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Archive for November, 2005

The End Of Black Hat SEO

29 Nov 2005

Greg Jarboe is the guru of cranking up web visibility through effective optimization of press
releases and leveraging news search. Greg went to a search conference in Sweden and managed to take a ‘black hat’ to dinner when the conference was over. In between courses, the black hat confessed he was thinking about crossing the line from ‘evil’ to ‘good’, meaning he started to see ‘white hat’ SEO was catching up with ‘black hat’ SEO, and the future wasn’t looking as bright as it used to in his dark corner of the market. Here’s a rabbit that popped out of the hat, taken from an article from the hand of Gord Hotchkiss, the President and CEO of Enquiro.

"Up to now, online has been the Wild West. The sheriff hadn’t come to town yet. Black hats could get mediocre sites to the top of the rankings because the vast majority of legit sites had no clue about search engine optimization. Reams of content were hidden in content management systems, locked off from the search engines by impenetrable dynamic URLs. [...]

Brands are clueing into the importance of algorithmic search. Spider friendliness is usually a requirement in evaluations of new CMS solutions or site redesigns. And when you take a site that has thousand of pages of content, with rich internal linking structures and scads of legitimate, authoritative incoming links, it will jump to the top of the search results. It’s inevitable. [...]

Today, these huge brands are turning to white hat search practitioners to help unlock the full potential of their sites. [...] It doesn’t matter what tricks a black hatter has up their sleeve, you can’t beat the sheer bulk of these killer sites, as long as they’re properly optimized.

So, as the online geography becomes more civilized through the influx of legitimate business, black hats are forced to move off Main Street into the back alleys. There’s less territory for them to operate in. And now, they’re competing for position against other black hats who are as ruthless as they are, rather than against naïve site owners who have never heard of a meta tag or Pagerank. It gets harder to make a buck."

From [Enquiro] – Read the entire article ‘A Whiter Shade of Black
by Gord Hotchkiss.
This content is copyrighted by Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.

Ohter interesting reads :

Matt Cutts: Celebrity Google Engineer
The NetProfit Article Archive
The MarketingMonitor Article Archive

 

Sivaraman Swaminathan on Linkage & Credits – Blogiarism Series

28 Nov 2005

Together with Jason Schramm from Shiwej, I’ve decided to start a guestblogging series which will run on both our blogs at about the same time.
Today (November 28th, 2005) is the sixth installment of the series and we’re travelling to another part of the world to let Sivaraman Swaminathan from Customer World vent his opinion on blogiarism. Swami lives in India and is Sr.Vice President of iContract, a one-to-one marketing services company. He has over 14 years of work experience in the 1-2-1 marketing field and he’s a member of the Institute of Direct Marketing in London.

1. How did you get into blogging?

I have always had a passion for reading and sharing. My friend, Nishad had
introduced me to bloglines. Having had a passion for writing, I found this to be
a useful and easy tool to share. That’s how I got into Blogging.

2. What is your blog’s name, what is it about?

My blog’s name is Customer World [rss]. It is everything to with
customers, technologies that affect customer experience and communication
tools that will enhance relevance, customization and personalization.

3. Are there any policies you follow when reporting on an issue?

I normally give credit to the source. I believe it is extremely important.

4. What guidelines do you follow when linking to an outside source?

I give credit and a direct link. Any article reference and words, I provide
a link so that my readers can have a access to the source. I think the key is
to have transparency and honesty. If sharing is true promise of blogs, then we
have to do it by giving credit where it is due.

5. Do you think you are trustworthy? Why do your readers trust you?

Yes. I would like to believe I am trustworthy because I follow some very strict practices of referencing my articles/posts.

The reason why they trust me, I guess, is the authenticity of the information being provided. And on top of it I have my comments and view of the topic. If you have a point of view on the topic and have a certain reputation that you carry, I think readers will trust you. I believe I am building-up towards that.

6. Do you think bloggers should be treated as journalists and be privy to the rights and protections that journalists enjoy?

