vineri, 16 septembrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Guinness World Records 2012

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 02:11 PM PDT

The biggest, fastest, longest, weirdest and wackiest record breakers from the 2012 edition of Guinness World Records.

Longest tongue (female): Chanel Tapper (USA, below left) has a tongue that measured 9.75 cm.


Longest fingernails on a pair of hands Chris "The Dutchess" Walton (USA) 309.8 cm (10 ft 2 in) for her left hand and 292.1 cm (9 ft 7 in) for her right a total of 601.9 cm (19 ft 9 in).


Largest afro Aevin Dugas (USA) is the proud owner of a record-breaking afro of 1.32 m (4 ft 4 in).


Harbor has the longest ears of any living dog, with measurements of 12.25 inches for the left ear and 13.5 inches for the right.


Mymains Stewart Gilligan (aka Stewie) is the world's longest domestic cat 123 cm (48.5 in) long.


Big Mama's and Papa's Pizzeria in Los Angeles, California, USA, is an enormous 1.37 m wide (4 ft 6 in) square pizza.


Largest collection of Daleks.


Largest collection of 'Do Not Disturb' signs.


Denise Tubangui (USA) had a collection of 2,429 cow-related items.


The world's largest violin, which is 4.28 meters tall, 1.45 meters wide, and weighs over 100 kilograms, was made by twelve luthiers in Markneukirchen, Germany.


The longest journey by skateboard was 12,159 km (7,555 miles).


Youngest person to climb the Seven Summits including Carstensz.


The fastest unconfirmed hike to the North Pole by a female is 48 days 22 hr and was achieved by Cecilie Skog (Norway).


Pekingese called Puggy was exposed to have the longest tongue measuring 4.5 inches (11.43 cm) long.


Congenital Generalized Hypertrichosis, characterised by excessive facial and torso hair.


The world's longest hair belongs to Xie Qiuping (China) at 5.627 m (18 ft 5.54 in).


Marinelli bend is 50 seconds and was achieved by Iona Oyungerel Luvsandorj (Mongolia).


The most balloons puffed up by the nose in 3 minutes.


The tallest man living is Sultan Kösen who measured 246.5 cm (8 ft 1 in).


Dr David R. Adamovich threw 102 14" throwing knives around his partner.


A 24-ft (7.3-m) reticulated python called Fluffy longest living snake.


Most dogs skipping on the same rope - 13 of them at the same time.


Birgit Berends had amassed a collection of 11,062 different penguin-related items as of March 14, 2011.


The most pierced man, Rolf Buchholz from Dortmund, Germany has 453 studs and rings all over his body.


The Guinness World Records 2012 Edition is available from the 15th of September.


iPhone 5 The Rumors and the Roadmap [infographic]

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 01:53 PM PDT

Apple products are notorious for speculation before launch - mainly because Apple is so secretive about any of the details of a product before launch. The iPhone 5 is no exception. Everything from the launch date to the features available have had recent speculation. Yet another iPhone prototype was potentially lost in a bar - just like the iPhone 4. Some even predict that Apple will soon release two new iPhones - the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S. If the iPhone 4S is also launched, it is expected to be a slightly updated version of the iPhone 4 without quite as many features as the iPhone 5. The infographic should help you separate fact from fiction and give you some idea of what to expect this fall with regard to the details that are known or expected.

More Infographics.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: allareacodes


The Funniest Ride Ever

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 11:45 PM PDT



This guy gets ready to ride his new motorcycle. Everything looks good until the camera pans away from the bike.


Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 27

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 10:01 PM PDT

Demotivational posters have become very popular nowadays, because they are really funny, hilarious and sarcastic. These posters make everyone laugh and also help people manage their stress level. The link between motivational and demotivational posters is that demotivational posters are simply cynical representation of text or quote which is motivational in nature. Well, let's go on checking the following new selection of demotivational posters.



















































































































































































Related Posts:
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 1
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 2
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 3
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 4
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 5
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 6
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 7
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 8
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 9
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 10
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 11
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 12
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 13
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 14
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 15
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 16
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 17
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 18
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 19
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 20
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 21
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 22
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 23
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 24
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 25
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 26


SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog


Social Network Spam and Author/Agent Rank

Posted: 16 Sep 2011 04:14 AM PDT

Posted by dohertyjf

On Wednesday I presented at SMX on the panel called "Facebook, Twitter, and SEO". I was excited to speak alongside Horst Joepen (SearchMetrics), Jim Yu (BrightEdge), and Michael Gray (Atlas Web Services). In my talk, I showed some information from patents that talked about how a search engine might detect a person's topical relevance and authority and use a scale on which to pass link juice from their social shares or not. Let's explore some of these a bit more.

What Factors Might Search Engines Look At?

There are three concepts I would like to introduce you to.

Topical Trustrank

The first concept you should be familiar with is "topical Trustrank". The original Trustrank was first mentioned in this Yahoo patent from 2004. At the time, it seemed underdeveloped, since it relied on sites to label themselves. And worse than underdeveloped, it was open to spam since it relied on websites to tag themselves (not unlike the meta keywords tag). The patent was granted in 2009 as a way to rank sites based on labels given them by people, according to this article called Google Trustrank Patent Granted.

Another take on Trustrank is Topical Trustrank, which was introduced in 2006. Because Trustrank seemed to be biased heavily towards larger communities that could attract more spam pages (without tripping a spam threshold, maybe?), Topical Trustrank aimed to build trust based on the relevance of the connecting sites (and I would argue now, the topical relevance of those sharing links via social networks).

Author Rank

According to one Yahoo patent application, "...author rank is a 'measure of the expertise of the author in a given area.'" Since this is delightfully vague, here are some specific areas (taken from Bill Slawski's How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content) that the search engines might look at to determine if you are authoritative:

  • A number of relevant/irrelevant messages posted;
  • Document goodness of all documents initiated by the author;
  • Total number of documents initiated posted by the author within a defined time period;
  • Total number of replies or comments made by the author; and,
  • A number of [online] groups to which the author is a member.

We can take these and apply them to social as well. If they are calculating author rank based off of content taken from around the web, why would they not also use this author rank for your social shares? Here are some more questions a search engine might ask about a user (according to an email I received from Bill Slawski):

  • Do they contribute something new, useful, interesting?
  • Are they tweeting new articles, or recycling old articles? Are they sharing articles from just one site, or are they sharing articles from a number of different sites? What's their engagement/CTR?
  • Do they participate in meaningful conversations with others?
  • Are they replying to others through @replies or others (DMs. maybe?)? What topics?
  • Do those others contribute something new, useful, interesting?
  • Are they themselves keeping the cycle going and replying to various others, or always responding to the same users?

Agent Rank

According to this article from Search Engine Land, Google applied for a patent around a way to determine an agent, or author's, authority in a specific niche. According to the article:

Content creators could be given reputation scores, which could influence the rankings of pages where their content appears, or which they own, edit, or endorse.

Also according to the article, here are some of the goals of Agent Rank:

  • Identifying individual agents responsible for content can be used to influence search ratings.
  • The identity of agents can be reliably associated with content.
  • The granularity of association can be smaller than an entire web page, so agents can disassociate themselves from information appearing near the information for which the agent is responsible.
  • An agent can disclaim association with portions of content, such as advertising, that appear on the agent’s web site.
  • The same agent identity can be attached to content at multiple locations.
  • Multiple agents can make contributions to a single web page where each agent is only associated to the content that they provided."

Does the following sound like the new rel=author markup that we're seeing in the search results? I think it does:

"Tying a page to an author can influence the ranking of that page. If the author has a high reputation, content created by him or her many be considered to be more authoritative that similar content on other pages. If the agent reviewed or edited content instead of authoring it, the score for the content might be ranked differently." "An agent may have a high reputation score for certain kinds of content, and not for others – so someone working on site involving celebrity news might have a strong reputation score for that kind of content, but not such a high score for content involving professional medical advice."

