Central Perk

luni, 27 iunie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 05:10 PM PDT

Demotivational posters are hilarious takeoffs of the motivational posters that many schools and workplaces post all over the place and make people generally feel ill. I think that a nice big dose of de-motivation is needed for us all. Check out my anti-motivational posters!

A new selection of funny demotivational posters.

Yoda is Named World's Ugliest Dog

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 04:56 PM PDT

Meet Yoda, man's worst-looking best friend. A 14-year-old Chinese-crested and Chihuahua mix was declared World's Ugliest Dog at California's Sonoma Marin Fair. Yoda clinched the unorthodox beauty contest with his poofs of hair, hairless legs and overall unsightliness.

Yoda weighs only 1.8 pounds and his owner says she first thought he was a rat before learning he was really a tiny dog. Yoda has been the family's pet since he was two years old. He was found abandoned in a field.

Source: dailymail

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

The Ethical Issues of Personalisation Online

Posted: 26 Jun 2011 01:36 PM PDT

Posted by Hannah Smith

It feels kind of negative to start a post with a warning, but you’re all busy people and I’d hate for you to waste your time – so here goes: Today I’ll be talking about the ethics of personalisation online, and the potential issues which might arise as a result. As such I won’t be offended if you decide this isn’t quite your cup of tea and decide not to read on.

Still with me?

Thanks for sticking around, you look lovely by the way...

So this post was prompted by a seminar I attended this week where I was lucky enough to see Eli Pariser present on precisely this topic. He’s very passionate about what he calls ‘the Filter Bubble’ (i.e. the effects of online personalisation) so much so he’s written a book on the subject. So, what’s the deal with personalisation? Well, as Cyrus highlighted in his recent Personalised Search post:

“Google’s personalised search means nearly every result returned within a browser is altered one way or another. It’s rare that two different people on Earth ever see the exact same set of search results.”

What’s wrong with that? Google personalise results so people see the things which are most relevant to them. Normally we’d see relevancy as a good thing... Personalisation is the future – improved user experience – hurrah!

But wait - Eric Schmit says:

“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not been tailored for them.”

That sounds a little sinister... It’s going to be hard for me to see stuff that hasn’t been tailored for me? Why? I thought your algorithms were being used to show the ‘best’ results...

Well, it turns out that they are, it’s just that ‘best’ is subjective – ‘best’ is based on your point of view.

“Increasingly online, it’s becoming impossible to escape your own point of view.” - Eli Pariser

Fortunately my point of view is 100% correct. I am never wrong. Ever. I really like being right because I get a natural high thanks to the dopamine which is released by my very clever brain. It’s awesome when you see your own views reflected right back at you via the magic of the interweb.

But what if I’m not right? What if I’m never again exposed to a contrary point of view?

And what happens when other sites get in on the act? Oh hai Facebook!

“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” – Mark Zuckerburg.

Uh oh – it’s beginning to feel like you’ve got me wrong... I want to hear about important stuff. I might not ‘like’ hearing about stories like that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think that they’re important.

Pariser refers to this as ‘the psychological equivalent of obesity’. The personalisation filters which are currently being used may bias the content which you see – for example, if you mainly spend your time online seeking entertaining content which doesn’t seek to challenge you in any way (drunk party pictures on Facebook *like*) then that might soon be all that you see.

Now clearly, if people are going to head to Facebook for their daily dose of real-world news then mankind has got itself some massive problems. But if people are going to Google for news and are still only seeing a one-sided view of the world which just so happens to coincide with what they already believe is that really the ‘best’ result? On the face of it, it might seem to be a ‘good’ result from the user’s perspective – but is it for the greater good?

Here comes the ethics question – Is it ethical for search results to be personalised in this way?

In my view, it’s really not ok. Most people (i.e. those who work outside of search) don’t realise that their search results are personalised. Plus, as Cyrus quite rightly highlighted “...Google made sure it’s darned hard to turn off.” Much as it might comfort me to only view results which sit comfortably with my own politics, is it good for me? We’re handing over control to an algorithm that by design does not strive to provide a balanced mix of results.

This scares me.

But, is it reasonable to expect a corporate entity to act for the greater good? Particularly if providing users with a more balanced SERP results in them high-tailing it straight into the warm embrace of the competition? In any case – wasn’t it always this way? Before the internet people consumed news only via whichever media sat comfortably with their own political affiliation. Plus of course, even if a more balanced mix of results are shown, you can’t *make* people click through to read something they don’t want to.

So, what do you think? Should we be afraid of personalisation? Should we push for easier ways to turn it off? Should there be more ‘balanced’ results for certain types of queries? Should I get myself a tin foil hat, cancel my broadband, flush my smartphone and hide under my desk?

