Internet commentary

Citation

(2000), "Internet commentary", Circuit World, Vol. 26 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.2000.21726daa.001

Internet commentary

Keywords Internet, Search engines, Design, Environment

After a search so painful, and so longThat all his life he has been in the wrong.Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,Who was so proud, so witty and so wise.(John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, A Satire against Mankind (1679))

I recently created a Web site for a company sub-contracting printed circuit design services. l incorporated all the necessary meta descriptions and keywords. My client complained bitterly that when he typed his name or any other combination of keywords into a search engine, his name was not on the top of the list or, in many cases, even lower down. I can never guarantee that this will happen, one way or the other. There are many reasons why search engines will not display a given Web site, even when the keywords are very explicit.

If I just typed the name of my client's company into a search engine, it would come up with thousands of responses – apparently, the particular name is very common in the Middle East. It would therefore be utopian to expect this to produce results, so I simply typed the name of the company and "printed circuit". This immediately came up as number-one in two of the ten search engines I tried. I do not think that this was too bad a result. But why did it not come up in all of them? The answer to this may be very complex. To understand this problem, we have to know how search engine spiders work. Unfortunately, nearly every search engine has a spider which works in a different manner. So, what is a "spider"? When you announce to a search engine that you wish to be incorporated on their listing, your URL will be integrated into a database. In due course, usually in the middle of the night, the cyber-spider will read your URL and have a look at the site. It will determine a number of keywords, usually from the meta list and description on the Home Page, sometimes from the first ten words of text on your Home Page, but sometimes by other methods or through your whole site, and record them. There is no guarantee, in the latter case, that it will choose the same keywords as you would, When you do a search, if the keyword you enter corresponds to one of the keywords in the database, the Website will be listed. The more the number of keywords that correspond, the higher up the listing the site will appear. So, if you put in "Smith", hoping for, say, The Smith Flexible Printed Circuit Company to come up, you will be an optimist. If you put in "Smith flexible printed circuit" (including the quotation marks), you will have an extremely good chance of it coming up within the first five responses.

This does not explain why it does not come up in all search engines. One answer to this may be that you have repeated too many keywords: some spiders apparently do not like this and refuse to record such a URL. Similarly, some search engines do not like the same URL being submitted more frequently than once every six months or a year. However, be warned that some search engines actually perform a very doubtful practice. They sell keywords. For example, you may pay the engine, say, $1,000 to have the keyword "printed circuit" for a period of six months. In this case, anyone typing in this keyword while looking for a site will have that particular company's URL as number one and, probably, numbers two, three, four, five and six, as well. In some cases, this happens to the exclusion of all other sites, but more frequently it will ignore the sold keyword but come up with sites relating to all the other keywords.

There are, therefore, no hard-and-fast rules to get your name registered on a given search engine: a diligent search on the search engine site might produce a few hints as to how to increase your chances. Only one thing is certain: never part with your money to a company guaranteeing that your name will appear on 500 search engines. These companies do little more than the free services offering the same kind of thing, some of which are reasonably serious. In any case, you can bet your bottom dollar than no one ever uses at least 480 of the 500 engines! Research has shown that 95 per cent of search engine referrals stem from no more than five engines.

It must also be said that the backlog on the database of many search engines is horrifically long and it may take up to six months for their spider to visit your site. Until this happens your name will not be listed. I therefore recommend that if your name does not appear on a given search engine where you wish it to, after six months, send the company an e-mail complaining of their service. You will probably get an answer, sometimes even explaining the reason. If the latter is valid, then correct it and resubmit. If this does not work, then send another e-mail, referring to your previous correspondence and keep on doing so until they give you satisfaction. You would be surprised how many times this is successful.

http://extra.ivf.se/dfee

Those of you who know me, will also know that I have been very active over the past 20 years or so in the environmental aspects of our industry. I have often been accused of going too far, too often! For this issue, I shall be reviewing just one site, devoted entirely, according to its own byline, to design for the environment. If I have gone too far, too often, then some readers may consider that this Swedish IVF site also does so (Figure 1). Of course, it is well known that the Nordic countries are extremely environment-conscious and often world leaders in the field, sometimes trying to impose their views far and wide. It is not my job to judge whether this is justified or otherwise, but I do not hesitate to express my own views, where they differ from those of the site or to agree with those which have been "dotcommed" on it. But each reader of these words has the right to form his/her own opinion.

Figure 1 IVF Design for Environment Site. Note that the left hand frame is not a text design, but graphics, contributing to the long download time

This is a new site and in a state of constant mutation so that this report is based on how the site is at the time of writing (June 2000). By the time you read it, it may have changed.

