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miercuri, 11 aprilie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Make It Count
Duck Thinks It's a Dog and Plays Fetch
Cats Imitating Art
Sexy Star Trek Cosplay Girls
Instagram: From Zero to $1 Billion in 17 Months [Infographic]
Chattino.com - Chatroulette WebCam Chat

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 04:05 PM PDT

Nike asked filmmaker Casey Neistat to create a commercial for the Nike+ Fuelband #makeitcount campaign. Instead of taking the traditional ad-making route, Neistat took the cash and set out on an inspiring 10 day trip around the world with his friend Max.

Via: Gizmodo

Duck Thinks It's a Dog and Plays Fetch

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 04:00 PM PDT

A duck thinks it's a dog and plays fetch with his owner's sandal. How she trained him to do that, we have no idea.

Cats Imitating Art

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 01:51 PM PDT

Here's a cute collection of famous artworks and cats striking the same poses. I found "Romeo And Juliet" by Ford Madox Brown particularly appealing.

Alfred Stevens, "The Bath" (1867)

Mary Cassat, "Breakfast In Bed" (1897)

Carlo Dolci, "St. Catherine Reading A Book" (Late 17th Century)

Salvador Dali, "Woman At The Window" (1925)

Ingres, "Grande Odalisque" (1814)

John Singer Sargent, "Repose" (1911)

Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Princess Sophia Matilda Of Gloucester" (1774)

Joseph Ducreux, "Self Portrait Yawning" (1780)

Gerard Hoet, "Young Man Playing The Flute" (Early 18th Century)

Richard Edward Miller, "Woman In Blue Dress" (1909)

Titian, "Venus Of Urbino" (1538)

Frederic Leighton, "Flaming June" (1895)

Rembrandt Van Rijn, Self Portrait (1628)

Ford Madox Brown, "Romeo And Juliet" (1870)

Edgar Degas, "Two Dancers On Stage" (1874)

John William Waterhouse, "Echo And Narcissus" (1903)

Mariano Fortuny, "Odalisque" (1861)

George Benjamin Luks, "Young Girl With Doll" (Early 20th Century)

Anton Einsle, "A Woman Before A Mirror" (1841)

Paul Cezanne, "Apples, Peaches, Pears, And Grapes" (1879)

Guido Reni, "Repentance Of St. Peter" (1635)

Via: Buzzfeed

Sexy Star Trek Cosplay Girls

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 11:56 AM PDT

Star Trek is based on a wonderful science fiction background, but we have never really thought of any of it to be sexy, minus Zoe Saldana as the new Uhura in the Star Trek reboot that we absolutely love. However we have stumbled upon some great images of Sexy Star Trek Cosplay and wanted to share them with you. We are happy to give you the first Star Trek based "Galactic Boner". Anyway here is some Sexy Star Trek Cosplay. Enjoy!

Instagram: From Zero to $1 Billion in 17 Months [Infographic]

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 11:05 AM PDT

When Instagram launched its first app in October 2010, it did not strike most people as the kind of startup that would be acquired for $1 billion. Designers at Visually have compiled an infographic that documents the startup's journey from photo app to $1 billion startup using, appropriately, Instagram photos.

Click image to see a larger version.

Chattino.com - Chatroulette WebCam Chat

Posted: 11 Apr 2012 10:15 AM PDT

The page Chattino.com is like Chatroulette on which you communicate with other people with or without webcam. If you have a webcam you can see your chat partner directly on the screen. Who has not, can switch to text chat, and then chat with other users.

The site is quite easy. I was expecting a lot of advertising, but this is only marginally present. Thus you can have without annoying advertising window in silence chatting. Chattino.com offers the two chats. It is not filled with unnecessary spam. The design is finished in blue / white. Ideal for me, to protect the eyes during a long chat.

The website is completely free, you must not log on. You can choose between webcam chat and text chat.

