OK, the house passed CISPA 248-168 and it’s bad… how bad? Really, really bad. Let me explain why. When you watch detective shows TV and the “good guys” suspect that somebody is a “bad guy” and they want to go through his “crib” they get a warrant. If they don’t get a warrant then all the stuff that they gathered is inadmissible in a court of law. Warrants work the same way for digital information. If the “government” wants to go through all your online banking information, porno stash, Facebook posts they too just like the detectives on the TV have to get a warrant to search your home.
In the past they had to do three thing to get a “cyber” warrant before they could take your computer and copy your emails etc.

Establish a Crime Has Been Committed.

This entails gathering evidence of  illegal online activity. Typically this is done by tracing the IP address associated with the crime committed and utilizing resources that tie the culprit to activity though CC purchases, social media interaction, etc.

Establishing Who the Suspect Is

Investigators should then do some research as to who the person is they are accusing of perpetrating this crime. Background research can reveal a history of  internet crime. Their job may provide them with opportunity and skills required. This is important because competent hackers use other people’s computers to conduct their illegal activities online by route their traffic through a few different computers, making it difficult for anyone to trace.

Present Evidence to a Judge

Once all the above has been gathered, it has to be formally presented to a judge, who can issue a cyber warrant. The judge will review it and then sign off on a cyber warrant that allows authorities to search computers and hard drives, and monitor all past Internet activity as admissible evidence in court.

If they don’t have a warrant then the materials they gather violate the 4th amendment to the constitution which is as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now with CISPA, they won’t need any of that. CISPA not only allows the government to use web data gathered without a warrant for ‘cybersecurity’ or ‘national security’ purposes, but also allows for private companies to gather this information for the investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA which is sufficiently broad to include not just hacking but any online activity that is a threat to public health or safety. This is sufficiently broad a definition to allow anyone’s packet data and computer information to be searched. Get pulled over for a running a red light. Bingo time to copy the drive on your cell phone. Going online to get a yerba mate cup from Argentina, sounds suspicious, let’s see what else you might be up to.

Yes CISPA is 1984 and total information awareness was implemented almost 10 years ago. But now you don’t even get a fig leaf when the internet TSA comes to strip search you digitally. Because it’s all legal. Nice, huh? OK, but what about you John Q. Public? I’m talking to you mister “I’ve never looked at porn and I’ve never done anything even quasi illegal online.” Well congratulations but, you may be surprised to learn that not all government employees, and private contractors are scrupulously honest as you. It’s true… I know, shocking…

CISPA gives these people the legal right to spy on you as you engage in

• Online banking.
• Fill out a health questionnaire
• Criticize the government on social media
• Post a comment anomalously
• Go on Facebook, Gmail, store business data in the cloud, conduct a transaction, store your recipe for quiche on a network drive, you name it they got and there is nothing you can do legally.

And thanks to CISPA life is one big fishing expedition with no warrants, no privacy, and no rights. They can build a case against you out of the fluff and dross they have collected. And since Obama signed NDAA into law if they “decide” your an enemy combatant they can lock you up, torture you and hide body too. All perfectly legal.

This is America Folks. Seriously, it’s time to take it back. Vote outside of the two party system. They are just playing good-cop, bad-cop with you. The organizations that really control us are quasi-governmental corporations that have a revolving door into public office. They support an agenda that builds their wealth at the expense of the general population and they have no allegiance to us as a country, they are multinationals who drive up the national debt and leave us with the bill. And so are ultimately the shills the put into office to represent their interests.
Here are some groups fighting to keep what little freedom we have left in this country:
http://www.aclu.org/
https://www.eff.org/
Heck while your at it:
http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29
http://www.dailypaul.com/229356/can-the-power-of-the-people-stop-cispa
http://www.modernwhig.org/
Get organized, use the web, and start to change things.

do•mes•ti•cate

I believe the thing that separates humanity from other the domesticated species on this planet is that we never ask ourselves who or what it is that domesticated us. Even those who profess to have a personal relationship with some mythological deity whom they hold responsible for our current predicament become extremely reticent when you ask them for its cell phone number. That said, before can I begin to describe what domesticated us,  I I have to define exactly what it means to be domesticated especially for those readers who vanity is such that they find the notion that we share anything in common with Canis lupus or Felix catus to be too distasteful to consider.

verb /dəˈmestiˌkāt/
domesticated, past participle; domesticated, past tense; domesticates, 3rd person singular present; domesticating, present participle

1. Tame (an animal) and keep it as a pet or for farm produce
• - mammals were first domesticated for their milk
2. Cultivate (a plant) for food
3. Make (someone) fond of and good at home life and the tasks that it involves
• - you’ve really domesticated him

The defining characteristic of the process of domestication is artificial selection.  The objective of which is to produce a specie with characteristics better suited to whatever its purpose may be. In example, household pets have to be selected for a friendly demeanor toward humans and cows have been selected to grow fast and produce copious amounts of milk.