The article goes on to explain that authority scores will be hard to build up, but easy to harm. This would be one way to keep authors producing high quality content. Some more factors that may influence authority:

  • Quality of the response
  • Relevance of the response
  • The authority of those who respond to what you post

The Google Person Theory

Here's a philosophical argument that I came up with that I like to call the Google Person Theory about how Google could determine author authority:
  1. If you share articles frequently around a certain topic, you must be involved with that topic.
  2. If you are involved with that topic, you will also be writing about that topic.
  3. If you are writing about that topic, others will be sharing your writing on that topic.
  4. If others are sharing your writing on that topic, you must be authoritative about it.
  5. Therefore, articles you share within that same topic can be trusted (and potentially ranked higher).
According to Search Engine Land, "Authoritative people on Twitter lend their authority to pages they tweet. " (source)

How might search engines view my sharing and that of my followers?

Two weeks ago Duane Forrester from Bing posted an interesting article showing how a they might visualize if someone is attempting to game their ranking signals by sharing a lot, or if the increased rise in sharing is natural. According to the Information Retrieval based on historical data (PDF) patent:

A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links.

If we take "back links" and replace it with social shares, we get this:

A large spike in the quantity of [social shares] may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging [shares], purchasing [shares], or gaining [shares] from [others] without editorial discretion...

If you are automatically tweeting every interesting article that comes your way, and you have a large network of people who do the same in an attempt to game the signals, here is the image of how Bing might view those manipulated ranking signals (the below is an example of a "Like Farm"). Check out all of the hubs on the image below:

And here is an image of non-manipulated, truly viral signals. Check out the wide scatter of sources:

Some quick pieces of data to dissuade you from spamming or completely automating

We hear a lot of talk around automating your social stream. This seems like an oxymoron to me, since it undercuts the whole purpose of "social" media. Here is an interesting statistical graph for you:  Manual tweets get twice the clicks on average!

Next, if you're interested in whether automating your Twitter stream will increase your followers, take this next graph into account:

Key learning: Less automation = more followers

(All data gathered from Triberr - The Reach Multiplier)

How can I build my author trustrank with the search engines?

Here are some ways to benchmark and build your author presence in the eyes of the search engines:

Author microformats - if you own a website, you most definitely should implement the new rel=author microformat, validating through Google Plus. This is a fantastic way to directly claim your content to the search engines. Here is how to do implement it on Wordpress (via Joost de Valk) and here is the official Google page on authorship.

Klout Topics- Since we were talking about topical trustrank earlier as well, you might want an idea of which topics the search engines might consider you authoritative about. I think that Klout Topics is a good place to start.

Gravatar - Ross Hudgens wrote a great post a few months ago called Generating Static Force Multipliers for Great Content wherein he talked about the importance of a consistent personal brand and image across the Internet. If you have the same photo across many different sites, how could the search engines not use this in determining trustworthiness?

KnowEm is a website where you can find if your username has been taken across many different social networks. This is a great place to go to learn where you need to sign up to protect your username, and therefore your personal brand and author trust.

Conclusion

Author authority has long been a topic of discussion in SEO circles and we've wondered "Does Google have an author rank?" From these patents, I think it is obvious that they have the capability, and especially now with Google Plus for Google, and Facebook for Bing, both are going to be making this even more of a priority.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.


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Keyword Metrics for SEO (And Driving Actions from Data) - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 02:02 PM PDT

Posted by Aaron Wheeler

 We all have access to a lot of great metrics surrounding keywords we research and target, including data from search engines themselves, analytics suites, and other third-party companies (ourselves included). It's one thing to gather and parse this data, but it's a whole 'nother thing to actually act on that data to drive traffic. On this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand illustrates some ways to take the keyword metrics you've garnered and turn them into visits to your sites. Have any tips on interpreting and acting on keyword metrics? Let us know in the comments below!