Well protecting one’s idea or thought is a must. If you go back to traditional
papers and articles, they always give references. I think that is something
we must adopt. I don’t think we need to "exert" control but we need to"encourage" referencing.

linkingstartshere

Initiated together with Jason Schramm, this guest blogging series will continue to make people aware of the power of linking and the need to give credit to the people who earn it.
Together, we’re improving the Blogosphere, you can help too if you start linking here !
And be sure to check out Jason’s post here.

Note :

Jason and I are not related but have a common field. Jason writes for the BlogNewsChannel, and takes care of Apple Watch, very surprisingly the Apple section of Nathan’s network.
I sometimes write on Inside Google & Inside Microsoft.

 

The Cardinal

28 Nov 2005

The ‘Who Would You Be in 1400 AD’ test. :)

The Cardinal

You scored 52% Cardinal, 33% Monk, 44% Lady, and 45% Knight!

You are the real power behind the throne. No one dares dispute or refuse you. Which is good because that’s how you get things done. You are also, however, completely corrupt and highly immoral. This doesn’t bother you in the least as you lounge around your rich comfortable surroundings, reveling in wealth and authority.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

cardinal stats

Link: The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test written by KnightlyKnave on OkCupid

 
No Comments

Posted in Geek, Humor

 

Wooing PCWorld

28 Nov 2005

When I got home from school today, I found a big package in the snailmailbox that came from San Francisco. Remarkably enough it had 7 shipping documents included for transport, but they were in fact 4 times the label document and 3 times the commercial invoice. American shipping policy is apparently one of many duplicates. A pretty impressive pack on first sight. The content was described as being 3 PC World magazines.
It took the snailman only five days to fly it across the ocean and deliver it to me. Very nice.

I’m writing this post to thank Andrew Brandt, the Senior Associate Editor, because he promised me in an email conversation that he’d send me some copies of the December issue in which Erik Larkin used some quotes from my blogpost concerning bundled software. I’m really very pleased PC World takes care of its sources so conscientious and I’m really² happy they keep their word and deliver on a promise.

Seriously, Andrew even marked the page that featured my quote with a paperclip and attached his nametag with a personal ‘Miel: Thanks ! – Andy’ note on the back. I must say that’s never been done to anyone I know of. What an effort, what a service… I feel so special :) – Hey guys, you’re welcome! If anything useful pops up to you in this blog, just let me know the same way you did while writing the ‘Software Surprises‘ article and you’ll get a yes for sure.

The label said there were 3 copies of PC World inside, and indeed that was true. Only thing is : two of the December issues were enclosed, but also the November issue, which then makes 3. Now I have stuff to read on the train to school for about two weeks I think, and that’s just great ! Thanks again !

Advice for other magazines/newspapers :

If you ever find content on a blog you can use in an article, please have the same courteous policy Andrew has. Contact the authors of that certain blogpost BEFORE you publish your content. Send an email to ask if it’s ok to republish bits or pieces, even if it’s only about two silly phrases of an entire article (which was the case for me).

I know I don’t make the difference in Erik Larkin’s article, but it’s just common sense to do it this way, when ‘the press’ meets ‘the blogosphere’. I don’t get paid for writing content. Journalists do. So making money (even indirectly) from content written by non-profit citizen journalists is really a kick in the dark and below the belt at the same time. Especially when you’re not linking back or giving credit. In this case, I’m not being linked to, but I am given credit and I got ‘paid’ by means of two copies of the issue that featured my words, plus I’ve been given a third issue of PC World which had totally nothing to do with the entire situation.

That’s good enough for me, and I bet it’ll be good enough for other bloggers too if the situation is similar.

That said, I have to add a little something Randy encountered with IDG before the entire buzz about my ‘Toolbar Needed To Run FlashPlayer‘ experience. He brought it up in an interview me and Jason Schramm did with him about blogiarism just recently :

"I avoid linking to any IDG Website as I caught them re-publishing one of my articles on their Website without asking permission or paying me. I emailed the authors listed on their Website and found a dozen more that were never contacted or paid. When I approached them, they told me I was privileged to get one of my articles on their Website. They ignored most of my emails and thru lawyers at me the rest of the time. They refused to compensate me and basically put me in a position where I would have to take legal action to get any compensation for myself or the other authors. I personally wasn’t interested in a lawsuit and abandoned the issue. But, I avoid giving them any Google juice."