Many species have been artificially selected but there is a very limited number that are considered truly domesticated.  According to the evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond animal species must meet the following six criteria to be considered for domestication.

1. Flexible Diet
2. Reasonably Fast Growth Rate
3. Ability to be breed in captivity
4. Pleasant Disposition
5. Temperament which makes it unlikely to panic
6. Modifiable social hierarchy

I would point out that humanity as specie meets all of these criteria. We are omnivorous, capable of breeding in 12 years, thrive in captivity, are eager to please, etc. etc.

Domesticated species that have been raised for many generations become substantially altered in both appearance and behavior.  Dogs are very different from wolves. Recent studies begun in the 1950’s by Dmitry Belyeav in the breeding of the silver fox Vulpes vulpes has established that numerous morphological changes such as depigmentation, floppy ears, rolled and shorter tails with fewer vertebrae, dwarf and giant varieties, the ending of the yearly estrous cycle, lower corticosteroid levels, and higher blood serotonin levels all occur in concert with the deliberate selection of more docile and malleable animals. Click here for more information.

Hypothalamic hormone interactions are not amenable to overly simplistic description but cortisol is generally viewed as a stress related hormone. Individuals under high stress produce more cortisol and it’s presence facilitates the production of adrenaline which triggers fight or flight behaviors. Higher serotonin levels in the mid-brain and hypothalamus also correlate with the reduced aggressiveness of the domesticated animals. The lower cortisol and higher serotonin levels appear to be related to the animal’s reduced adrenal response and correlates to change in appearance such as mottled or spotted colored fur. The overall effect of all of these changes is to delay the onset of fear response from 6 weeks to 9 weeks and even later in the domesticated fox. The technical term for biological changes that delay the onset of  adolescent characteristics into adulthood is pedomorphosis and results in an adult that retains many of the characteristics of the juvenile of the specie.

Pedomorphosism is the retention of juvenile characteristics well into maturity. Developmental biologists have determined there are two distinct ways this can occur, neotony and progenesis. In neotony the physiological development of an animal is slowed or delayed. In progenesis sexual development occurs faster. Both of these processes result in an adult capable of reproduction that retains juvenile physical characteristics.

Mickey Mouse's "evolution" in the 20th century is an example of Neotony

Click here for more information.

The evolutionary biologist Steven J Gould has stated that the fundamental “evolutionary story” of humans is based on our specie  “retaining to adulthood the originally juvenile features of our ancestors.”

Human beings are members of the Great Apes and our closest living relatives are the chimpanzee with which we share a common ancestor some six million years ago.

For reference purposes here is a picture of an adult chimpanzee:

It is fairly evident from that while we are similar in many ways to the adult chimpanzee pictured above, the differences between our two species makes it fairly unlikely that anyone would confuse the two if they were both invited to a party. Notice the small eyes set below a thick wide brow ridge, the long limb to torso length, the large prognostic jaw and teeth, the chimpanzee’s stooped posture, thick fur body and facial hair, and of course the  chimpanzee’s much thicker skull and commensurately smaller brain. Now take a look at a juvenile chimpanzee.

Notice anything familiar? The large cranium to body size? The flat facial physiognomy? The lack of prognostic jaw? Weaker muscle tone? Diminished adrenal response, etc. etc.

OK, how about this:
Again this is an adult chimpanzee:

And this is George Burns:

"If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age."

Those of you who are still following along should be able to see that physiologically adult human beings are very similar to pre-adolescent chimpanzees and that as we age members of our specie tend to look more and more like chimpanzees.  This is exactly what pedomorphosis looks like and it is a well know physiological effect of domestication.

So in summary human beings look like a domesticated chimpanzee because we share a common ancestor “only” six million years ago and we are domesticated and they are not.  If you still find that you cannot accept this, well then…  “Good night Gracie.”

Now the defining characteristic of domestication is the artificial selection of a specie for a specific purpose. So the next question becomes who or what domesticated us and for what purpose?

