luni, 9 iunie 2014

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


The Town with the Most Polar Bears

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 11:54 AM PDT

Do you want to see a polar bear up close? Just make your way to Churchhill, Manitoba. They've got more than a few polar bears living in town.





















Source

A Harsh Penalty for People Disobeying the No Parking Signs

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 09:48 AM PDT

These people all parked outside a city hospital in Russia and ignored the no parking signs around the area. They probably ended up really regretting it.


















Can You Name This Actor?

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 09:08 AM PDT

Do you know who this actor is? He's world famous and he's also a master of disguise. Who is it?






















He is actually very famous but it is hard to see here that this is actually Johnny Depp in character on the set of "Black Mass" where he is playing a famous Boston gangster.
 

















Making College Affordable

 
Here's what's going on at the White House today.
 
 
 
 
 
  Featured

Making College Affordable

At a time where college has never been more important, it has also never been more expensive. So as part of his year of action to expand opportunity for all Americans, the President is working to make student debt more affordable and manageable to repay.

Today, he signed a memorandum directing the Secretary of Education to propose regulations that would allow nearly 5 million federal direct student loan borrowers to cap their loan payments at 10 percent of their income. The memorandum also outlines new actions to support federal student loan borrowers, especially vulnerable borrowers who may be at greater risk of defaulting on their loans.

Find out more about the President's actions to make college affordable.

And tomorrow, the President will take to Tumblr to answer your questions about education, college affordability, and reducing student loan debt. Learn how you can participate.

Making College More Affordable


 
 
  Top Stories

Weekly Address: Supporting America's Students

In this week's address, President Obama underscored the importance of helping to lift the burden of crushing student loan debt faced by too many Americans and highlighted the efforts he's taken to ensure we uphold America's commitment to provide a quality education for all who are willing to work for it.

READ MORE

The President's First-Ever Tumblr Q&A

Tomorrow, President Obama will take to Tumblr to answer your questions about education, college affordability, and reducing student loan debt.

READ MORE

West Wing Week: 6/6/14 or, "Dispatches: Europe"

Last week, President Obama embarked on a three country tour, which took him to Poland, Belgium, and France. If you haven't already, you'll want to check out this very European West Wing Week.

READ MORE


 
 
  Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Time (ET)

10:00 AM: The President and Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:50 AM: The President meets with nurses to discuss immigration reform

12:30 PM: Press Briefing by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest

1:15 PM: The Vice President will attend an event for Governor Maggie Hassan

1:45 PM: The President delivers remarks and signs a Presidential Memorandum on reducing the burden of student loan debt

2:40 PM: The President meets with governors of Western States via video teleconference

4:15 PM: The President welcomes the NCAA Champion UConn Huskies to honor the Men's and Women's Basketball teams and their 2014 NCAA Championships WATCH LIVE


 

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The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links

The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links


The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links

Posted: 08 Jun 2014 04:23 PM PDT

Posted by nicoleckohler

A few years ago, while I was still on the client side of things, I received an email from a blogger I was working with. As part of our fledgling link building program, my company had been sending out free products in exchange for a review and link to our site. Oldest trick in the book, right? However, the blogger's email threw me off: she told me her policy was to nofollow links, and asked if this would be all right.

"Uh, sure," I eloquently responded, having absolutely no idea what she was talking about, "just as long as there's a link!" I then scrambled to look up just what in the heck a nofollow link was, and roughly five minutes later started cursing at my monitor. We'd just invested thirty bucks in a completely useless link!

While that may have been my viewpoint back then, my opinion on nofollow links has changed. Obviously, for those of us who are trying to earn links for our clients, receiving a nofollow link can feel like a slap in the face. But these links have hidden powers that make them just as important as followed ones.

Here's why nofollow links are more powerful than you might think.

Links build awareness

A link has a few different connotations these days. It could mean, "this is an article that supports my viewpoint, and you might benefit by reading it, too." It could mean, "I do a lot of shopping here, and I think you should look at their cute dresses." Or it could simply mean, "I like cat videos!" But at its very core, a link is designed to create awareness of something on a different page.

When you're out there trying to make people aware of your business, links are hugely important. SEO companies now offer link building services because businesses realize how important they are. So to that busy CEO who sees his or her website traffic dipping, and believes that links will give them a way to get back on top, a successful link building campaign is going to be really desirable.

That busy CEO is probably going to flip out if you say "well, we got 50 new links this month, and 40 of them were nofollow." But it's important that neither you nor the CEO (nor their marketing team) discredit the power of a nofollow link. Links still build awareness, as long as they are seen. They don't have to be followed. They probably don't even have to be clicked! They just have to be visible.