The main criterion on which I must judge this site is the fact that the ordinary person cannot access the more interesting parts of it without paying a fee. As a general rule, I believe that the Internet should be free for everybody but there must be exceptions to prove this rule, notably in cases where expensive research has been done without prior funding. My judgment, therefore, must be influenced by whether l think that the information available on the site is worth the sum asked. Obviously, what would be worthwhile for some people would not be for others.

The site is run by the Swedish Institute of Production Engineering Research. Its title is the IVF Electronics DfE Webguide. Before I start discussing its contents, let me talk about the technical aspects. It is hosted on a very slow US sub-let server or one with insufficient bandwidth to allow consistently fast downloading (frequently the downloading slows down to 100 or so bytes/second). Once the site has been finalised, I would like to suggest to the IVF that they may care to put it either on a server with a fast connection or to implement a mirror site on a fast server. To compound this slowness, some of the pages are horrendously large in file size. For example, the Home Page is divided into three frames. The left-hand one, used just for a menu, aggregates about 22 kilobytes, mainly because of the excessive use of graphics which could have been replaced by ordinary text with no loss of appearance or impact. The top frame, which is more obviously graphical, actually has a smaller aggregate of about 18 kilobytes. The main frame totals about 60 kilobytes, which is far too much for fast downloading, even with a reasonable connection from the server into the Internet backbone. A good part of the total 100 kilobytes is devoted to a photograph of a component sitting in a mussel shell on a stony beach. This may be attractive, but does it convey a sufficiently powerful message to justify its size?

The Home Page itself appears to have been generated using the Microsoft FrontPage software. I believe that this is a good application for this generator. At the time of writing, there are minimal meta keywords and description in the frame set page, so this site may not be universally selected by some search engines. However, the FrontPage generator incorporates the possibility of a much better and more economical system of navigation than has been used here by means of the frames. This is, of course, the method using borders and themes. If, at any time in the future, the Webmaster cares to review the site with the intention of improving it, l would suggest that he may care to examine this possibility, making it more "user-friendly".

There are still some minor bugs in it. For example, there are two Search features, one in the "Member pages" and one in the section "Design Guidelines". Both operate over the whole of the subscription-only pages and neither on the open pages.

With little doubt, the most important parts of this site are in the Design Guidelines. These form an excellent document, touching on most aspects of where the electronics industry impacts on the environment. Nevertheless, there would appear to be some areas that are less well treated than others, especially in the electronics manufacturing sector, which forms an important part of the loading on the environment. For example, the year-old European Council Directive, on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) used in solvents, is not addressed in this document, even though VOCs may form important components of fluxes and cleaning solvents.

In some cases, the approach seems to lack a certain pragmatism: as one example, it suggests that printed circuit laminates should not contain brominated flame retardants. This may be all very well, provided that you are able to purchase such laminates and that your product does not have to be certified to Underwriters Laboratory standards (i.e. most goods exported to the USA). Also, can one really weigh up whether a few grams of a cross linked polymer containing a brominated compound is environmentally worse than the increased number and severity of fires (including loss of life) caused by not using a flame-retardant laminate? I remember well the problems in the 1960s and early 1970s when G-10 (as is actually recommended here) was the standard laminate. Of course, there are coming onto the market some non-brominated flame-retardant laminates, mostly containing amine or phosphorus compounds, but it has yet to be shown that they are as good as or less toxic/polluting than conventional FR-4 under all conditions of cradle-to-grave life cycles. Also, the typically 30 percent higher cost of these laminates must also enter into the equation.

If we go to the page entitled Check-list, we can see that the four main headings are "Reducing the use of materials", "Reducing energy use", "Avoiding environmentally critical substances" and "Facilitating maintenance". Under each of these headings there are a number of hyperlinks to some of the other pages, giving more details of how to improve the design for environment. For example, if we clicked on "minimise the product weight and volume", we are informed that many electronic products are transported over long distances, by air or other means. Reducing the weight and volume of a product reduces environmental impact through lower energy use and reduced emissions during transport. It then goes on to say that it is preferable to choose light materials and to reduce the quantities to a minimum with some further details, which is all obviously sound sense but may need stating to be appreciated.

An interesting section in these Design Guidelines is entitled Mechanical Elements and Casings. In theory, I agree with most of what is written here. However, possibly the most controversial part is called Life Cycle Assessments. The controversy is because it is not only an inexact science, it is quasi-impossible to implement it fully. Although not using the exact same words, the IVF admits this openly and freely. For example, if you purchase a capacitor, how are you going to determine the environmental loading of the manufacturing process when you cannot even control whether the cardboard of the box it is packed in contains 0, 35 or 75 percent recycled material? If you follow all this to its logical conclusion, the cradle-to-grave assessment of even a small electronics assembly may cost more than the assembly itself (and consume half a forest of trees to document it!). Another aspect is that one can never tell where an operation is carried out. For example, if a component is tinned, in which country is the tin smelted and refined and how is the energy for the refining generated (e.g. fossil fuels, hydroelectric or nuclear)? It is therefore possible only to skim the surface of such an assessment.