The answer to this is located here and it may surprise you.

Going to Twitter and writing a 140 character Tweet is not a difficult proposition for anyone. However, if you’ re posting to your WordPress site and want to announce it through Twitter, it is an unnecessary step provided you install The WP-to-Twitter plugin by Jol Dolson. Simply put the WP-to-Twitter posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress site when you make a post. It can be configured to use a number of  URL shortening services including Su.pr, Bit.ly, Yourls, Goo.gl and WordPress. (Personally I use Goo.Gl.) WP-to-Twitter also includes google analytics integration, so you track which tweets are driving traffic to specific areas of your site.

The plugin can be configured to send a simple default message when your updating or editing posts or pages, and also allows you to write a custom Tweet when you want to. Both the custom Tweet texts and your default messages support a variety of shortcodes to substitute your blog title, post title, etc., in your tweeted update.

Shortcodes available in post update templates:

• #title#: the title of your blog post
• #blog#: the title of your blog
• #post#: a short excerpt of the post content
• #category#: the first selected category for the post
• #date#: the post date
• #url#: the post URL
• #author#: the post author
• #account#: the twitter @reference for the account (or the author, if author settings are enabled and set.)
• #tags#: your tags modified into hashtags. See options in the Advanced Settings section, below.

You can also create custom shortcodes to access WordPress custom fields by using doubled square brackets around the name of your custom field to add the value of that custom field to your status update. Example: [[custom_field]]

Should you post anything which is longer than the available space it will be truncated by the plugin. This applies to both the default messages and to your custom messages. I just set up the plugin and

This is my first post using the WordBooker plugin. Basically, WordBooker is a plug-in for WordPress, which links your blog to a Facebook account so when you make a post to your WordPress site, your Facebook wall is automatically updated with an extract of your post with links back to the original article. This saves you the time and effort of re-posting and provides an efficient incentive to develop content for your site as a priori to just posting something directly on Facebook.

Installation is fairly simple provided your running PHP5, WordPress Version 3.0 or greater, and Curl is enabled on your server. However, the configuration of the plugin is mildly intimidating. Since this is my first whack at it, I can only hope I have not made some egregious mistake. You can see the not inconsiderate configuration manual here.  Once the plug-in has been installed and linked to your Facebook account, and you have configured it properly using the aforementioned manual, when you post a post (or page should you decide to configure it so) to your WordPress site your Facebook wall will be updated.

Pretty neat huh?  If you currently host your own WordPress site you can download WordBooker here.

Configuration of the WordBooker Plugin is mildly involved. There are so many options it is easy to lost in the process however, if you keep it simple you will find it a fairly painless process. Again you will need to review the configuration manual which you will find at the bottom of the WordBooker Configuration page under the settings menu in your dashboard. Go through it step by step.

The first phase connecting to your Facebook account, is the easy part. Just click the Connect with Facebook link in the setup on the WordBooker options page.

Then click the Install Button on the Facebook WordPress integration panel that comes up.

Click Allow for all the permissions it will ask for.

And unless you are running your WordPress admin area with HTTPS (which isn’t a bad idea and should be a subject for another post) you will see the following warning. Again just click continue.

That’s pretty much it for the installation, tomorrow I will add a new section on how to configure it. Which is much trickier…

Windows 7 is the latest and greatest incarnation of Microsoft’s Operating System to frustrate users and infuriate developers around the world. That said, compared to its previous incarnations it’s actually, not that bad. Still it’s a Microsoft product which means lots of “funny” little quirks that get in the way of actually being productive. As a designer, I find Windows 7 inability to view Photoshop .psd files directly in explorer to be absurdly inefficient. In the past, e.g. in Windows XP, you could add the psicon.dll to the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell\ folder, register it and everything would be right as rain. But Windows 7 is a very different beast and it has an entirely new image stack, called Windows Imaging Component (WIC), and uses it in Windows explorer to create thumbnails for most image formats.
The upshot of which is, 3rd party developers can create their own WIC codec to support proprietary image formats such as Nikon’s NEF, Canon’s CR2, and Olympus ORF raw formats and Explorer is able to show nice little thumbnails of all those pretty pictures when the corresponding codec is installed.