Who uses a webcam, can chat here with a chatter. It opens a small chat window. On the left you find the two webcam windows (once yourself, and once the chatter). Once you are asked if you agree to the microphone and camera. I opened the window so many times and each time I was asked. For me, this is simply a kind of security, so the chat can not just start when you open the page. On the right is the chat dialog. Below you can check your messages and you can set settings as language, male / female, etc. There are also other settings. You can auto start, click Clear Log chat, chat or video noise required on or off. Basically it's quite simple: you can be put through to someone, if you don't like the person, you can search for next chatter available.

You only need a chat name and then you can start chatting already. The chat is set up simply. But there are always enough users logged. Hence you can always chat.
There are also other small items. You can find a video area, radio and online games. The online games are flash games and in turn can be played directly in the browser. You have the possibility of a toolbar with an integrated radio and other features to install. The toolbar is there for Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

The level of the chatters was unusually high. There are a lot of Moderators avoiding that everybody can do whatever he wants. However, there were very nice people in text chat as well and no insults. The webcam chat I have met so much different people, all very kind and funny. Therefore, the page itself is great and easyly to hand up and, one of the best Chatroulette Alternatives.

On the side there are different types of chat. Anyone who has a webcam, is welcome to chat in webcam chat and who simply have no desire to webcam chat changes, just the normal text chat. The chat is ideal for boredom. The design is held in white / blue and does not disturb the long chat. So if you want a little time like to chat, it should first try times on this page. The chat is for people from 18 years on.

5 Tips for Managing Your Community on Google+

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 04:01 PM PDT

Posted by jennita

The day Google+ opened up brand pages, I anxiously refreshed my Gmail inbox all day long until I finally got the email inviting me to create a company page. I knew that by creating the page under my personal account that I’d be the only one able to manage it for the near future. But I really didn’t care; I was just so giddy to get the page set up.

Remember that feeling? I bet you ran out and did the same thing, right? But then what happened? Are you still as excited about it as you were back then, or do you now dread having to go in there? I mean not only do you have to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, HackerNews, and [insert social platform here], but you have to have a strategy for Google+ as well. Calgon, take me away!

Ok, so we know that having a Google Plus strategy is important and we know all the ways that we should optimize our brand page for SEO purposes, but are we managing our G+ community? Here at SEOmoz, we’ve been working hard on making sure that Google+ isn’t thought of as just a third sock, but as an important part of our social (and search) strategy.

Today I want to show you five ways you can use Google+ to engage more with you community, all the while helping your site and brand page show up more in searches. Sound good? Now, let’s walk through some of these tactics. One thing to remember is that with any kind of social strategy, what works great for us, may not be the best for you. So test things out and see if they work. Now, on with the tips!

1. Check your notifications & respond

You probably want to slap me in the face right now, right? I mean come on, OF COURSE you check your notifications… but do you respond? Every single morning when I log into Google+ the very first thing I do is check notifications. I start with the oldest and work my way forward and I respond to as many of them as possible.

Don’t miss this opportunity to let people know you’re out there and that you care about what they’re saying. Here are a few examples you can take advantage of:

Someone shares your post. Take the opportunity to thank them!
Someone shares a post with you. They probably did it for a reason, look at the post and respond if it makes sense.
Someone mentions you in the comments. Read the post and jump into the comments as well. (Sometimes people freak out when you actually respond, that always makes my day.)
Someone adds you to a circle. Take this time to go through your new adds and add people them to circles if it makes sense. (When the next notification you get is someone excited that you’ve added them to a circle, you’ll enjoy that smile it puts on your face.)

But don’t end your interactions with notifications, as these only show up when someone specifically adds the +brand in a post. What about those mentions that weren’t direct?

2. Search for your brand/name/keywords & respond

The next step in making sure you’re interacting with the community is to see what people are saying about you. Running a search will show you people, pages, posts, hangouts, etc. But I usually filter to only show me Google+ posts so I can see what people are talking about.

