Central Perk

marți, 21 decembrie 2010

Damn Cool Pics

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Parrot Sings Let the Bodies Hit the Floor
Modern Japanese Capsule Hotel
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 15
The Ugliest and Scariest Fishes
Christmas Inspired Demotivational Posters
Lawnmower Racing
Top 10 Female Child Stars Who Became Hotties

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 02:23 AM PST

Dear Damn Cool Pics Visitors!

DamnCoolPics will be back after Christmas and New Year holidays. I wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Faith makes all thingz possible,
Hope makes all thingz work,
Love makes all thingz beautiful,
May U hav all da three 4 this Christmas.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Let the coming year be prosperous joyful for all of us.

With my warm wishes,

DCP.

Parrot Sings Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 02:19 AM PST

Modern Japanese Capsule Hotel

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 02:02 AM PST

Welcome to the 9 Hours Hotel where you can spend the night sleeping in one of 125 small little capsules called hubs that are only large enough for a person to lie down in for $80. They are quite popular in Japan for commuters who have a need to stay in town overnight. This one is located in Kyoto.

The 9 h capsule hotel and all amenities were designed by Fumie Shibata of design studio s, which she founded in 1994. with her team, she defined the elements necessary for a 'minimal transit space' in big cities in japan. The product designer has been pursuing the 9h project as a creative director for 3 years.

Buckminster Fuller said:
"Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. It's time we gave this some thought."

While we spend almost a third of our life in bed, we spend most of it sleeping. In urban centers there are often issues of light, noise, ventilation and privacy. Perhaps sleeping pods are not such a bad idea.

Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 15

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 12:27 AM PST

The Ugliest and Scariest Fishes

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 12:18 AM PST

These are real marine reptiles that seem to come directly from hell.

Christmas Inspired Demotivational Posters

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 12:08 AM PST

Lawnmower Racing

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 11:58 PM PST

Lawnmower racing was invented in 1973 in The Cricketers Arms pub in Wisborough Green in West Sussex, England, UK, by a group of young men bemoaning the prohibitive costs of getting involved in any kind of motorsport.

Top 10 Female Child Stars Who Became Hotties

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 11:56 PM PST

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Ranking Signals Hiding Beneath the Surface

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 04:12 PM PST

Posted by randfish

I've recently been thinking more about some ranking signals that in the past, I dismissed (perhaps foolishly). Some of these the engines have previously disavowed, while others don't get the attention or discussion they potentially deserve. My list includes:

Mentions of a domain / brand name - particularly in sources that the engine has classified as "news." I suspect we'd find a reasonable correlation and probably plenty of examples of domains that begin ranking once they earn these mentions.
Nofollow links from trusted sources - by running a bit of analysis across the domains on the web, engines could see, quite simply, who links to very good pages/domains and with what level of consistency. From there, it's an easy step to simply "count" those nofollowed links as followed or treat them similarly to the mentions above. This metric already gets a lot of attention, and our correlation data, at least, suggests that a high number of links/linking root domains with no-follows does correlate to better rankings.
LinkedIn + Twitter profile links - since these sites (and likely others like them) are used primarily by real humans, most of whom can't afford to have a spammy site seen by potential employers/networkers, these links are likely golden for search engine uses.
Traffic patterns via aggregated Google Analytics data - if the search quality team received a list of domains that sent/received traffic and the relative quantity levels, I suspect they could put this to use as a methodology to sort the spam from the real sites (spam tends not to send out traffic, nor receive it from a diverse range of good sites). It would also be an incredibly tough metric to game - how do you draw down lots of referral traffic from many unique high value sites (directly - most ads would get filtered) without actually being interesting and worth visiting?
Mobile visits, check-ins and interaction - Though still tough to determine/track compared to some other metrics, I'm thinking that a local business or relevant website only gets clicks and interactivity from mobile browsers/devices if it's highly relevant and useful. This could be another solid way to filter spam and get data for local/maps types of rankings (presuming the engines had access to the data at scale... can you say Android/Windows Mobile?) :-)
Links and references in Gmail - Again, it's unlikely Google's actually reading our email, but certainly the search quality team could get a list of the number and diversity of references to sites used in email (much the same way Gmail delivers "personalized" ads based on the content of emails)
Content that garners comments/UGC - if real people are actively participating on a site around unique content, I'd wager to guess that content is likely the type engines would want to rank. Things like comment RSS feeds, trackbacks and content uniqueness analysis could all be leveraged to help sort.
Rich media present on site and around the web - Spammers don't make a lot of unique graphics, images and photos. Likewise, they don't film original video, don't post podcasts, don't build Flash elements, upload Excel spreadsheets, graphically heavy PDFs, or the like. Real websites and businesses run by real people and businesses do. Since the engines already have the indexing and segmentation capacity, there's nothing to stop them from examining the data as a quality signal.

I'm not saying that Google/Bing are definitely using these, but I'd suspect that all of them have practical applications in improving search quality and relevancy. And, by running correlations and analysis of these datapoints ourselves (where possible), we may be able to learn more about what makes a site "look natural" and rank-worthy to the engines, particularly since so much of my email and our Q+A seems to be worried about false positives of late.

I'm curious - any other factors you think fit this pattern/system?

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Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

WordPress SEO Plugins – 2010

Posted: 21 Dec 2010 08:06 AM PST

I haven’t done an updated “Reccomended SEO Plugins for WordPress” since 2008, so I figure it’s about time to correct that problem.

SEO

Surprisingly, the number pure SEO plugins is relatively short. This is due to two factors: my use of Thesis as a Theme (see Thesis Theme Review) and WordPress SEO Plugin.

WordPress SEO – In the past, I haven’t been a huge fan of all-in-one SEO plugins, but this year Joost De Valk changed my mind. This plugin does the work of 8 plugins. It builds XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, builds the canonical tag, takes care of robots, Google analytics, and more. Really, if you use only one plugin from this entire post, this is the one to get.

Scribe SEO – Scribe SEO is a plugin that checks your post for keyword focus and bunch of other SEO factors (see my Scribe SEO Review for more details). This plugin is part of paid service, but I can tell you it’s one I use, and it makes me more money every month. For an example on how to use it, check out How to Perform a Content Audit.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – An HTML sitemap is one of the key features of making your website more crawlable. This plugin builds the sitemap and updates itself when new pages or posts are added.

WP Super Cache – With the announcement that site speed became a ranking factor, you need to pay attention to site performance. Caching is one of the easiest ways to do it.

WPtouch – As smart phones become more ubiquitous, everyone is going to need a mobile-friendly version of their website. Rather than having two versions, though, this plugin takes care of all the heavy lifting for you.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This is a great plugin because it allows you to expose your readers and the search engine spiders to other related content.

UTILITIES AND EDITING

This category makes up the largest group of plugins I use and recommend. Quite simply, these are tools that make WordPress better/easier to use.

Ad Injection – Allows you to inject ads randomly throughout your posts. Very configurable with a lot of options. Highly recommended.

AdRotate – If you sell ads or display affiliate ads, this plugin makes it easy to administer them without having to muck with the code. You can have multiple ad blocks and groups.

Blogroll Page – A big list of friend’s blogs down your sidebar is soooo 2005. Blogroll pages are where it’s at now. This plugin takes the list in your sidebar and puts them on page.

Custom sidebars – Sometimes you’ll want different sidebars for your posts, for social pieces, for advertising, or for any other number of reasons. This plugin makes it easy to do.

Dagon Design Form Mailer – A contact form with configurable options. The best part is you can have multiple forms if you need them.

Dashboard: Pending Review – This plugin let’s you know if there are posts waiting for review right in the dashboard.

Dashboard: Scheduled Posts – Shows you a list of the next posts scheduled to post right in your dashboard.

Dynamic Content Gallery – This puts a visual slider on your homepage and allows you to feature new or top content.

Exec-PHP – Sometimes you need to execute some PHP code in your posts. This plugin lets you do it.

Executable PHP widget – Same as above except in widget form for your sidebar.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Does the whole feedburner redirection thing.

Future Calendar – Shows a calendar on your post edit pages. Every day with a scheduled post changes color. The more posts, the darker the color. This is essential if you do a lot of scheduled posts.

GoCodes – Simple redirection/ URL masking on your blog.

GZIP Output – Not sure why WordPress took this out but now it’s back.

Insights – Lets you execute searches on your blog or in Google from the editing dashboard, so there’s no need to open up a second link. Click the icon and the highlighted words are linked automagically. This plugin is a huge timesaver.

KB Linker – Lets you autolink words in your posts, which is essential for traffic and internal anchor text.

Login LockDown – WordPress is a piece of swiss cheese from a security standpoint, and this closes some of those holes. It’s better than nothing.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – Puts the Admin bar back at the top where it should be.

Photo Dropper – Searches flickr for creative commons images and inserts the images and attribution automagically–another huge timesaver.

Post Template – Have a post that you make every week or month? Turn it into a template and save time.

Search & Replace – Sometimes you gotta change stuff. This plugin lets you do it quickly and easily. This is really powerful and there is no undo so use with caution.

Search Meter – Keeps track of what people are searching for on your website.

Simple Pull Quote - Adds those nifty looking pull quotes on your site to make you look much more professional.

Tidy Up – Cleans up your screwy HTML. Use with caution, especially if you have PHP in some posts.

Tweet old post – Tweets posts from your archives very configurable. SEO Crybabies don’t like it, but the rest of the world gobbles up your old content like freshly baked bread. Make sure to disable the dates though.

Viper’s Video Quicktags – Easy embedding of video from multiple sources.

Wikipedia nofollow – Do unto wikipedia as wikipedia does unto you: nofollow all links to the wiki automatically.

WordPress.com Stats – Puts quick stats right in your dashboard.

WordPress Editorial Calendar – A table-like calendar view of pending and scheduled posts with drop and drag editing. Another big timesaver if you schedule your posts.

WordPress Popular Posts – Let’s you do some magical stuff with your popular posts, like the images I have in my sidebar or on my updated popular posts page.

WP-EMail – Adds “email a post” functionality to your website.

WP-Print – Adds printer friendly pages to your website.

WP Minify – Reduces the whitespace in your code, making it just a little bit leaner and meaner.

WP Status Notifier – sends an email to an editor when a post is kicked into pending review status. It’s helpful for multi-author blog or blogs with an editor who cleans up your bad grammar and spelling (Hi Sara and thanks again!)

MAINTENANCE

Broken Link Checker – Linkrot is bad. This plugin identifies it so you can go fix it. I was amazed how much stuff goes away and how quickly it does. A very helpful plugin.

Optimize DB – Cleans up your DB, making it smaller and faster.

Redirection – Sometimes pages move; this helps you identify and fix the problems.

WordPress Database Backup – Essential for making backup of your WordPress database.

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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.

WordPress SEO Plugins – 2010

White House Staff: It Gets Better

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010

White House Staff: It Get Better

Inspired by President Obama’s It Gets Better video, several LGBT White House staffers decided to add their voices to the project. President Obama has more LGBT appointees than any previous administration and he is committed to making his administration reflect the diversity of our nation.

Watch the video.