I can only say that I feel bad for Randy for not having received the same treatment I’ve been given. Maybe it’s because of this PC World changed its policy towards the blogosphere? I don’t know, I can’t say. I only hope there are more editors like Andrew Brandt working at PC World now, because I for one can testify this man knows how to practice PR.

 

R.I.P. George Best

28 Nov 2005

George Best (22 May 1946 – 25 November 2005) was a Northern Ireland football international who is mainly remembered for his time with Manchester United F.C.. He played for United between 1963 and 1974, helping them to win the Football League Championship in 1965 and 1967, and the European Cup in 1968. The same year, he was named European Footballer of the Year and Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year.

At the age of 15, George Best was discovered in Belfast by Manchester United scout Bob Bishop. He was subsequently given a trial and signed up by chief scout Joe Armstrong in 1961. He turned professional and made his debut for Manchester United in 1963.

He made 466 appearances for Manchester United in all competitions, scoring 178 goals (including six in one game against Northampton Town). In 1974, the 27-year-old Best was sacked by United for excessive drinking and persistent failure to attend training sessions and matches. Over the next decade, Best drifted between several football clubs.

Best has often been called the most naturally gifted player from the British Isles, rivaled only by Pelé and Diego Maradona on the world stage. Maradona himself has frequently named Best as his all-time favourite player. Pelé once stated that George Best was the best player he ever saw play and named him as one of the 125 best living footballers in his 2004 FIFA 100 list.

While at Manchester United, Best’s talent and showmanship made him a crowd and media favourite. He was dubbed “the fifth Beatle” for his long hair and good looks, but his celebrity lifestyle led to problems with gambling, womanising and alcoholism. Best often told the story of a bellboy who entered his hotel room with breakfast in the early 1970s. Seeing Best in bed with the current Miss World, a magnum of champagne and several thousand pounds of cash won from a night’s gambling.

Taken from the [Wikipedia].

 

How eBay Lures Customers

28 Nov 2005

Whenever I’m browsing to a dotcom, I only type the name without the suffix (or affix) and just hit ctrl-enter to go there. Call it lazy or time-saving. I was searching for ‘Google’ and accidentally did something wrong, causing my browser (maxthon) to open op a Yahoo! SERP [link]. (Maxthon, an IE-based browser uses Yahoo! instead of MSN, interestingly enough). GeoLocation makes me end up in the UK & Ireland version.

I noticed the first (sponsored) result for Google was a link to eBay.co.uk and
it looked like this:

ebay1

I usually don’t click on ads, but I just wanted to find out what Google Products were for sale at eBay, and to be honest I was quite amused by what I’ve seen. Let me tune you in :)

ebay2

Isn’t that cute? I can buy a GMail account for $0.93 :) Here I was thinkin it was for free. But it gets better. If I pay a little more, I can get this :

ebay3

Wow ! Almost 200 MB more for only $1.70 ! Sweet ! But of course, this is for an ‘Exclusive Google GMail Account. I totally understand. This is if you want to be with different from ‘the crowd’. This means that 155 MB of Google webspace is worth about $0.77. Good to know.

This is for the real Google lovers, the real stuff ! Not for rookies !

ebay4

But if you see it big, you can also opt-in on this one :

ebay5

Needless to say this really is a bargain compared to the other results ! Tricky part is : You get the ten (10) invitations for $1.70. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can get the accounts. Too bad it doesn’t mention if it’s for the regular GMail accounts or the Exclusive ones. ;)

On a side note : I saw ebay changes the word ‘goggles’ into ‘googles’, which brings us to following items :

Good for any diving experience : Adult Swim Googles for swimming.
(Not for climbing mountains or riding bikes !)

ebay6

Or what about these exclusive Night Vision Googles ?
Now you can search in the dark too !

ebay7

Google Products are also for kids. I’ll illustrate it with the following image :

ebay8

Not bad at all, these customized Google products. I wonder if Google knows about this algorithm that transforms their registered, trademarked name into a random product.
Another goody : The Google Wine. Sure the Google Guys have lots of money, which would make it seem logical they have a good wine cellar too. Here’s what I came up with :

ebay9

This link
is a totally unrelated sale, but it’s announced as a Google Adsense website that’s
been put up for sale. In fact it’s just an unknow site about recipes :

ebay10

This is just to illustrate how Google is being used. Abused if you want to call it that way. And how eBay tolerates it and even contributes to the abuse by letting their algorithms change existing words into the keywords used by a surfer in a search engine. This sort of coding gives internet a bad name. I’d call it eBay-spam. Imagine these sales pages turning up in SERPs. Then it would be spam in general. This is misleading and deceiving. It’s just not-done.

