Central Perk

marți, 2 august 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Hot Girls With Sleeve Tattoos
30 Hilarious Hood Ornaments
An Entire Room in One Box
Schooling of Republican Presidential Candidates [infographic]
Improv Everywhere – King Philip IV

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 02:41 PM PDT

You must have seen people proudly showing off their Koi fish and dragons tattoos on their sleeves. Other popular styles are Floral patterns, Tribal tattoo designs, Traditional Japanese Designs and Celtic Designs. Since Full Sleeve Tattoo Designs cover a major part of your body, you need to be extremely careful about choosing the kind of tattoo you want to go for as there is no looking back.

30 Hilarious Hood Ornaments

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 02:02 PM PDT

The beauty of a funny hood ornament is that it's a joke reserved for the careful observer (in most cases) who no doubt appreciates a good laugh when they find one. There just isn't enough fun when it comes to cars these days, so props to the creative (or just plain weird) folks who went the extra mile when it came to customizing.

An Entire Room in One Box

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 01:25 PM PDT

Designed by Marcel Krings and Sebastian Muhlhauser, Casulo is an entire room of furnishings in a single 31" by 47" box. Without using any tools, the contents of the box transform to create a wardrobe, desk, three stools (one is height-adjustable), a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress. See the video of the box in action and pics below!

Schooling of Republican Presidential Candidates [infographic]

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 01:14 PM PDT

The media enjoys getting a laugh (or twenty) mocking the educational background of recent candidates entering the Republican nomination. So how educated are these candidates really? Here, we break down exactly what degree each possesses... and what their chances for success are.

Click to Enlarge.

Source: onlineschools

Improv Everywhere – King Philip IV

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:41 PM PDT

The latest Improv Everywhere mission featured an actor Chadwick Elliott who looks a lot like King Philip IV of Spain signing autographs in front of the 400-year-old Velázquez painting the "King" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

A Theory About Google: Authenticity and Passion as Ranking Signals

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 04:21 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

I look at a lot of search results every week, trying to parse out why some are ranking higher than others, what Google + Bing are adding to the results and where we might better add value with software. I still feel a serious addiction to mysteries in the search results and can't help but play detective (even when I know I should be doing other work). Over the past 6-9 months, I've been getting the sense that there's something new in Google's algorithm - a metric or set of metrics that looks for some form of authenticity in a site and passion in the content created on a page.

These aren't things a machine or algorithmic system has been traditionally able to measure, but (can I say this without sounding crazy?) I can feel it. Talking to lots of other SEOs in the past few weeks (thanks to events like Expon in São Paulo and Mozcon here in Seattle), I feel better - like I'm not alone.

Finding examples is next to impossible. There's so many reasons a site or page might outrank another that putting up a screenshot of any given set of SERPs feels like an invitation to be ridiculed. But I can describe the results where this feeling pops up:

A site/page ranks in competitive results but doesn't have the link profile, domain authority or social metrics to perform at quite that level
It often comes from a small, personal or niche website and is a lengthier article or piece of prose, usually rich with images and well-formatted
There's almost always a sense that the piece is less commercial and more personal than other results, particularly in commerce-focused queries
The result feels like it has no SEO whatsoever, often not even a focus on keyword targeting or on-page work. It almost seems to rank in spite of itself, or the lack of knowledge the author/creator has about the rankings process
It's almost always interesting and enjoyable; like stumbling across a great independent shop in the midst of a big-brand retail district

OK... Maybe I will try to find a result.

Wow. That actually only took me a half dozen queries. It's not a perfect example, but here, have a look:

Google SERPs for Seattle Waterfront Walk

So it's not the most commercial or competitive query in the world, but all the results, save one, feel very familiar - they feel targeted, intentional and even good. There's nothing wrong with the sites and pages doing some SEO or trying to pull in searches for those seeking advice on walking Seattle's waterfront, but.... See that second result?

Yeah, this one:

Round About Seattle

There's something different about it. And if you click through (I won't link, even though it's a great 5-minute browse, so as not to potentially influence its rankings) you can definitely feel that Robert Wade, who wrote the piece and took the photographs, has no formal effort to rank for this query nor any of the many combinations of the phrase (nearly all of which contain that page in the top 5). Here's a screenshot of the blog post, which contains basically all of the text in the document (the rest of the post is photos).