There is a reference section, giving the titles of 11 other works, all of them of Swedish origin, some of them written in Swedish. Does no other country consider DfE as important or does the IVF consider that non-Swedish publications are not worth reading? Anyway, be that as it may, a number of these are IVF publications and – wait for it – are there to buy. Yes, buy, and often at high prices, after you have already spent 300 bucks to register your company and 60 more for each user, just to access this publicity on the site. Is not this a little grasping? It would make more sense to me if these documents were downloadable in PDF format, free of charge, as only subscribers would have access to them. The IVF claims that it is a commercial organisation and must make users pay for the information. I counter this with the thousands of commercial companies throughout the world that offer vast amounts of technical information on the Internet, without asking for a sou. As for the non-IVF documents, could a hyperlink to them not be instituted?

Going back to the menu, there is a section entitled "Legislation". This provides four hyperlinks, two to EU directives and two to Swedish regulations. One of the two EU ones is on the famous WEEE and it leads to a complete historical run-down from the first draft to the current (June 2000) adopted proposal, which is downloadable in PDF format (free of charge!).

The next title is "Eco-labelling schemes" and offers details of three Nordic labels and two German ones that can be affixed to approved items, notably but not exclusively IT equipment. (Incidentally, it says elsewhere not to use adhesive labels!) The criteria for approval and some lists of approved equipment are hyperlinked. Interestingly, no portable and only two desktop computer manufacturers (one of whom I have never heard of) are listed in one of the Swedish labelling schemes, yet there were over 70 CRT monitor manufacturers listed in the same one. What exactly does this mean? Considering the kilograms of lead in a large CRT monitor and the grams of lead in a desktop computer, I am frankly at a loss to understand this, not to mention the toxicity of the CRT phosphors.

Back to "Halogenated flame retardants" but, this time, in a more general context than in the Design Guidelines. Clicking on it leads to a menu page with "Legislation, environmental labelling schemes", "Environmental declarations" and "Reports". The latter is easily discussed: in fact, there is access to only one abstract showing that people in all walks of life have PBDEs of the order of picomols/g of lipid weight in their bodies but that workers in an electronics dismantling plant have more. The Legislation chapter offers five governmental items and three others on the subject of Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate (Keml) proposing a ban on [brominated] flame retardants. This seems to be a much more drastic measure than is warranted, no matter how bad a pollutant these substances may be, considering that the major use is for textiles, such as children's nightdresses, and no substitute offers the same protection and may be equally ecounfriendly. The labelling schemes took us back to the same page as previously discussed. (At this point, the security system asked me for my password again and refused it. However, by closing the dialogue box, I was back in business!) The "Environmental declarations" were a funny collection. The first line stated verbatim, "Miljödeklaration för IT-produkter (In Swedish only) click the link to the left." This is followed by a few clauses (in English) which seem to be translated extracts from the Swedish document.

This is roughly it; a very critical look at the main parts of this site. Now for the $64,000 question, or rather the $360 one. Is it worth the cost? My answer can be only, "it depends". It depends on:

• •

  Is your company in Sweden?

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  Is your company interested in supplying the Swedish market?

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  Is your company in (or likely to supply to) another country, which is expecting to enact similar legislation?

• •

  Do you wish to Eco-label your products?

• •

  Do you wish to have environmentally-friendly products, labelled or not?

• •

  Are you concerned about brominated flame retardants?

• •

  Are you interested in lead-free electronics, with the stress on conductive adhesives?

• •

  Are you interested in the early development taking place in the EU and Sweden concerning chemical substitutions and legislation?

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  Are you interested in design guidelines, generally?

If you answer yes to any one of these questions, then go ahead, your investment will be well spent.

The data on this Website is probably unique, but the implementation as a site still leaves, at this moment, a lot to be desired. I expect and hope that, in the next month or two, there will be considerable improvements to it as the teething problems are tackled. If so, by the time that this journal lands in your In-tray with its habitual resounding thump, you will be able to view the site under much better conditions than I could, and so much the better.

As usual, I give my subjective scores out of ten for various features of the site. The fact that l give an excellent 9 for Information does not contradict my own opinions expressed earlier, where I disagree with some aspects. Rather, it is a statement that the impartial merit is high. Communications could be improved if the IVF linked in more with what is being done in other countries. As it is, the site gives the impression of being too parochially Swedish or, at least, Nordic whereas an enormous amount of good work in this field is being done elsewhere. Let us remember that the World Wide Web is truly international.

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