Reading the FAQ leaves me with the same impression I had before. I said:

Without knowing what I'm talking about, I got the impression from signal v. noise that google web accelerator pre-caches all links when you're on a website. And so they're hitting the server whether you follow a link or not. Does this sound like I'm onto it?

And Betsy said:

It's the other way around. If you follow a link, they save it. The next time you follow the link, they give you the saved copy unless there's reason to believe it's out of date. So you wind up with fewer server hits, not more.

But this sounds like regular browser caching. If google says below

What is prefetching?

Prefetching takes advantage of idle time when a user is viewing a page to accelerate the links which he or she is likely to follow next by “prefetching” those pages. This speeds up users' online experience by making many pages load faster. You can learn more about prefetching on the Mozilla website.

2. How does Google Web Accelerator decide what to prefetch?

Google Web Accelerator decides what links should be prefetched based on aggregate usage statistics as well as the user’s mouse movements. But Google Web Accelerator also allows websites to specify which links should be prefetched (for example, the top story on a news website), so that webmasters can prioritize links which they expect their users to be interested in.

I still got the impression that it's pre-caching, and the signal-to-noise people think this will increase load because you won't necessarily follow that link.

Thanks, Betsy. I obviously need to work out how to turn that off for my high-volume sites.

I didn't read the FAQ carefully. You're right, Bon; it's both a cache and a pre-fetcher. But it isn't going to follow every link; just the "likely" ones, whatever that means.

An attempt at statistical probability?

The article was also pointing out that for web based apps that are running things like administration pages Google Accelerator was clicking links that did things like modify layout and delete items in the attempts to prefetch.

Frappr sucks. It won't let me use my actual zip code. Says it doesn't exist.

Does Google Maps recognise your zip code? (I'm assuming it does).

I'd bitch.

Frappr recognized that Lakewood isn't Cleveland. Yahoo doesn't seem to know that.

Does Google Maps recognise your zip code? (I'm assuming it does).

It does. Frappr is discriminating against tiny post offices. Pillocks.

I have a hiveminded tech question. Joe and I are in the middle of setting up a coffee roasting business. We have a website (www.simcoffees.com) and now we need to add a shopping cart capability. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to go about doing this? We have seen some companies that will allow you to take credit cards (I don't know all the terminology yet) but many of them seem to charge a lot. We only have one product (bag of roasted coffee) so I don't know that we need something fancy.

Any suggestions?