InfoNorway is an index of English language pages about Norway.
Follow the links to browse this site for Norway related information, or use the search form to find information directly. Keep your search terms short. One or two words will do.
InfoNorway links to thousands of quality pages related to Norway, all sorted and organized for easy access. Please let us know if you have trouble finding the Norway related information you are searching for. We at InfoNorway are always looking for ways to improve our site, so your comments and suggestions will be received with thanks.
The purpose of this web log is to note and make comments on changes made to InfoNorway. Feel free to send feedback and/or comments to fredrik_nygaard@hotmail.com.
I received a tourist pamphlet about Telemark in the post a few weeks ago and have spent much of today adding relevant links found in the pamphlet to the Norway > Regions > Telemark section.
I added Nor-Bu Lodge to Norway > People > Associations.
I added Norwegian Ancestors Found, a professional genealogy service run by Kristen Åkre, to Norway > History > Genealogy.
I have opened a new index for law firms at Norway > Commerce > Companies > Law and added a promotion for the childrens film "Summer of Suspense" to Norway > Art > Film.
I added Annette Obrestad, a talented poker player, to Norway > People > Famous.
I added Patanegra to Norway > Art > Music > Popular.
I added the head hunter company Boyden to Norway > Commerce > Jobs.
I added Jean Honl to the list of Rosemaling artists at Norway > Art > Rosemaling.
I've added an Amazon ad collumn to the right hand side of the link pages, and moved the sponsor collumn to the left hand side, so that the non-commercial content appears as the middle collumn of the link pages. It will be interesting to see how the Amazon image ads perform compared to the text ads. I suspect the image ads will do quite well, but with the text links now on the left hand side, they too may do better. The Amazon ads are quite nice to look at so I don't feel they are compromising the web page in any way. The only problem I've noticed is that they are a little slow.
I added pictures of North Norway by PhotoMedia to Norway > Pictures.
I've added ten new hotels to Norway > Regions as part of my quality check of the links, and I think this pretty much completes the Regions indexes as far as lodging is concerned. I have also made a change to the About page noting the fact that InfoNorway now has about a million page views every year. Up from about six hundred thousand a year back.
I've added Kjellerskolen, a place with cheap accommodation to Norway > Regions > Troms.
I've added EasyTrans, an online dictionary, to Norway > Language > Dictionaries.
People have been buying quite a few books and gift items through my Amazon links lately. A sure sign that the Christmas season is upon us. I on my part, have gone through all the recipe links and online shops that I link to and checked that they are all right. Shops and recipes can be found at Norway > Shops and Norway > Recipes.
I've added Ludvig Holberg, an 18th century Danish-Norwegian dramatist, to the list of famous Norwegians at Norway > People > Famous.
I've added Odd Nerdrum, a figurative painter, to the list of famous Norwegians at Norway > People > Famous. I've also started a systematic check of all the links in InfoNorway. This will keep me busy for a while...
Added "Webcams Norway" and "Webcams in Norway" to Norway > Pictures.
I've made some changes to Norway > Commerce > Companies due to the merger of the two oil companies Statoil and Hydro into a single oil company called StatoilHydro.
Stavanger Aftenblad, also simply called Aftenbladet, is a major Norwegian newspaper from Stavanger. Their online edition has an English section that I've been made aware of by one of their employees, and I've added a link to this web page on Norway > News.
My girlfriend sent me a pretty funny video sketch that I've added to Norway > Art > Literature > Humor.
Added the ship building company Aker Yards to Norway > Commerce > Companies > Engineering.
I put in a random picture button next to the help button. I used to have pictures displayed at the bottom of each page, but I removed them in July because I thought them of little use, and they were often unrelated to the topic of the indexes and therefore a potential source of confusion. However, my girlfriend thought I should put them back in somehow, so I have now reintroduced the pictures. But this time, I've made them appear in a pop-up box, and with a function that picks pictures randomly. The button is clearly marked random picture, so that should avoid any confusion.
This is mostly a gimmick to show off some JavaScript programming, but I guess it has its useful side too. When searching InfoNorway, users can now take a break and watch some pictures before searching on for whatever they are looking for. Looking for stuff on the web can be tedious work and a break may be just the thing in order to come up with that clever idea that gets one going again.
I've been spending some time adding pictures to my Norway > Regions indexes. While doing this, I came across a web site with pictures from the Rondane mountains, which made me realize that I needed to add an index for this mountain region. The Rondane index that I've created by moving stuff about Rondane from various other index into the new one, can be found at Norway > Regions > Oppland > Rondane
I put in a help button next to the search button to give some general info on how to use InfoNorway. It is not a hugely useful function, but better than nothing. And Google is most likely going to view it as useful, so this will probably help my site ranking.
I used to have a bit of similar waffle in the right hand collumn, but I decided to remove it because it seemed a little needless to have it there. Soon after I removed it Google lowered my ranking on the Norway keyword, so I have reason to believe the reintroduction of this waffle will improve my ranking. And who knows, some people may find it useful. Having hidden it behind a help button, it won't get in the way for anybody.
I have added Peter Wessel Zappfe to the list of famous people. He was a Norwegian philosopher with a rather grim view of human existance. His younger and more famous colleague, Arne Næss, has a more optimistic view of life, and is something of a pioneer in ecological philosophy. There are quite a few web pages related to him, and I've gathered the best ones in an index dedicated specially to him. You'll find them both at Norway > People > Famous.