Unfortunately, there is no “publicly available” codec for the Photoshop PSD format for Windows 7

But, and this is a big but, there is a commercial one you can buy, from Ardfry Imaging that really works, or you can go through rigamarole below and get “some” read not all your .psd files to show up… I tried both and found that the advantages of having every .psd image visible preferable to the annoyance of not seeing the one I was really looking for. But in the interest of being diplomatic, I’ve put together a detailed set of instructions for installing both,and you’ll notice that the commercial solution is a bit shorter. My personal recommendation is to bit the bullet and blow $19.99 on the commercial version from Ardfry.

OK first for the free not so good way to make your .psd files somewhat visible in explorer on windows 7

Apparently, the Microsoft Expression Blend 3 design tool, includes a psd codec, but  you have to buy Microshafts useless Silverlight design too for a minimum of $150 to use it. Fortunately, there are a lot of clever people out there and there is a free trial where you can get your hands on that the codec  hidden deep in the bowels of the Expression Blend Tool. So the upshot of all of this is- there is a PSD thumbnail viewer for Windows 7 but it’s cludgy and your going to have to do a little hacking to get it.

So if your dead set on getting this inferior solution for free, rather than get the good one for $19.99, put your hacking cap on, (preferably a balaclava) and get started…

Step One: Download the Microsoft Expression Blend 3.0 Design Tool Trial Edition: Here

Step Two: Use 7-zip to extract the contents ‘Blend_Trial_en.exe’ file from the above, by right clicking on it and selecting from the 7-zip drop down menu,, Extract to “Blend_Trial_en” (Do not double click and install it.) If you don’t have 7-zip you can get it right: Here It’s free and it’s great.

Step Three: Inside the Blend_Trial_en folder you will find a folder called Setup and inside of that you will find a file call BlImp.cab Use the oh so versatile 7-zip to extract the file’s contents using the same technique only this time it will create a folder call, appropriately enough, “BlImp”

Step Four: Copy the PSDCodec.dll from the BlImp folder and put it in an suitable location on your main hard drive, e.g. “C:Program Files\PSDCodec”

Step Five: Now you have to register the codec from the command prompt. To find the command prompt, type cmd in the search bar just above the start menu here:

Note you have to register this as the administrator so just typing cmd in the search bar above the start menu and clicking enter, ain’t gonna cut it. You have to hold down the ctrl key and shift key when you hit enter or it’s not going to work. If you do it right you will get a warning that should look kind of like this:

Step Six: If you have done all of the above you should be looking at something like this:

Now to register the codec from the administrators command prompt, you have to run the following command: regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\PSDCodec\PSDCodec.dll” Type it in exactly like you see here:

Hit enter and your done.  My personal experience with this solution proved to be inconsistent. I could see most of my .psd files but not all. And that drove me to find an even better solution that was much easier to install.

The Right Way to make your .psd files visible in explorer on windows 7

Download the free 15-day trial of the CODEC

Click Install.

Voila, all your .psd files are now visible.

My advice, pay the 20 bucks dude…

You can buy you license at this address: http://www.ardfry.com/psd-codec/

This has nothing to do with Web Design or SEO but, this is the best tasting chocolate ice cream you will ever have, it is so good it will effectively ruin store bought chocolate ice cream for you. I used the Whynter Ice Cream Machine (it’s awesome) and you can find out more about this amazing ice cream machine here.

Note: I got mine for under $200, just check amazon or do a price search. Hey, that could be a topic. How to effectively price search on the web…

Anyway here is the recipe, Enjoy.

Armand’s Chocolate Ice Cream

4 oz. Bittersweet chocolate chips (Giradelli)
3/4 cup Whole Milk
1-1/4 cup Cream
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar (turbinado)
1-1/4 teaspoons bourbon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Whisk the eggs in a bowl until fluffy (don’t over whisk to the point where the eggs are stiff) add sugar while whisking a little at a time, then add the vanilla, salt, and continue to whisk until the the completely blended (about a minute more.)

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler over low heat, (Think Warm, Not Hot) while whisking, gradually whisk in the milk and cream stirring constantly, until smooth. Remove from the heat and cool.

Note: I use sealed Ice packs I keep in my freezer to quick cool this, otherwise put in the fridge for a few hours.

Combine the two mixtures. Transfer to the Ice Cream Maker and 1 hour later you have ice cream.

Note: if your using one of the freeze the base ice cream makers you will need to cool the mixture in the fridge for 2-3 hours before transferring to the ice cream maker.