Here’s the [eBay link]

 

Tuning Windows

27 Nov 2005

Just recently (in my last post to be exact) I needed to get a screencap of a movie that was running in my MediaPlayer. Every time I did it, I ended up with a black screen in Photoshop, so I needed to find a way to get around that. I used Google to find me a site that could help me and arrived at Darknet. They listed up how to screencap movies for RealPlayer, Windows MediaPlayer and Mac.

Capturing screen shots of a movie, a ‘how-to’ guide :

"For Windows Media Player, you have to disable Hardware Acceleration. You can do this in Windows Media Player 6.4 and later by clicking on View -> Options and moving the Hardware Acceleration slider to None. You can do this in Windows Media Player 7 by clicking on Tools -> Options, going to the Performance tab, moving the Hardware Acceleration slider to None, and restarting Windows Media Player. Now you may make take a screenshot by pressing the [ALT + PRNTSCRN] combination."

Remember to restore the settings after your copy-paste adventure. via [Darknet]
Philipp also did a blogpost on it, but I noticed it too late.

Next : In case you want to convert a video to DVD, VCD, SVCD, CVD or
AVI,DivX,Xvid, ASF and a lot of other formats, check out the guides from [Video-Help]. They have really good tutorials about it.

Next : "Do you use the Run feature in Windows XP? [...] tools and utilities that I bet you never knew you had that can be accessed through the Run feature."

Check out the 113 (!) options on [FixMyXP] and expand your XP knowledge.

Next : "Windows allocates resources according to its settings and manages devices accordingly. You can use the System tool in Control Panel to change performance options that control how programs use memory, including paging file size, or environment variables that tell your computer where to find some types of information."

From Microsoft’s Knowledge Base [id: 308417] :

How to set the performance options for your computer Win XP Home/Pro :

* How to manage processor time
* How to manage computer memory
* How to change the size of the virtual memory paging file
* How to optimize the memory usage
* How to change the visual effects

Next : Tuning Internet Explorer :

* One more way to fine tune Internet. Explorer load time
* Customize Internet. Explorer Title bar
* Further speedup broadband cable Internet connection

Highlight : Remove unnecessary Scheduled Tasks scan by Internet Explorer and make Internet Explorer Load faster :

[...] "trick is to open registry and navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace and then looking for shared tasks ClassId key {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. Simply delete it and get out of registry. No need to reboot. Launch Internet Explorer and see the difference."

From [XPTuneUp]

 

American Dad Immortalizes Dancing Nerd

26 Nov 2005

The dotcom was down for a few days due to a misunderstanding. But now it’s back, so let’s go for it again :) Thank you Tom, for fixing it.

Last night I was watching an episode of American Dad (episode 10, All About Steve) and I noticed a very cool thing. Apparently, the makers of American Dad got a bit of their juice from a very comic clip that was all over the internet. From the descriptive pages on Fox, here’s what happens near the end of this episode :

“During a panel discussion on Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings, Vevver is speaking when Stan barges in. Vevver tells the crowd that Stan is the man who convinced Lucas to not release the original, untouched version of Star Wars on DVD, and the crowd attacks, allowing Vevver to escape.” [Read here, scroll to Episode 110, released on the 25th of September]

For copyrighted reasons, I can’t put up a sample of the clip because YouTube doesn’t allow copyrighted material. But here’s a screenshot of the dancing/shadow-fighting geek :

It’s amazing how one geek can change the world with a dance and some humming, and it’s pretty cool how a cartoon can make that geek immortal. :)

Related : American Dad has landed in Europe