Over to you mozzers, I’d really like to hear your views – especially if they don’t coincide with my own.

Image credit: Lucky Lager - http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/5281358464/sizes/m/in/photostream/

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Seth's Blog : A relentless race to the bottom

A relentless race to the bottom

They're shutting down Jimmy Wang's store. Shutting down a succesful little business.

Walgreen's is moving into town, my town, a town with three or four small drugstores and plenty of places to buy stale cookies, thank you very much.

I've written about Brother's market before, an anchor in my little town. The only place to get hand-picked fresh food, pretty much, and the sort of market you could imagine moving to town just to be near. Remember those little markets where they actually care about the produce they sell? In a world filled with bitter cash register jockeys, Brother's was different. A smiling face, a family member mentioned, a don't-worry-about-the-pennies sort of interaction.

I've probably shopped there a thousand times, and every single time it brought a smile to my face.

The problem is that while Brother's was in a race to the top, a race to create more and better interactions, Walgreen's is in a race to the bottom. They exist to extract the last penny from every bit of real estate they can control. That's the deal they made with their shareholders.

The landlord who owns this land lives in another state. He doesn't care. He can ignore the protests and the petitions.

And Walgreen's won't even notice the community outrage. We can write letters or call or boycott the new store (or all their stores) and the local manager, the local region manager, the state-level manager, the head of store operations--none of them care, of course, because it's just a job to them.

Real estate is the soul killer here. You can't have a beloved local market and a public drugstore chain occupying the very same spot. Pundits like me can talk all we want about being remarkable, about leading and about making connections, but when a public company wants your spot, when it can extract a few extra pennies per square foot, you lose.

The internet has opened the door for millions of businesses to do things differently, because there are other assets now, assets that can transcend location. Your permission to talk to customers, your reputation, your unique products--you can build a business around them online. But that doesn't work so well if you depend on local (and leased) real estate, if you're selling watercress or radishes, apparently.

One by one, store by store, the chains expand, earning a few more dollars a share and further insulating themselves from the communities they used to serve. No, my neighbors and I don't need another drugstore, we have plenty. That's not going to change Walgreen's mind, and it's not going to help Jimmy and his team, either. My heart goes out to them. Thanks for everything you did for our community, guys.

The race to the top continues. It's just a lot harder if you have a landlord.

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Robert Sheinbein Talks About LinkWheels Graywolf's SEO Blog

Robert Sheinbein Talks About LinkWheels

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 07:12 AM PDT

The following is a sponsored post for Linkwheel.

For today’s post we’re going to be talking to Robert Sheinbein of LinkWheel.net, Hi Rob for my readers who don’t know you can you tell us a little about yourself and experience in the world of internet marketing.

Hi. I’m Robert Sheinbein, and I have a host of websites that deal with various aspects of the internet. Some of my best-known sites are Oilchange.com (which is a premium website design company), ekonline.com, and SEO services like linkwheel.net and madcontent.com. We’re based out of Canada, and have offices in the USA and in India. We have been into the creative side of the internet for quite a while now, and clients have always asked us if we can also help optimize their websites. That is how we got into SEO, and both our SEO sites are leaders in their own niches.

SEO is a complex discipline, in your opinion, what are some of the top things that site owners should focus on right now?

You’re absolutely right! We have worked with many clients over the last 2 years. Sadly, we see that most of these people don’t have an idea about SEO. They just come up and say ‘If I pay you this much, can you get me onto the first page of Google?’. Their on-site optimization is shabby, and a significant percentage of these websites will never rank. People should understand that a website is an asset. Like any other asset, it should build with time, and the value should enhance. Starting a new website just because it costs just $10 won’t serve a purpose. Site owners should have their home work done right. The exact keywords they want to focus on should be a part of their on-page strategy. Once the site is indexed by search engines with those keywords, whatever else is done off-page will yield results. And people should be very wary of SEO which ‘brings your site to page #1 instantly’!! Once a Google ban comes, like the Google Panda Update, it is effectively the end of the website!

It’s also important that anyone involved in SEO stay abreast of current changes, like the recent Panda update. When we spoke initially you mentioned how LinkWheel made some changes to your product can you tell my readers what some of those changes where and why you think they where important.