How many times a day do you see someone you follow tweet a link to an article with an interesting headline? Let's say the article is really well written, and is on a site you don't currently follow. So you add them to your feed reader. A week later, you think "oh, you know, that post I read is really relevant to this blog post I'm working on now!" So you link to it in your post. This accomplishes two things: one, it probably negates that original nofollow link from Twitter (more on that shortly), and two, it has made both you and your followers aware of that site.

Links lead to profit

A nofollow link can also directly lead to someone spending money on your company's products or services. If you consistently create awareness and engage with people, those nofollow links may earn you way more than domain authority. Don't believe me? Here's the story of how I became a paying Buffer customer.

A few months ago, I saw a tweet with a link to this case study about how Buffer responded to being hacked. I had no idea what Buffer was, but it gave me an idea for a blog post. After I wrote my post, I followed Buffer on Twitter. I engaged with them a few times (for example, mentioning them after my post went up), and they engaged right back.

Over the next few weeks, I visited the Buffer blog when they tweeted links to new posts, learned about their company, and admired the heck out of their content marketing skills. I'd say it was at about the two month mark that I decided to actually give them a try. A month later, I upgraded to the Awesome plan and began using it daily to manage not only my accounts, but also our agency's accounts.

To recap, this is how it all went down:

  1. I became aware of Buffer through someone else's Twitter link
  2. I followed Buffer on Twitter
  3. I engaged with their content
  4. I tried, subscribed, and ended up forking over $10 a month (well worth it!)

This was all because of a single nofollow link. Over the course of three months, my general awareness turned into lifetime value for Buffer. That one nofollow link directly led to profit.

You can make an equation out of this:

a + e = p

Awareness + engagement = profit. By becoming aware of Buffer, and having opportunities to engage regularly with them, I converted into a paying customer. This all happened because of social media, and all those links you see on social media are nofollow. (Who said there's no ROI in Twitter?!)

Links lead to more links

A few years ago, Joshua Unseth wrote a post for YouMoz explaining how a single nofollow link earned him a second link that was followed, increased his traffic, and boosted his article to the top of the SERPs for a specific phrase. His post, titled "The Importance of nofollow Links," has a really great conclusion that stresses the importance of even a single link:

To put it into context, of the people that came to the article as a direct or indirect result of the nofollow, ~1% made a comment on the article itself, and ~2% blogged about it – actually, if you count this article, then the results were blogged about by 3% of the visitors.

While I don't think that these numbers would hold on a site with more viewers, I think that they represent the way in which content ends up going viral. In the end, ALL IT TAKES IS ONE LINK, and its follow status doesn't seem to make a difference.

I couldn't say it any better! What Joshua wrote still holds true today – and in fact may be even truer, considering how many of us use Twitter to amplify messages and blog posts we enjoy, or rely on a feed reader to provide us with interesting content that we want to share on our websites.

Here's a real-life example of the potential power of a single nofollow link. Back in March, we published two maps showing the ISP landscape in the United States, and how the potential Comcast buyout of Time-Warner would affect it. The post was picked up by the Amazing_Maps Twitter account, which has more than 160,000 followers.

This was a nofollow link, obviously, as were the retweets that followed.

Two days later, we made it to the front page of the Huffington Post.

After HuffPo picked up the story, the maps spread to several other websites, most of which had followed links back to our blog post or homepage. But even if those links hadn't been followed, we still would have created new awareness of WebpageFX, our blog, and the work we do.

Like Joshua said: it only takes one. One link can lead to many.

How to make the most of your nofollow links

"Okay, Nicole," I can hear you skeptics saying, "I'm on board. nofollow links are powerful. Magical, even. But you don't see any of my tweets getting picked up by HuffPo."

Well, food for thought: we've published hundreds of blog posts, and only one of them led to a Twitter link (not ours) that led to HuffPo. Success on the Internet is all about being at the right place with the right content at the right time, and with all of the blogs, websites, and companies vying for attention, your chance at getting noticed is lower than low.

Here are some ways that you can make the most of your nofollow links, whether they're on social media, someone's blog, or elsewhere.

Motivate viewers to click your link. This might mean testing headlines, trying different tweets, or coming right out and saying, "look, if you click this, this cool thing will happen." For example, Buffer found that one tweet earned a blog post 100% more clicks than another, just because they changed the language surrounding the link.

Increase your audience. Want more people to see, click, and act on your nofollow link? Get a bigger audience. This may be as simple as following industry figureheads who are likely to follow you back, directly asking for shares, or sharing your post multiple times. Try emailing people of authority and asking (nicely) for them to check out your content. If it's really good, it may earn you a share.