 

Video Transcription

Howdy SEOmoz fans! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday, This week, we're talking about some keyword metrics for SEO and how you can drive action from the data that you collect.

Now, some of this data is in the SEOmoz platform. A lot of it is stuff that we haven't added in or that you might be calculating manually yourself. Certainly, all of it is available from your web analytics tool, Google Analytics or Omniture or Webtrends, whatever you are using, and from doing some specific analysis yourself, maybe in Excel or something like that. What I want to help you do here is take all of this information, all of these data points that you are collecting about the keywords that are driving traffic to your site and be able to use them to take smart actions. Collecting metrics is fine. It's good to have analytics, good to have data. But it is useless unless you do something with it, right? I mean, why bother looking at the number of or the percentage of market share of search engines unless you're going to actually take action based on those things. So, let's dive in here and take a look real quick.

The first one that I want to talk about is search engines versus market share. This is things like, okay, I am getting 84% of my traffic from Google, 8% from Bing, 6% from Yahoo. This is fine, and it is something that you might want to measure over time. Over time if you see that your shares are increasing or decreasing, you might take some action. But the thing that you really want to do is compare it against the market averages. I will have Aaron put in the Whiteboard Friday post a link to I think it is StatCounter, who has some great metrics around what these average market shares are for most websites and referring traffic.

Key important point - do not, do not use comScore data. If you use comScore data, what you will see is something like Google has 65% market share, Bing has 14% market share, Yahoo has 20% market share. No, no, no, no. Everyone's website shows that they are getting between, let's say, 80% and 90% of their search traffic from Google. So, if Google's market share is 65%, how is this possible? Well, the reason is because, remember that comScore is counting all searches on the Microsoft networks and on Yahoo's network. Yahoo has a huge content network. Microsoft has billions of web pages. Any searches performed internally on those sites count towards the search share, versus Google, who basically has very few actual web properties, media properties, content properties, so all the searches go offsite to somewhere else. Very few of these searches stay on Google verus Bing and Yahoo where a large percentage of the searches that are performed end up back on Microsoft or Yahoo properties.

The action that you take once you see one of these is if your market share numbers are way off and you think they are way off for your sector, so you could use some scoring against some competition. You could use something like Hitwise to determine that. You would want to say, "Oh, you know what? We are low on Bing. We are going to expend extra effort to try and get traffic from Bing." The other thing that I'd highly recommend that you put in here along with this column is . . . so, search engine, market share, you versus the average market shares, and then you also want to have something like a conversions data. Throughout this talk, throughout this quick Whiteboard Friday, some conversions, I've 3 here, I have 6 there, I have 9, I have 10, whatever it is. I want to say that I know conversion is one of those metrics that is tough to gauge, especially for a lot of B2B folks or folks who are driving traffic to their site and then they have offline conversions, conversions via phone, all of these kinds of things. So, driving at what is the actual conversion value of these kinds of things is very tough.

If you are in a pinch and you want a metric that suggests, infers conversion, infers value, I really love using browse rate. So, browse rate . . . I'm going to come over here for a sec. Browse rate is essentially a simple metric that will say something like 1.7, which means that on average when somebody visited a web page of yours, visit one on my web pages, they browse to let's say 1.7 other pages, meaning that if 100 visits come, I will probably get 170 page views from those 100 visits that land on this page that come from that search engine, that come from that source. So, do you get what I am saying? Basically what's nice about browse rate is it exists for every source that you could possibly think of, and it is there by default. You don't need to add a conversion action. It strongly suggests, strongly infers usually, that you will get more value from that visitor.

Browse rate is a great sort of substitute if for some reason you can't get conversions. If you can get conversions, by all means put them in. Add action tracking. You should have that in your web analytics. But if for some reason you can't, browse rate is a good substitute. It's a great way to substitute if you are looking at traffic sources that aren't conversion heavy but you still want to compare the value against them.