We have been building LinkWheels for several years. LinkWheel.net has been #1 on Google for over 2 years now, and like I said earlier, we worked with thousands of sites. All this while, we have been fine-tuning our offering to get best results for our customers. After the Panda Update, we decided to revamp everything on our site, and we rebuilt our existing packages from the ground up. So compared to three months ago, nothing on our site is the same! We have decided to give extra teeth to our packages, and you will now notice a much more rounded SEO package – with Web 2.0 properties, Article Submissions, Press Releases, Social Bookmarking, Videos, and Backlinks. And we have noticed that the results are much more pronounced now. Like always, we only use unique content written by people in-house, and the Panda update has only vindicated our strategy to stick to unique content. Earlier, people came to us to buy a LinkWheel, and went elsewhere for other SEO services – or they tried to do it themselves. But now, these are inclusive packages targeting all areas of optimization.

In the early days of SEO people where concerned with on page tactics, then we moved to off page tactics and link building, where do you think things stand now.

Good that you brought this up. I feel the real mistake we all did was to move completely away from on page strategies. When off page really took off a few years ago, everyone quit the on page bandwagon and shifted to sites which got put up in a few hours, and then paid consultants to get them to the top of search engines with off-page strategies. It could be possible to come ahead on search engines, but that result won’t stay – especially after the Panda update. Even if people use WordPress or any other readymade tool to launch their website, they should make sure that they first focus is on-page. If that is done well, the off-page results will be much more pronounced, and will last longer.

While search engines may be looking for additional signals, links are always going to be part of the ranking algorithm, what are some link building aspects or tips you think will be effective and have the most influence on increasing rankings.

You’re right. Link Building will always remain one of the most integral aspects of SEO. But building links just for the sake of a number isn’t going to cut it any more. Experts already know that just backlinks are not going to work. Sadly, many SEO companies choose to hide that strategy from their customers. Building backlinks on auto pilot will fade out. We’ll go back to the old days once more – where links are created by hand. Either on blogging platforms, or directories, or bookmarking sites, or on blogs as comments. Niche is the ‘in’ thing, and the next big thing will be local search. So backlinks relevant to the niche will be ranked much higher. It is a good trend that we are moving away from quantity to quality. For instance, our Orbit Package comes with about 75 direct links, and is worth much more than several thousand ordinary backlinks. The results are much better, and are almost permanent in nature.

Let’s switch gears to social media for a moment, while there’s lots of talk about social media in general the two biggest sites everyone talks about are Twitter and Facebook. How important do you think it is to integrate them into your overall marketing strategy.

Social Media has become mana for most of the businesses today. With time, it’ll settle down, and something else will come up But you’re right – integrating FaceBook and Twitter into a marketing campaign is absolutely necessary. Every business owner wants a connect with his visitors and customers, and there is no better way to do that. And since both of these (and YouTube) are viral, they are very real sources of genuine traffic. The good thing is that most businesses today have the presence of mind to use these tools. But creating accounts is not going to be enough – especially for new-age businesses which thrive online. It is necessary that they spend quality time on them too.

Let’s look into the future, what do you think are some things that are on the horizon that will have a big effect on the internet marketing industry and people should be paying attention to?

Local Search is going to become big. Online Businesses will see that they will be competing with businesses from the real world – in real time! So gearing up for that should be the way forward for all entities online. The online traffic will get more meaningful. People will start spending higher monies online, and partnerships will pave the way forward. Integration with all kinds of convenience options – including payment gateways, shopping carts, logistics sites, and Social Media is going to decide which sites will make it and which will go out of business. With regard to SEO, several gray practices will get weeded out. The future search position leaders are going to be websites which use genuine white hat practices. So if sites are still stuck with their old SEO consultants who tell them that buying a million backlinks is the way forward, it is time for them to change their SEO provider

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions today, since you’ve been kind enough to spend your time answering them, why don’t you take this opportunity to tell people about your company, and the services you offer

It has been a pleasure! I hope your visitors will find this information of some use. And yes, the two pillars of SEO continue to be top quality content, and high quality backlinks. Our websites www.madcontent.com and www.linkwheel.net cater to both those needs respectively. We always work hard to keep our offerings very competitive, and we firmly believe that SEO budgets should not get out of hand! People should spend wisely, and calculate their ROI on SEO spending. Our prices are very good! In addition to that, we have a special offer for visitors of Wolf Howl – pick any package from www.linkwheel.net, and just enter the code ‘20SPECIAL‘ while checking out. That instantly activates a 20% discount! We look forward to helping your visitors get ahead on SERPs. Cheers!

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts.

photo credit: Photospin

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Robert Sheinbein Talks About LinkWheels

Photo of the Day: President Obama greets the troops

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, June 27, 2011

Photo of the Day: President Obama greets the troops

President Barack Obama jokes with military personnel along a tarmac rope line before boarding Air Force One at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh, Pa., June 24, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)