Another trick: if you write blog posts or product content that references someone else, make sure they know about it. It may seem like you're just trying to stroke their ego, but it works. If someone wrote a blog post about me, heck yeah I'd tweet the link out to everybody I knew! (Unless it was bad. Then I'd just cry.)

Ensure your link is relevant. This, in my opinion, is one of the most important aspects of a nofollow link. So many links on social media go unclicked simply because the content isn't relevant to them. This one is hard to control, because it's pretty difficult to know when your audience is going to be in the mood for your blog posts vs. photos of puppies, but you can still get ahead by thinking very carefully about what you share, when, and why.

Make sure your content is relevant, too. Okay, so your link got clicked. Great! But your bounce rate is at 99%. Not great. You can write the best headline in the world, but if the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is empty, nobody's going to stick around. Avoid misleading headlines, unfulfilling content, or just plain marketing to the wrong people.

This is honestly the biggest flaw of the ISP map I linked above. Lots of people checked out the maps, and even visited our blog to see the rest of the study, but then they left. Probably 99% of our visitors to that post have no idea who WebpageFX is and what we do. That doesn't mean the content was bad, but it just wasn't relevant to the kind of audience we want to attract (that is, potential clients).

Optimize your landing pages. What do you want someone to do after they visit your link? What's the next step for this visitor? Keep them around a little longer. Use a related posts plugin to provide some additional reading, or try a service like snip.ly to suggest relevant content or links.

Don't complain. If someone gives you a link and it's nofollow, please don't storm into their inbox with guns blazing. Maybe they just don't know you well enough to follow your links yet. If you're cool about it, the second link they give you may be a followed one. And even if it isn't, you're still getting exposure out of it, right?

A nofollow link isn't the end of the world

As SEO professionals, I know we're all aiming for followed links that pass a lot of "juice" to the websites of our clients. If we all had our way, earning links would be easy, every link would be followed, and Google would never, ever penalize websites for having too many links, or too many links of a certain type. We would all have millions of dollars, and would spend our days on the beach drinking fancy cocktails. Unfortunately... that's just not the way things are.

Honestly, a nofollow link isn't the end of the world, either for you or for a client. These links are valuable, and important for anyone trying to build their brand online. As I've shown, they hold significant power, and more than you might expect.

Instead of focusing on whether or not a link is followed, we should do our best to get those links in front of the right people at the right time, crafting content beyond the link that motivates conversions. As it is for everything in SEO, obtaining links is all about balance: the balance between followed and not followed, "juicy" links and dry ones.

In my case, that nofollow link I talked about at the beginning of this post went live, the blogger was happy with her product, and the review she wrote was fantastic. It led to a fairly high amount of clicks through to our site… and what do you know, even a few purchases. Seeing was believing for me, and now I'm an advocate of earning links in general – not just the followed ones.

Image Credit: Public domain images from Pixabay (links, beach); cat screencap from Maru's YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/mugumogu); Twitter & snip.ly screencaps I took; Buffer blog (source linked in post)


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Seth's Blog : Two kinds of busy

 

Two kinds of busy

When I'm giving a speech, I don't have the ability to squeeze in a phone call, think about what's for dinner or plan tomorrow's meeting. I'm doing one thing, and it's taking everything I've got. So yes, I'm busy, all in.

On the other hand, we all are familiar with the other kind of busy, the busy of feeding one kid while listening to see if the other is still napping, while emptying the groceries, checking email and generally keeping the world on its axis.

I have two suggestions:

a. if you're used to being one kind of busy, try the other one out for a change. You might find it suits you.

and

b. if what you're doing isn't working, if you're not excelling at what you set out to do or not getting the results you seek, it might be because you're confused about what sort of busy is going to get you there...

       

 

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Personal Income Tax Revenues Show Significant Softening in Q4 2013, Decline in Q1 2014

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 12:07 AM PDT

For two consecutive quarters, state income tax revenues have disappointed. And in the first quarter of 2014, state income tax revenue actually declined.

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute reports Personal Income Tax Revenues Show Significant Softening in the Fourth Quarter of 2013.
Total state tax collections have grown in each quarter of the last four years. However, growth softened significantly in the third and fourth quarters of 2013. Early figures for the first quarter of 2014 indicate even further softening in state tax collections, and possible declines in personal income tax collections.