Added an article on Christmas and one on Confirmation to Norway > Traditions.
Added an article by Wikipedia about Norwegians as an ethnic group to Norway > People.
Added Brokke, an Active Vacations site to Norway > Regions > Agder > Setesdal and Norway > Sports > Active. I also added a page with pictures of Setesdal to the Setesdal index.
I added an article on Ole and Lena jokes by Wikipedia to Norway > Art > Literature > Humor.
I've added an article by Wikipedia about Lutefisk to Norway > Recipes > Fish > Lutefisk. Lutefisk is dried fish, soaked in lye. A very strange delicacy indeed.
I've also made some minor changes to Norway > Commerce > Unions, Norway > Language > Dictionaries and Norway > Language > Translators.
I've made a slight change to InfoNorway's look, toning down the gray and putting the links in the footer into a box. I've also added an article to Norway > Sports > Competitive.
I added some articles about sports in Norway to the Norway > Sports index. I also found a number of shops that I've added to Norway > Shops > Gifts, Norway > Shops > Department and Norway > History > Viking > Shops.
It's kind of odd that people will spend time and money on creating web shops dedicated to Scandinavian products and not register them (for free) with InfoNorway to make them easy to find. I keep finding these shops hidden away in the most unlikely corners of the web. I guess people still don't understand the importance of having their web pages registered with the right directories.
My article on search engine optimization goes through the basic steps to make a web page easy to find on the web. It's all public knowledge stuff, but this is clearly still news to a lot of webmasters.
The InfoNorway logo is now a link to the top index. It's pretty much a principle on the web that all objects should be "clickable", and logos always brings the user "home", and for InfoNorway, that's the top index.
I've also listed all the first level indexes at the bottom, just above the copyright. This should make it easier to move from one topic to another. When I'm working in one section, I often need to go to another topic, and this will save me a few clics, since I no longer have to go up to the top and then down again, going from arts to people, or from regions to travel, etc.
I added Anja Garbarek, Bloodlights and Rockettothesky to Norway > Art > Music > Popular. I also added some articles to Norway > Education and Norway > Language.
I've gone through the pre-configured Google links on my music indexes looking for new stuff to put on InfoNorway. I found a number of articles on popular, contemporary and folk music, as well as an article on the poet Henrik Wergeland. The indexes affected by this are:
As I suspected, the pre-configured Google searches are coming in very handy. All I need to do is click on the link, look for interesting stuff and paste the good links into InfoNorway.
I've added a pre-configured search to the bottom of all my link pages. This new link will bring the user directly to Google with the search term of the link. This will be quite useful for myself when I look through my indexes. Having gone through an index, I can conveniently check Google to see if there are any new and interesting links I should add to the index.
I've added El Caco, Heroes & Zeroes and WE to Norway > Art > Music > Popular. You can thank my daughter for this since this is pretty much her domain.
I've added an About button where there's a short introduction to InfoNorway.
I've made all the buttons on InfoNorway look the same by playing around with css. The idea is that the buttons should look like physical buttons regardless of them being normal links or form buttons.
The links are now sorted in a more logical fashion, with the most interesting outgoing links coming first, then important sub sections, followed by less remarkable links, amazon items and finally related pages. Some indexes like Norway > Regions > Oslo have benefited quite a lot from this reorganization. I used to display all outgoing links on top, regardless of importance, and that put a lot of unimportant links higher than the more interesting groups, such as museums and accommedation. With the new sorting, the uninteresting (for most people that is) links come lower down.
Choice hotels made a change to their web site, similar to MultiMap, some time back. I'm not sure if the new site is an improvement on the old one, but I've finally got around to fix all my links to the Choice hotels so that they now point to the correct pages in the new site. This update has affected indexes with Choice hotels found under Norway > Regions
The map provider, MultiMap, has changed the way they link to their maps, and so I had to update all my references to their local maps. There are almost hundred links to such local maps on InfoNorway, so this took a bit of time. However, MultiMap is clearly improving their site, and this means InfoNorway too is benefiting. This update has affected indexes with local maps found under Norway > Regions
I've revisited all the bad pages that I marked two weeks ago, and quite a number have been fixed. I was happy to see the artist Per Ung, and the legendary figure skater Sonia Heni have their official web pages repaired. And the Oslo sky diving club which had its web page hacked is also back. There were also a number of other web pages that were fixed. The indexes that have been changed by this are:
Updated Norway > Pictures with a photo blog by Thomas Laupstad. He contacted me a few days back asking me to add his blog. I wish more people would contact me with sites as fine as this one.
Updated Norway > Commerce > Engineering with a link to AADI. It was about time I added this company, since I have been involved in developing their online shop, so these guys are actually business contacts of mine. They are nice people to work with.
I was contacted by a guy looking for NorWear jackets. A quick search at Google didn't give me much. The best web page was this one. Hardly a confidence inspiring site. There's an English flag on the page, but you can't click it.
I've spent much of the last two weeks going through all my links to check that they are all okay and functioning. I've marked the bad ones in my database, so that they will not appear on InfoNorway. I then revisit all the bad pages again some time later to see if any of the bad ones have been fixed. If they are still bad, I remove them permanently, or else I mark them as okay and the links will reapear on InfoNorway.