Bingo! I ran a simple search for “seo tools” and the very first post to come up is a big ol’ Open Site Explorer logo as part of a post called 31 Essential SEO Tools and Resources and they were nice enough to mention us. This is a great example of when you can reach out and thank someone for sharing a post.

Another example is to simply search for your brand name. If you watched my recent webinar or follow me on Twitter, you likely know that I have a small obsession with cupcakes (ok it’s a big obsession… moving right along). Let’s use a local cupcake shop as an example.

Sadly, they don’t have a Google+ page but lots of people are talking about them here. This is such an awesome opportunity to reach out to your community.

What is your community saying about you that you didn’t even realize was happening?

3. Check the Ripples for your latest content

When Ripples first came out, Casey Henry wrote a great post about using Ripples to connect with influencers. This still holds true today, but the even better part is that Google has added some upgrades to Ripples since then. Now you see all the shares for the specific page you shared, not just the individual share’s Ripples.

These are the Ripples for a post from The Next Web that SEOmoz shared.

So let’s say you see that you have 26 Google+ shares but you only have three shares from your own post, you simply check the Ripples on your post and voila, you can see them all. Additionally, you can add any URL to check and see the Ripples.

From there, the sky is the limit. You could track your posts' Ripples to see who your consistent influencers are. On the Ripples page you can see the top influencers for each post.

These are influencers and stats from three different posts, as you can see, that Rand Fishkin guy is fairly influential. :) I may want to reach out to him more!

But seriously, this is a really great way to see who's sharing your content (or your competitor's content!) and gives you easy access to reach out to them and make content. You can use this information for link building, for community management, for brand management, so. much. win.

4. Mention other brands and people directly

Just as you're looking for posts mentioning your brand, other companies are doing the same thing. So if you want to be noticed, you need to do it as well. The same goes for people, be sure to link directly to blog authors, community members, speakers at events, etc. When someone gets a personal notification that they've been mentioned, how much do you want to bet that they'll reshare the post, or comment or +1 it or take some sort of action? I'd bet a lot! We recently linked to all of our speakers for MozCon and many of the direct shares, comments and +1's came from the speakers themselves.

It's nice to see your name "in lights" and the more you link out, the more they link in. Google+ makes this so easy to do since you don't have to be in circles with people or brands in order to link to them (unlike Facebook). You can do this when you post or even when you comment on someone else's post. So what are you waiting for?

5. Start a chat or Hangout

One thing that I love about Google+ is that interacting with other people is quick and easy since they make it so simple to link directly to someone (see above). In turn, this makes it a great place to start a chat or something along those lines. I love what SEER has been doing with their page, they've been having Q&A sessions on Google+ and their team jumps in and answers questions.

GENIUS! Believe me, we'll be stealing that one soon enough for the SEOmoz page. :)

In addition to using chats/Q&A sessions to reach out to your customers/community, you can always hold a hangout. We have attempted it several times but unfortunately the limit of 10 people has made it pretty difficult for us as we get too many people trying to jump in. However, check out what My Community Manager is doing with hangouts.

First, they hold the Hangout every week at the same time so people know when to expect it.

After the Hangout, they write a post talking about the main topics.

How do you think you could leverage Hangouts and other kinds of chats with your community in Google+?

Your Turn!

I've given you five great tactics to help you manage your Google+ community and interact with your clients, audience, fans, etc. I know there are a ton of other things you can do, but I really wanted to focus on ways to keep your community motivated and engaged (the dreaded word.. ENGAGE). I see lots of people doing similar things on Twitter and Facebook but Google+ is getting somewhat ignored. With its importance in search, it's important to know how to use it to your advantage.

Now it's your turn. Have any questions or additions you'd like to make to this list?

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Watch: White House White Board

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Watch: White House White Board

In this new White House White Board, Brian Deese, the Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, explains why the Buffett Rule is necessary to restore fairness to the American tax system -- and ensure that everyone plays by the same set of rules.

Watch the Buffet Rule White Board: