You might want to try connecting your Windows PC with your Malahit DSP2 receiver using SDRUno-Extio (not the regular SDRUno, but the other one you will find that was installed at the same time) and Omni-Rig 1.9. Now why would you want to do this? One reason is that you are a geek like me and want to see if it works and is worth the trouble.
What You Need
In addition to the receiver, you need a USB cable, but as a geek you have already hooked that up to update your firmware. You need Omni-Rig 1.9 (other versions might work, but you need one that shows the TS-480.)
Manage Sound Settings
Once you have enabled the two disabled items above, you should see the “spectre” option in SDRUno-Extio, but after you have set up Omni-Rig correctly.
Omni-Rig settings
The Rig type should be TS-480 and the Port is the one you see in Control Panel Device Manager. When you unplug the receiver, a COM port will disappear and will return when you plug it in – that is your Malahit’s COM port – COM 7 in my case.
Find the COM port used by the Malahit.
The baud rate should be the same as the CAT settings in SDRUno (The Sett. button in the SDRUno Rx Control).
Start SDRUno-Extio. A tiny window opens up.
Start SDRUno-Extio
Click Sett. to open the main settings. Choose Malahit spectre as the WME Input Device.
Select Malahit spectre.
Click RX in the main window to open a receiver instance. Note the three buttons at the top: RSYN1, MCTR and TCTR. The labels are white text.
A receiver instance is opened.
Click each of the three buttons: RSYN1, MCTR and TCTR. They will turn to orange text.
The three buttons are clicked.
Click Sett. and go to the CAT tab. Choose the Malahit’s COM port and baud rate.
Set COM and Baud Rate.
I am not sure why the status says “Not connected” but once you click Play on the main window, the PC speaker should come to life and relay the Malahit’s audio and mirror the frequency in SDRUno.
Click SP1 in the main window to display the spectrum and waterfall in SDRUno-Extio.
Spectrum and Waterfall in SDRUno.
You can now control the receiver from your PC. Enjoy!
Thanks to Alexander DL5VZ for his help in clarifying these steps.
I had to make a 20-minute video in Descript and I jumped into it without reading any instructions, so flame away. I know I’m not the only one who uses such video tools, or any other software, before RTFM.
The Split Word Problem
I can assure you that I do not have a long, Aussie drawl, but see the issue in the image below.
Words get split arbitrarily.
I noticed that some words were split into two clips for no obvious reason. I did not make a dramatic, extended “aaaaaaand” there. It’s a normal intonation. There was an “A ustralia” split too, when I do not utter a gap when I say it.
Another example of a split word.
For normal editing, such as the numerous full stops inserted in the middle of sentences, words shown twice, etc, you select multiple words and click the “Correct” button.
Example of a duplicated word.
The Fix
I have not found out what causes this glitch, but this is how I solved the problem.
Select the shorter fragment.
Delete it.
Click “Correct”.
Select the longer fragment.
Add the letters you deleted from the shorter fragment.
My previous Epson printer was dying and its ink cartridges were getting expensive, so I had my eye on the Epson EcoTank printers. It took me some compromises to settle on the ET-3800. Ideally, I would have liked an A3 scanner with higher resolution. I also wanted a printer that was in stock locally. I had to pick this A4 model, realising that I don’t really need to print on A3 paper and for scanning large pages I have just received a CZUR scanner, yet to be opened. This is not a review, but just a report on the confusing setup process of this printer.
The setup instructions are on a large folded sheet in English, Hindi and Chinese. This model works with the Epson Smart Panel app, so some of the setting up (but not all) is done with the app and not the tiny screen.
I connected it to power and loaded paper. I started the Smart Panel App.
My phone’s Bluetooth found the printer.
I was looking forward to the ink loading process and opened the black ink bottle. You just turn it over and it does not leak – when it touches the receptor in the printer, the ink begins to flow. There is some ink left in the bottle, so don’t discard it just yet.
Do the setup in a quiet room, so you can hear the gurgling of the ink as it empties into the tank. If you are doing something else on the side while the ink is filling up and are not paying attention (like me) and nearly pour the next bottle into the slot that you just filled, relax. The printer is Ash-proof (that’s me). The guides at the top of the bottles are all different, so you cannot insert the wrong colour in the wrong slot!
When all four ink tanks are filled, the app asks you to proceed with ink initialisation. Okay.
Next, I tried to connect the printer to Wi-Fi. The previous Epson printer was on Wi-Fi. This kept failing, because the English instruction, “Did you confirm the password?” implied I had already done that. As you can see, I had not even entered any password. Never got the chance. Eventually I replied “Yes”.
But I did not get a chance to enter it. This was an endless loop. What’s going on? Nothing doing. I could not get past this point.
I managed to install the Wi-Fi settings from the front panel, but it was not going to be of help.
Setting Up the Software
So I thought I’d try the URL printed on the instruction sheet. Strangely, the choices of the installation country were just USA, Canada or Asia. I picked USA, as Australia is not in the choices.
I could not find the ET-3800 – maybe it is not sold in the US. You have to ask why does Epson need to make so many models each year, but they are not telling.
So I used the DVD that comes with the printer. It has all the software and drivers you need. This is fine if you have a DVD drive on your computer. Luckily, I have a removable DVD drive that I can use to set it up on my laptop.
After initialisation, I selected “Print Test Page”. Nothing happened. I found that had to complete steps on the printer front panel to finish alignment etc. Then a test page came out. The screen guidance was not clear, but I think I got it. I had to do head maintenance and print head alignment again, all from the front panel.
The instructions for choosing the best print sample are not the clearest. Take a look. I worked out that you have to look at the numbers on the printed sheets and use the +/- buttons to pick the number you like, then you proceed to the next step. Perhaps the steps should be labelled A, B, C and D?
The front panel mentioned a firmware update and showed two choices – Dismiss and Close? At this point I did not know if this screen was a touch panel – it is not. You have to push the buttons to interact with that screen.
Poor Wi-Fi Sensitivity
Now, this is where the fun really began. I had set up Wi-Fi with my home network, but I could not download the firmware. The printer had lost the connection. I live in a steel-frame house that has poor phone reception inside and it also seems to hamper Wi-Fi signals. Although the previous Epson XP-420 printer had no problem with Wi-Fi, the ET-3800 was just borderline and had allowed itself to be set up, but could not hold the connection. Thankfully, I had a spare Ethernet port on my extender (my home office has an Ethernet run to the modem/router) and was finally able to update the firmware but adding an Ethernet cable – the last spare I had.
Registration Madness
The trouble with this disjointed installation process is that the DVD-based setup app invites you to register the printer online and that is straightforward. The form tried to get me to enter my phone number as mandatory when I tried to edit my existing profile. Why would they need my phone number when they have my address and email?
Finally, you get this screen.
Looks simple, right? Remember, I have just installed a printer and its process sent me here to register it with its serial number, but why show me a setup option as well as a file download link? I checked them out, downloaded whatever I could, being pretty sure I already installed everything from the DVD. OK, they are allowing for someone who registers before opening the box and has not been through the installation process. Perhaps, given so many dozens of models they make, the poor product managers don’t have time to figure this out.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider (“SF”) is the favourite tool used by most SEOs I know. We usually use it to do a crawl of a website. I am happy to use SF, but I have seldom looked deep into the Visualisations menu to export one of its reports, known as Body Text Word Cloud.
I was checking a website of a US company and felt something was amiss. I ran a partial crawl of a few pages and looked at this Word Cloud, where I noticed that its primary keyword (present on the website in spades) was missing in this report. I questioned SF tech support, who confirmed it as a bug. It was a stopword in some European languages, but not in English. They fixed it within days in the version seen in the image above and it will soon be in the next production release.
As much as I love SF, this post is about this report and not the rest of the tool. If you have it and have a recent crawl of any website, you should open the crawl file, or do a small crawl of your site, or that of a competitor. Note: Many will block crawlers, so do your best human emulation.
Content Analysis
I picked a former client (9 years ago) whose site still shows many well-implemented SEO features. They are doing a great job with content, as I found out with this check.
Now, most people who use Screaming Frog SEO Spider might have looked at the body text word cloud and not given it much thought – well, that was certainly me. In case you did not know, that word cloud is only that of the home page. If your primary keywords are not seen in that cloud, you might want to rethink the make-up of that page.
You can check any crawled text page by right-clicking a page URL and choosing the option in Visualisations for Body Text Word Cloud.
Here’s an example from this site. It’s their eSIM page.
Here is their Network Solutions page.
Those two examples should suffice for the post, but I checked some other pages and observed that they have done a great job giving their primary keywords adequate prominence without overdoing it. I could run a single-page crawl of a competitor page if it happens to be performing better in the SERPs and check its word cloud.
As usual, the usual disclaimers apply. Ranking involves numerous other factors that won’t be picked up by a tool, so I imply nothing other than to encourage SF users to explore this option on their sites.
I had not heard the expression “PIM” until today and it was in the SEO context. It’s a buzz word for what we might have called database driven websites in the past. They are used for product catalogue sites, such as hardware or clothing brands. They are increasingly cloud-based and are stepping up their marketing. I have not worked for a company that would need a PIM, so I had not noticed it before. Today I saw a YouTube video talking about SEO for PIM and the first thing I noticed was no attempt to explain the acronym. As you do, I Googled it and now I know.
What Is a PIM?
PIM is a Product Information Management system. It stores data about products and it might include a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. In other words, it contains product titles, descriptions, feature lists, images, variants, videos, prices – whatever attributes you can attach to a product. A PIM might offer these features:
I stopped looking at that point. No, that is fluff – much of it, anyway. From the PIM maker’s perspective, it is just a packaged database product with a fancy name. Telling the customer to use keywords in titles and descriptions isn’t good enough.
SEO Expectations of a PIM
Sorry, I expect more from a PIM, given all the trouble they have gone to package a database product. Here is what I would expect out of the box, as a minimum:
Schema.org (structured data) Tagging – A product page has so many opportunities to mark up different attributes.
Faceted Navigation Management – Products with many attributes have the potential of creating thin content and Google might choose not to index what it considers low-value content.
Digital Asset Management – No, I mean beyond storing file names and descriptions. Images, videos, PDFs etc can have many SEO optimisations.
Having received a new credit card, I thought I’d update a few of my direct billers before they chased me. I logged into My Vodafone and saw this helpful message.
See what that says? “through a web browser” – I was already using one, so it’s looking good at this point. I clicked the red button and it went downhill from here.
My browser offers this modal:
“SMS me link” and “Email me link”? Where did they learn English? There is space to jam in an article. I provided my mobile number and received a link to click. That logged me into the mobile version of My Vodafone.
I noticed that my street address was out of date, so I changed it. Then I decided to change my billing address, as it is a PO Box. We have received all mail at that box for 40+ years. No luck.
The geniuses at Vodafone have decided that the billing address in their system cannot be a PO Box, even if that is indeed your billing address. Credit cards use that as one way to authenticate a card. Nope. If you choose the option to enter a separate billing address, you need to provide a house number, followed by a street name and then street type. No exceptions. So, I had to lie and claim that my billing address is the same as my home address.
I went back to the website to look for help and got this badly proof-read message:
Vodafone Australia is telling me that logging in is now “more secure” and I no longer need a username or password. I tried again with the other option to send me a link by email.
Success, almost. Yes, the link in the email took me to the desktop web interface without a password.
So, at this point, I have forgiven Vodafone for their poor English. Maybe it is trendy English in Sydney, or Brisbane, but I too work in a web dev environment along with UX people every day and we try to stick to boring, grammatical forms. OK, let’s try to change my billing address.
No luck. The desktop form is the same and I cannot supply a PO Box, (what with being a responsive site, same code base and all that).
Somewhere in the earlier steps, I found the help text about accessing with a web browser.
Quite condescendingly, Vodafone Australia is telling me what is “best”. It says I can access My Vodafone “on other devices” through a “web browser”? Yes, the SMS link opens Safari on my iPhone – that is a web browser. They could have made the link open in an app, if installed – which I have on my phone. Never mind.
What about THIS device I am on? I am reading this on a desktop web browser, not a mobile app or a mobile web browser. So, they tease me there, hinting at this possibility. They don’t say “desktop”, but my phone also has a web browser. Why won’t they say “desktop” and that the secret is to ask for the link by email?
Accessibility
Now to get a little more serious. I see this largely as an accessibility issue and not semantics. I am 69 and probably better off playing lawn bowls, or whatever those grey nomads do. I have only one usable eye, so I have empathy with the visually impaired. If I want to use a desktop for my interactions, don’t decide what is “best” for me, then make me spend ages trying to find the secret entrance. I spent many volunteer hours at the Melbourne PC User Group for 25+ years helping older people navigate websites. Many of those people might have given up with this Vodafone desktop web login.
The other oddity is that even though I have chosen email billing and direct debit, what is the point of asking for a billing address? I provided my home address. In the end, I found that both credit cards and debit cards attract a small fee, so I switched to the bank debit option.
A few weeks ago, I helped my sister-in-law with a similar issue at Optus, where she has a landline. She is legally blind in both eyes, so does not own a mobile phone and does not have a computer, therefore, no email address. She gets paper bills and had missed one in the post. I thought that she could perhaps open a My Optus account with her sister’s email address and we could set up direct debit with her bank. No siree. Without a mobile phone, Optus will not let you have an online account. Without an online account, you cannot provide an email address. The customer service people told us it is all about “security”. Really? would someone hack into her account to pay her bills for her?
They told us to go to a store. We did that – quite a chore, as the lady in question uses a walker and has health issues. All sorted in person in less than 5 minutes.
Lack of Friction
My friend Roger Dooley in the US is known for a few good books that are relevant to us in the web economy. “Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing” and now “FRICTION—The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage”. Reducing friction in customer interactions is a simple concept. When customers want to pay you, make it easy.
Full disclosure: I have a motive in compiling this list of SEO podcasts. It’s a handy reference for me, as I have published my book, featured here: https://accidentalseomanager.com. I hope they will consider interviewing me if that suits their model.
If you know of any SEO podcast that should be added to the list above, please use the contact form or Google me. If you run one of these excellent programs, let’s book a time later in 2022. I live in Melbourne, Australia, so timezones might need to be checked.
