and Feed Web Analytics World - URL and Feed Lies, Damn Lies - URL and Feed Two books on the bookshelf are: Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success Web Analytics: An Hour a Day Are there any that I missed that are your favorites? More About: Live
What Google's Supplemental Results Change Means to You
2007-08-03 22:54:00 The job of search engines is to index every site out on the Internet, rank them according to relevance, and be able to return them based on free-form search. When you think about it, that's a lot of data. When you perform a search, you want to see the most relevant listings first, and the not-so-relevant ones later. One of the ways Googl e has managed this is through the use of two different indexes - their main index, and their supplemental results index. When Google crawls your web site, it determines if your site belongs in its primary index, or in the supplemental results index. Triggers that will get you put into the supplemental results index are: Current Google PageRank Complexity of your page's URL Repetitive text that looks like you are trying to game the system Pages with no substantial content Pages with redirect links Orphaned pages Chang e s to the algorithms that Google uses to rank pages This means that if your page is in the supplemental index, your resul... More About: Results , Result
16 Search Engine Optimization Resources You Can't Live Without
2007-08-01 17:54:00 Following up on the Article by Avinash Kaushik, I thought it would be a good idea to detail what SEO resources I have been using. Below I have listed the web sites and the associated blogs that I read regularly, the free online tools that I use to check out the sites I work on, and a list of Articles that I have bookmarked that I refer to regularly. Sites and Blogs Pandia Search Central - URL and Feed SearchEngineWatch - URL and Feed SEOChat - URL and Feed SEOBook - URL and Feed Matt Cutts - URL and Feed Yahoo Search Blog - URL and Feed Big Oak Inc. - URL and Feed Online SEO Tools Google Webmaster Central Yahoo Site Explorer SEOBook Online Tools SEOChat Online SEO Tools SEO Articles A Complete Glossary of Essential SEO Jargon SEOMoz - Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization SEO Organizations SEMPO - Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization SEO Books Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day Search Engine Marketing, Inc. Are there any SEO res... More About: Resources
Week in review - SEO and Web Analytics Blog Posts
2007-07-28 23:48:00 Search Engine Optimization articles Search Engine Optimization Pricing - This is an article that details the SEO pricing model for SEOMoz, a premiere SEO company in Seattle. This will give you a good idea if you are paying too much or too little. However, it will still be up to you to decide if you are getting what you are paying for. A Complete Glossary of Essential SEO Jargon - Simple enough. This is one you should permanently bookmark. Learn how to talk the talk, so you sound like you know what you are talking about. There are about 130 Search Engine Optimization terms for you to learn. Web Analytics articles Google Analytics Artistes - This article outlines a great 6 week online Google Analytics training course offered up by ROI Revolution, and Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. Google is not moving - Some statistics on the volume of searches. Looks like Google is widening the gap between itself and the other top search engines - Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. Top Ten Web Ana... More About: Review , Blog , Week , Posts
How to Twitter Your Way to SEO
2007-07-24 16:20:00 Twitter is a new Web 2.0 phenomenon. It is a site where you can log on and answer the question "What are you doing right now?" Each entry you make on your Twitter account is called a "tweet". You can then link to your friend's Twitter account and read what they have been doing. Twitter was very popular at the Mix 07 conference I went to earlier this year. But the big question is, does Twitter have value for the Enterprise 2.0? Reading the articles above, the answer would seem to be Yes. Twitter, just like blogs, is indexed at a furious pace because of the constant flux of content. Twitter has a very high Google PageRank of 8 out of 10, and some very popular Twitter accounts have PageRanks of 4, 5 or 6 out of 10. These are great numbers, and means that the content is indexed very frequently and appears on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) often. But how can you use Twitter to the advantage of your company? With Search Engine Optimization, it's all about driving traffic t... More About: Twitter
SEOMoz - Search Engine Ranking Factors v2
2007-07-23 16:15:00 http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-rank ing-factors This is a great article on the effective methods of Search Engine Optimization. SEOmoz collected the opinions of the 37 top SEO experts, and compiled them into one document. They broke them into the top 10 positive factors (i.e. the ones with the most impact), the most controversial factors (i.e. the ones the experts disagreed on the most), and the top 5 most negative factors (i.e. the things you should not do more than anything else). Now, you need to take this article with a grain of salt... these are people talking about how they get paid. Are they telling you the whole truth? Did they pick the most complicated ones to boost the importance of their own services? Some people say that there will be no need for SEO in the future anyway. As long as there are search engines, there will need to be a way to categorize data and retrieve it. I have digressed. The future of SEO is for anoth... More About: Search Engine , Ranking , Actor
To Frame or Not To Frame for SEO
More articles from this author:2007-07-20 17:04:00 http://seo.gympieonline.com/frames-seo-ar ticle.html http://www.seologic.com/faq/frames-html-l inks.php http://www.seotoday.com/browse.php/catego ry/articles/id/299/index.php http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.htm l?page=2167901 The best way of optimizing a site that uses frames is to stop using frames. Most crawlers only follow HREF links, not SRC links, which means that the crawler won’t find anything past the page with the frameset. Typically development techniques like tables, server side includes, master pages, etc. will allow developers and designers to build content as if it were using a frameset, and be pre-compiled into one page before it is served to the user or crawler. Other development techniques, like a CSS based table-less layout, increase the content to code ratio and can also mirror the layout of frames If Frame s absolutely must be used, be sure to set up the NoFrames section. The best thing to put in the NoFrames section is a full version of the page, with ... 1, 2, 3, 4 |
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