Central Perk

marți, 7 decembrie 2010

Damn Cool Pics

Michael Buble and a Surprise
Ghosts Captured on Camera
Brazilian Car Show Models
Manhattanhenge Miracle
Amazing and Very Rare Natural Phenomenon: Cappuccino Coast
Unicorn Cow
History of Birth Control (Infographic)

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:05 AM PST

What a nice surprise.

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 03:37 AM PST

Do you believe in ghosts? Personally I have never seen one. But these people assure they have. More of it, they have managed to capture ghosts on camera, so you can view their photos and judge yourself whether these pictures are real or manipulated.

More Ghost Pictures:
Top 15 Most Famous Ghost Pictures Ever Taken

Brazilian Car Show Models

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:25 AM PST

A collection of sexy models at a Brazilian car show..

Manhattanhenge Miracle

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 12:47 AM PST

This spectacular miracle you can see on these pictures is known as the unique urban phenomenon of Manhattanhenge. It's when the sun sets over New York City and all the streets on the city grid are illuminated similar to the solstice at Stonehenge. This happens twice a year and coincides with the spring and autumn equinoxes. The scenes are truly beautiful and miraculous.

Amazing and Very Rare Natural Phenomenon: Cappuccino Coast

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 11:47 PM PST

It is called Cappuccino coast. Because it doesn't occur very often, you are a lucky one to see these pictures taken in Cape Town, as Cappuccino was brought to its shores by the strongest storm. This thick foam in the ocean appears when salt water interacts with the decomposition products of underwater living creatures, and everything is churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles.

Unicorn Cow

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 11:41 PM PST

Farmer Jia Kebing noticed a small bump on this cow's forehead when it was born two years ago but didn't expect it to grow into a 20cm (8in) horn.

History of Birth Control (Infographic)

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 11:32 PM PST

Birth control are techniques and methods use to prevent fertilisation or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception (the prevention of fertilisation), contragestion (preventing the implantation of the blastocyst) and abortion (the removal or expulsion of a fetus or embryo from the uterus).

The techniques and methods frequently overlap and many birth control techniques and methods are not strictly contraceptive as fertilisation or conception may occure. Contraception include barrier methods, such as condoms or diaphragm, and oral and injectable contraceptives. Contragestives, also known as post-coital birth control, include intrauterine devices and what is known as the morning after pill. (Source: Wikipedia)

Egyptian documents dating from 1500 B.C. list substances that stop pregnancy.

Click to enlarge.

Source: laboratorytechnician

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

The Rich Get Richer: True in SEO, Social + All Organic Marketing

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 03:12 PM PST

Posted by randfish

Many years ago, one of the search marketing industry's early great minds, Mike Grehan, wrote a seminal piece that's been referenced and influenced ever since - Filthy Linking Rich. Mike's point was well encapsulated in a few sentences:

The Mathew effect, when applied to networks, basically equates to well connected nodes being more likely to attract new links, while poorly connected nodes are disproportionately likely to remain poor

In fact, it has been proposed that "the rich get richer" effect drives the evolution of real networks. If one node has twice as many links as another node, then it is precisely twice as likely to receive a new link.

For those new to the field of SEO, social media and all forms of organic marketing (content development, blogging, email list building, etc.), it probably comes as no surprise that this same principle applies to each of these. The email marketer with a giant email list has much greater leverage to add 100 new subscriptions through the power of their existing influence than their new competitor, just starting out with those first dozen email addresses. The website ranking in position #1 for a high volume search query likely earns a few, natural, reference links each day, while a struggling competitor, even one who might have better prices, quality, value or content, must struggle out of obscurity before any of those "links via discovery" come their way.

This principle applies cross-channel equally well.

High search rankings can earn you lots of visitors who might subscribe to an email list. Thousands of Twitter followers can mean direct SEO benefit and second-order effects like more links and branding. A popular LinkedIn group can drive traffic that turn into more RSS subscribers, getting you noticed by industry lists, which then feed into more media attention and links, which delivers higher rankings. It's a virtuous circle -- unless you're sitting on the sidelines.

Many of the marketers I talk to complain bitterly about this challenge, though not all of them necessarily comprehend why the difficulty is so great. Thankfully, there are ways you can give yourself a step up, even in those early stages:

Build Basic Competency Everywhere: Since your email marketing efforts will boost your link building and your social media traffic can turn into RSS subscriptions, make sure you've at least got the basics of every channel covered. An accessible website is key to any rankings - and basic keyword targeting is, too. Get a presence on the major social media networks with your brand name and a basic email signup form on your site. Establish a blog, an RSS feed and a presence on some major industry sites (forums, Q+A sites, blog comments, etc). These basics will serve you well no matter what shape your marketing takes.
Focus on Your Strongest Channels: Which marketing channel should you choose? It depends. If earning links is hard for you, search is still low ROI and email newsletters are a mystery, don't start with these - go with what you know and build up your social media presence, your research-based white papers or your subscription-worthy blog content. With cross-channel leverage, you can shore up these weaker sectors when you have the strength to take them on.
No Matter What, Get Analytics + Conversion Tracking Right: All your efforts, in any spectrum of organic marketing, will be for naught if you can't measure and improve. Analytics and conversion tracking can show you which channels work for you and where you efforts are best spent - these aren't the only consideration, as passion and aptitude should figure into the mix as well, but they're the critical baseline. Get tracking right or suffer.