Research at the Paharpur Business Centre and Software Technology Incubator Park in New Delhi, India has demonstrated a 20% increase in worker productivity and a reduction of energy expenditures of 15%. They also found that 42% of the workers working for 10 hours in the building increased their blood oxygen levels by 1%. Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Office plants reduced the incidence of eye irritation by 52%, lower respiratory symptoms by 20%, lung impairment by 10-12% and Asthma by 9%. As result of this and an the reduction in worker sick days worker productivity was increased significantly.

How did they achieve such a miraculous results? House plants…  Specifically the following plants

The Areca Palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens)

• Works well in the day time
• Great for living areas
• One needs about 4 shoulder high plants/person
• Needs to be put outdoors once every 3-4 months
• The leaves of the plant need to be wiped everyday in Delhi and perhaps once a month in a cleaner city
• The soil used should be of vermi manure or use hydroponics

• Converts CO2 into O2 at night
• One requires about 6-8 such waist high plants per person in the bedroom
• Leaves need to be wiped in the same way as the Areca Palm
• The soil used should be of vermi manure or use hydroponics

The Money Plant (Epipremnum aureum)

• Excellent for removing Formaldehyde and other VOC’s
• Best grown using hydroponics

There is an excellent presentation by Kamal Meattle on TED that describes this experiment and I’m sufficiently impressed that I’m going to try it out this week. I’ll keep you posted. Below is a handy image file to print out with plant names, images, suggested size, water and soil recommendations .

OK, here is the follow up.
I purchased the following plants last week:

2 Large Dracaenas-
Bright Indirect Light. Weekly Soaking… Do not allow to dry out. Mist Every 3 days.

4 Small Snake Plants-
Bright Indirect Light, Weekly Watering… Soil should be kept barely moist, not soaked. Prefers nitrate free fertilizer.

2 Medium Cat Palm-
Medium Light, Weekly Watering… Soil should be moist, not soggy.

2 Large Peace Lily-
Low Light, Weekly Watering… Do not allow to dry out. Mist Every 3 days. Prefer moist warmth.

1 Medium and 2 Starters Pothos-
Bright Indirect Light. Weekly Splash of Water… Let the soil dry out completely between waterings. When it starts to droop add water.

1 Medium Spider Plant-
Bright Indirect Light Weekly Watering… Soil should be moist, not soggy.

I transplanted them all to larger pots that have a water catch basin built into the base so the roots are much less likely to rot from over watering, just in case. I used high quality potting soil and gave them a good but not excessive watering.

So far, I can report the following:

1) I definitely have not killed any of them. They appear to be very healthy.

2) The place definitely smells fresher. While I haven’t noticed a tremendous surge in my work performance, the environment is more enjoyable to be in, and this may explain the reason for the improved productivity that the study found. When people feel good in their work place they may be more willing to work more.

3) One surprising benefit I did not foresee was that the plants introduce a very pleasant level of humidity in the air.  I think that in the next month or so I may add a few more hanging plants where appropriate. But so far, I think the experiment has been a success and I didn’t have to transform my work space into something out of a Maurice Sendak story.

Contrary to popular belief, the search engine results that you see are not the same for everybody else.  Personalization of search results is an insidious convenience. The distorted perspective it gives of the web can cost your business valuable marketing dollars and it’s very hard to turn off.

You’ve probably noticed it on Netflix, every since my friend Cor watched those Japanese splatter films at my place. Netflix has been convinced I would love to see “Old Boy.”

Less noticeable, but far worse is the way Facebook News Feed which is literally screening your friends from you based on preferences and interaction rates so you can kiss your old friends goodbye…

On the plus side, Newegg is pretty good at predicting what I might be interested in and Amazon is terrific at recommending books.

But this is not about how some commercial sites think, I think. This is about the terrifying implications of that all powerful, all seeing, ubiquitous search engine, Google, because when Google customizes your search engine results this runs the risk of not just recommending the wrong movie, but of seriously limiting your worldview, by reinforcing an already biased perceptual framework. Or worse yet, costing your business money…

There is a time and a place for personalization, where I want my search results based on my past search history, my location, or what my social group has shared.  But not, when I want objective information and especially not when I’m trying to gauge the effectiveness of my site’s SEO.

Allow me to illustrate what this means for your business:

Me: Your site has a page rank of 2 and it is not showing up till page 4 on Google for your Major Keyword.

Client: What do you mean I’m #1 on Google for that keyword.

Me: Try typing “&pws=0” at the end of your search and see what happens.

Client: OMG!