Round About Seattle Screenshot

If I were to list things that Google might be looking at to discover authenticity through an algorithmic process, it would include things like:

Design & UI Quality (possibly via quality raters or the machine learning layers on top of user data)
About/Contact details (looking for authentic about + contact information to confirm the site is created by a real person/team)
Connections to the rest of the web (social accounts, job posts, a resume, partners, clients, etc)
Diversity of traffic sources (authentic sites/pages get referral traffic, social traffic, clicks from emails and, yes, some search too)
An offline presence in the real world (how Google measures this is beyond me right now)
Connection to other humans (people list it in their LinkedIn profiles, in their Twitter accounts, on their business cards)

Some of these feel like they might be helping those "authentic/passionate" results like the above, but others I'm not so sure. Whatever's going on - I like it. I hope Google does more of it. I don't know how to optimize for it, but that's exciting and interesting and new. And if writing passionate, authentic content on more personal, unique sites can earn more mojo in search, I'd say that's a win for everyone.

Now, please, tell me if you think I've gone mad with SERP overload or if you're feeling the authenticity/passion boost in the algo, too.

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How Mturk Protects My Site from Panda Graywolf's SEO Blog

How Mturk Protects My Site from Panda

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 10:28 AM PDT

Because Google's Panda filter has so dramatically impacted many websites, there is a lot of speculation about which specific triggers activate Panda's filter. I am not going to pretend that I know the exact causes. However, I do know the warning signs that are common among Panda sites, and I am working to avoid them.

Overall, my website has been ranking well and turning a nice profit for over 5 years. It has decent backlinks, and all key pages have other sites linking to them. Several pages are consistently referenced by authority websites in the industry. So why am I worried? I had a photo gallery section of about 500 pages which is about 1/2 of my site. That’s right – half of my pages had almost no text content or external backlinks. To my paranoid SEO brain that sounds like high potential for triggering the Panda beatdown.

My simple solution was to create quality descriptions for all 500 pages to add value and text to the pages. The problem is that I’m an affiliate marketer and therefore lazy. Even if I was not lazy, it is just not realistic for one person to describe 500 images using unique text. I would have ended up writing 500 descriptions that all sounded similar to each other – which is not great for adding unique value to these pages.

That means I need to hire writers, which introduces a new problem – I’m cheap and hate wasting money (okay, my cheapness is not a new problem). My normal writers charge between $10 to $30 per page depending on the topic and length. I was not about to spend $5,000 to $15,000 on this project. That position led me to the one place that provides fast turn arounds on large projects for reasonable amounts of money – MTurk .

In case you are not familiar with MTurk, it is a crowd sourcing service created and maintained by Amazon. They have hundreds of thousands of humans willing to do simple and quick tasks for pennies.

I posted my project on Mturk in batches to better control the process. I also posted very clear instructions about what should and should not be in the descriptions. I then set the price at about $1 for a minimum word count of 200.

The results? I ended up with 500 unique descriptions with an average length slightly over 300 words written by over 260 different people costing me a total of about $550. It also cost me a significant amount of time to manage the project. Several people tried to submit duplicate answers or stolen content. I had to review all descriptions and that took a few hours. I ended up rejecting 56 submissions that were later completed successfully by other writers. Overall, I spent a bit of time and money to end up with good quality content that has definitely added a lot of value to the weaker parts of my site.

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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.

How Mturk Protects My Site from Panda

Today at 1 p.m. EDT: Jobs Council Answers Your Questions

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Today at 1 p.m. EDT: Jobs Council Answers Your Questions

Today, the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness will convene in Palo Alto, California. The meeting will focus on high growth entrepreneurs and businesses. Moderated by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, a panel of leaders such as Steve Case and Sheryl Sandberg will answer your questions about accelerating economic growth and job creation. Learn more about today's event on our website.

Submit your questions and stay engaged through Facebook, also tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live at 1 p.m. EDT to watch the event.

Photo of the Day:

President Barack Obama meets with U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford in the Oval Office, Aug. 1, 2011. (White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog.

Prevention at the Heart of Keeping Women Healthy
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, announces new guidelines that eliminate barriers to services that can help keep American women healthy, ensuring affordable, quality healthcare for all women.

Baselines and Balance
Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council, explains how the budget deal sets the stage for balanced deficit reduction.

One Week Later: White House Office Hours
Last week, White House staff began holding regular “Office Hours” on Twitter. One week in, it's clear that White House Office Hours have been a success.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

9:15 AM: The President meets with the AFL-CIO Executive Committee

10:30 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

11:00 AM: The President meets with senior advisors

12:15 PM: The President delivers a statement to the press

1:00 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney

3:15 PM: The President meets with the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the U.S. Commander of the ISS Expedition 26

4:30 PM: The President meets with Secretary of Defense Panetta

Indicates events that will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.Gov/Live

Get Updates