Officials in many states have been facing extraordinary challenges in forecasting income taxes due to uncertainties related to capital gains, which can have a large impact on estimated taxes paid in December and January, and on payments with tax returns filed in April. The uncertainty has been heightened this year due to the strong performance of the stock market in 2013 and the un- intended consequences of the fiscal cliff. Calendar year 2013 ended up being a remarkable year for the stock market, gaining 19 percent as measured by the S&P 500 Index, creating a favorable environment for capital gains. On the other hand, for reasons discussed within, many taxpayers appear to have accelerated income from calendar year 2013 to calendar year 2012 to avoid higher federal tax rates, likely creating a "trough" in capital gains in 2013. This creates great uncertainty for states: Was the stock market strong enough to more than offset the "trough" effect related to the fiscal cliff, so that capital gains would be strong in 2013, or would the latter effect dominate, resulting in a large decline in capital gains?
First Quarter Income Tax Declines

In a followup report, the institute reports State Income Taxes Showed Declines in the First Quarter of 2014.
The Rockefeller Institute's compilation of preliminary data from 46 states shows that collections from major tax sources increased by an insignificant 0.7 percent in nominal terms in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the same quarter of 2013. This is the weakest growth since the first quarter of 2010. Among 46 early reporting states, 37 states reported gains while nine states reported declines in total tax revenue collections. Personal income tax collections declined in nominal terms by 0.4 percent. This is the first time since the first quarter of 2010 that states reported declines in income tax collections. The growth in sales tax collections was also weak at 1.0 percent, while corporate income tax growth was at 5.6 percent.

While the declines in income tax collections are not surprising, the softening in sales tax collection s is less expected and more worrisome. Among 41 early reporting states, sales tax collections showed declines in 11 states, with Arizona and California reporting the largest declines at 16.7 and 9.9 percent, respectively. The large declines in Arizona are mostly attributable to the expiration of a temporary one-cent tax increase for fiscal years 2011-2013. For the nation as a whole, the unusually cold winter may have temporarily depressed shopping, contributing to the sales tax slowdown.

State tax revenues have been recovering continuously for four straight years. However, the state revenue recovery has been much slower and more prolonged than in previous recoveries. State tax revenues were particularly strong in the first half of calendar year 2013, and particularly weak in the second half of calendar year 2013 and in the first quarter of 2014. This volatility probably is attributable more to taxpayer responses to planned and adopted federal policy changes and to legislated tax changes in many states than to underlying economic factors.

The declines in income tax revenue in the first quarter of 2014 likely reflect lower payments on the 2013 tax year of estimated taxes due in January. We expect that income tax collections will show further declines in the second quarter of 2014, when 2013 income tax returns due on April 15th are filed. However, it is hard to know how surprising the April surprises will be, as the tax year 2013 was also a very good year in the stock market. Once the figures for the month of April are available, we will have a clearer picture of the interplay between the strong stock market and the fiscal cliff, and their relative impact on the income tax collections.
State Tax Revenues 2008-2014



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Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Ukraine Opens Talks with Russia; New President Promises Peace Making Efforts; Bombing of Slavyansk Continues Anyway

Posted: 08 Jun 2014 10:57 AM PDT

The Financial Times reports Poroshenko opens talks with Russia.
Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's new president, has opened talks with Russia on restoring peace in two breakaway eastern provinces a day after taking office, vowing to negotiate an end to the three-month-old pro-Russian insurgency.

Mr Poroshenko took part on Sunday in a three-member "working group discussion" on a proposed peace plan with Mikhail Zurabov, Russia's ambassador to Ukraine, and a representative of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Iryna Friz, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian president said.

The opening of dialogue came a day after the billionaire oligarch took office with a promise to "ensure lasting peace" in the country's breakaway eastern Donetsk and Lugansk provinces, and on the same day that Ukraine's military pummeled rebel positions in a heavy assault on the separatist-controlled city of Slavyansk.

Pro-Russian rebels, who fired back with machine guns and heavy artillery, said that an unspecified number of civilians in the city were injured or killed. Explosions were heard, some buildings caught fire, and columns of thick black smoke rose over the town on Sunday afternoon.

In his first speech as president on Saturday, the billionaire oligarch sounded a more emollient tone on making peace with the rebels than the uncompromising line favoured by his caretaker predecessors, who took power after February's pro-Europe Maidan revolt.

Mr Poroshenko promised to allow easterners free use of the Russian language and move forward with a plan to decentralise government – core separatist demands – and the holding of new local elections in the east.
Peace Making

Peace making talk is off to a rather disingenuous start to put things mildly. Please consider Battles under way near Ukraine's Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.
Shooting resumed Sunday morning in the area of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the headquarters of Slavyansk self-defense forces told RIA Novosti. "Battles are now under way on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, in the area of the Yasnogorovsky state farm, as well as on the outskirts of Slavyansk, near the Mashmet," the militia informed.

The Ukrainian army continues to bombard Slavyansk (the centre and the districts of Artem and Vostochny), and its suburbs - Yampil and Semyenovka. The security forces use mortars and self-propelled launchers Tulip.
Images of Slavyansk

Reader Dmitriy provided a link these Images of Slavyansk.







More images in link.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com