Overtaking a competitor or earning your way into a crowded field with strong existing players isn't just hard, it's getting harder, at a faster pace, every day. I've shared this graphic before (when writing about how SEO Can Be a Competitive Advantage), but it's worth showing again:

Rich Getting Richer

Don't be discouraged, but do be wary, and do push to start investing in organic now. Like Manhattan real estate in the '80's, it might seem like there's a peak in how hard it is to enter the market, but it's only going to get worse.

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Tuesday Talks: One-Year Anniversary of the Open Government Directive

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2010

Tuesday Talks: One-Year Anniversary of the Open Government Directive

In honor of the one-year anniversary of the Open Government Directive, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein will be answering your questions on the Administration’s progress and the ideas and practices that are being implemented at the White House and across the agencies in a live video chat on WhiteHouse.gov.

Submit your questions and watch live at 2:20 p.m. EST today.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama jogs across the tarmac to shakes hands with people gathered to watch his arrival on Air Force One at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, N.C., Dec. 6, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SEOptimise

2010 Predictions – How Well Did I Do?

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:54 AM PST

Last year I made 10 predictions for PPC in 2010. I got a few of the more obvious things right, and few things wrong and I completely failed to predict some quite important changes. Here’s how I did:

1. CPCs will rise

This one was spot on (and also a complete no brainer).

2. More display advertising

More of our client’s at SEOptimise are using the display network now; some of them are even getting very good results from it so as far as my own PPC life goes this prediction is correct. I don’t know about the industry as a whole, does anyone have any figures about how the search/content share of spend has changed?

3. Conversion Attribution

“As part of their drive to push more business advertisers into display advertising Google will begin to move away from the last click attribution model that is the core of Google Analytics (and to a certain extent, AdWords).”

To a certain extent, the AdWords Search Funnels feature fits in with this prediction. It does not yet feature an actual attribution model but it does give you the data to have a shot at building one. I also predicted that we would still be talking about attribution modelling well into 2011; it is too early to say if I’m right on this one, but I think I probably am.

After seeing the Search Funnels data I no longer believe that conversion attribution is the answer to all my PPC problems; I think we will still be talking about it but I don’t think that much progress will be made in the near future (it is just not as important as I first thought).

4. Bing/Yahoo I

I predicted that Binghoo would increase their share of ad spend. For SEOptimise, this is true but for the industry as a whole I was completely wrong about this. As of Q3 2010 Google had increased their share of ad spend by 2% (according to Efficient Frontier’s search engine reports

5. Bing/Yahoo II

I thought that one of the ways Binghoo could improve their market share was by improving their interface and advertiser tools. Although I quite like their new keyword tool not much has changed in this area. The AdCenter interface is still pretty horrible and still doesn’t work in Chrome. I couldn’t have been more wrong about this one.

6. Other Platforms

“Other sites will introduce their own CPC auction platforms.” I didn’t mention Facebook in this prediction. If their CPC advertising feature was launched in 2010 then this prediction is a success but I think they already had it in 2009. I am unaware of any sites that have launched CPC adverts in 2010 so this prediction is wrong.

7. Real Time Search

What real time search?

8. Conversion Optimiser

“I expect Google to continue to work on their conversion optimiser tool”. Google launched “enhanced” CPC bidding during 2010. I consider this an improvement over their Conversion Optimiser tool although it is far from a “set it and forget it” solution (which is a good thing in my opinion).

9. Changes to the AdWords Advanced Exams

I haven’t noticed any big changes in the industry after the introduction of these exams. Fail.

10. Paid Search Will Dominate the SERPs

New background colour for adverts. Instant suggestion box pushing organic below the fold. New ad extensions giving AdWords even more real estate. Changing “Sponsored Listings” to “Ads”. A fairly obvious prediction to make (and one I’m happy to make again for next year) but definitely a successful one.

I give myself 4.5/10 for last years list. What do you think? What about your predictions from last year?

Seth's Blog : The open road

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The open road

I was driving on a very dangerous two-lane highway in India. More than eight hours of death-defying horror...

Our driver aggressively tailgated whatever car, truck or horse was in front of us, and then passed as soon as he was able (and sometimes when he wasn't).

What amazed me, though, was what he did during those rare times when there wasn't a car in front of us, just open road.

He didn't speed up. In fact, it seemed as though he slowed down.

He was comfortable with the competitive nature of passing (I may not be fast, but I'm faster than you), and he was petrified of the open road and the act of choosing his own speed.

Of course, we do the same thing with our career or our businesses. Most of us need competition to tell us how fast to go.