Now if you check with Google they have some ridiculously convoluted instructions on how to turn off personalized results.  Which include, but are not limited to the following:

• Logging out of your account
• Deleting your search history and/or
• Clearing your cookies
• etc. etc. etc.

Using this method is not only inconvenient, it doesn’t work that well, as the instant you check your email or your calendar your getting customized results. Google obviously wants you to keep getting personalized results because it’s part of their system for monetizing search results.

Typing &pws=0 at the end of your search is by far, the simplest way to get non-personalized search results.

Now, for the bad new… Even with personalization turned off Google will auto-detect your location and serve up localized results.  And this, I’m sorry to say can’t be turned off as it’s based on your IP location.

Tune in next week, for how to get around that one.

There are dozens of  WordPress plugin shopping carts available today. One of the better on site eCommerce shopping cart plugins is WP e-Commerce. The Instinct team has made a highly extensible customizable plugin that extends the fundamental functionality of WordPress as a content delivery system with streamlined checkout system that seamlessly integrates with Google Checkout, PayPal, Payment Express, and many other trusted payment processors right out of the box. WP e-Commerce also has flexible Tax and shipping rate calculations and integrates with USPS, Australia Post external shipping calculators as well as Weight Rate, Flat Rate, and Table Rate calculations.

Word of warning, shipping calculations are still a little wonky but most of these issues should be resolved in the near future. Suffice to say, if you are planning on installing this plugin, don’t get too creative with your shipping setup just yet.

WP e-Commerce is useful enough on its own, and its functionality can be further extended with additional plugins, free and pay. In example, the gold cart plugin ($40) adds the following capabilities:

• Grid view
• Multiple image upload
• Gallery View
• Live Product search option inspired by apple.com live search.

As Well As Additional Payment Gateways

• Authorize.net AIM
• DPS / Payment Express
• Paystation.co.nz
• Sagepay (previously Protx)
• Eway access (XML is also in Beta)
• Bluepay
• iDeal (ABN AMRO)

If you would like to find out if WP e-Commerce is appropriate for your online business call us today at 888-266-5449 or email me@armandgilbert.com

The Best WordPress Permalink Structure

If you’ve doing a search for the best WordPress Permalink Structure you will find that the vast majority of SEO experts recommend either of following permalink structures for the best search engine results. (If you don’t have a clue what a permalink is click here)

%postname% – This is the most common permalink structure
%category%/%postname%

And these are excellent permalink structures for usability and SEO, however, they come at a cost. They aren’t scalable. Currently WordPress holds all the rewrite_rules in a single database field in the wp_options table. If you have a few dozen pages and post, you may have a few hundred rewrite_rules in it. And this is just fine. But if you have a few hundred pages and attachments, the amount of rewrite_rules goes up exponentially. And this will slow down your site and lead to crashes.

Furthermore, starting your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields requires more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which use the text “page slug” as the URL) so again WordPress is forced to store a lot more information in it’s database.

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID.

By now your probably thinking forget permalinks, I’ll just leave it alone. And this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you want WordPress to manage the site as efficiently as possible. But then you won’t get the nice intuitive link in the address bar and you won’t get to put those all important keywords in it either. So what to do?

In example, without permalinks this page’s address would be http://www.armandgilbert.com/?p=1001

Well if you’ve got a small site and don’t plan of ever having hundreds of pages.

Good Enough
%postname%
%category%/%postname% - Are both just fine.

If on the other hand you are planning a much larger site with hundreds of post then you may want to consider one of these two formats:
Better
/%post_id%/%postname%/
/%year%/%category%/%postname%/

What are Permalinks?

A permalink is what a visitor to your WordPress site will see in the the address bar of their browser when they go to an article and is link you would send to someone directing them to a page on your site. The term is a portmanteau of Permanent and Link hence- permalink.

Permalinks are configured in the permalinks option under the Settings Menu in the WordPress Admin Panel. Permalinks are the permanent URLs to individual WordPress posts, as well as categories and other lists of blog postings. Properly configured permalinks can have a profound effect on your site’s stability, speed, aesthetics, SEO, and usability.

Permalinks Options

%year%
The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004

%monthnum%
Month of the year, for example 05

%day%
Day of the month, for example 28

%hour%
Hour of the day, for example 15

%minute%
Minute of the hour, for example 43

%second%
Second of the minute, for example 33

%post_id%
The unique ID # of the post, for example 423

%postname%
A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). So “This Is A Great Post!” becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI.

%category%
A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI.

%author%
A sanitized version of the author name.