Let's look at keyword distribution. A lot of people like to break out keyword distribution in a number of formats. Keyword distribution is a common metric. Folks will say, "Oh, how much traffic, how many keywords are coming from the head of the demand curve, middle of demand curve, tail of the demand curve, or long tail?" I actually like using four breakouts. So, what I do is, like, head is more than 500 searches per month in terms of volume. Middle would be like 50 to 499 searches. Tail would be less than 50, and then long tail would be, like, there is no volume report. Google AdWords tool or whatever your data is pulling says, "Boy, you know what? There is nothing from here."

Again, these are frustrating metrics to get. If you need to get them, what I would recommend is use a combination of your rank, so if you are tracking with SEOmoz or you are using the SEO Book Rank Tracker, or you're using some profession enterprise level thing like Conductor or BrightEdge or Covario or Rank Above or Search Metrics, those kinds of things, you want your rank, and then you want the number of visits. Essentially, what you get if you put these together is you can get a sense of, oh, you know what, this drove quite a bit of traffic, but my ranking wasn't that high. Therefore I am inferring that this is a head term. Or, oh, you know what, my visits were quite low even though my ranking was quite high. Therefore I am inferring this is a tail term. Hopefully in the future someone will make some spiffy software to do that. Let me think about that. So, once you have these distributions, you can see the number of keywords that are in each of these buckets, the number of visits that they send, the average ranking of those keywords. So again, you can calculate that inside your Moz web app or a number of these other apps, and conversion actions that you drive from these.

What's great about this is this really let's you see, like, "Hey, hang on a second. You know what? I spend all my time worrying about my rankings for these 45 keywords. The ones that are in my head, that are driving most of my traffic. My average ranking is #8, so I still have a lot of room to move. But if I look at my conversion actions across these, I think that the biggest opportunity might actually be, maybe it is here in the tail, or even in the very long tail." Then I would think to myself, boy, I need to stop spending a bunch of time worrying about these few keywords that I manage and try to get rankings up on the vanity keywords. I need to think a lot more about the value of tail, because for every keyword that I can capture here, the number of conversion actions I can get from that is dramatically higher. When you see metrics like this in your analytics this really drives you to be a different kind of marketer. To think to yourself, "All right. How do I get more user generated content? How can I produce more editorial content? Can I license content from somewhere? Can I syndicate out my content some places and get more people contributing back to me? Content is clearly driving a ton of value, and I need to do more content marketing."

Likewise, I think this is actually coming really soon in the Moz web app, but I highly urge you to segment branded versus unbranded keyword terms. This is incredibly important because if branded is driving all of your value, then SEO is not really working for you other than to capture keywords that you would almost certainly otherwise capture. When unbranded is capturing a lot of value, that's really your sort of SEO work capturing people early in the funnel in the discovery process before they know about your brand. So, breaking out branded from unbranded really lets you see how well the efforts of your managed SEO efforts are going.

Likewise, branded does let you see how well efforts like branding and market share and mindshare among consumers or mindshare among business if you're B2B is going. If you see these metrics trending up or down, particularly if you see branded trending down, you might think to yourself, boy, we need to get out there more. We need to get more exposure. People are losing excitement or interest in our brand. If you see unbranded going down, you might be thinking to yourself, well, you know what, either we're losing out in competitive rankings or we're losing out in the long tail. Then you can look up here into the keyword distribution curve and figure out where that is happening and why you are losing or gaining. This is very important from an analytic standpoint. It is also important from an action- driving standpoint. It can tell you what to do, what to concentrate on, what to worry about and not, where campaigns are going well and not. If your branding is going badly, you might want to talk to whoever is running your brand advertising. That's probably in their wheelhouse.

The next thing I like to look at, top keywords from a keyword metric standpoint. So, you've your top keywords here, and you probably would have a big list of keywords. In the Moz web app, I keep track of around 75 to 80. I could have up to 300 in there. I do searches. You can do this just using your Google Analytics, which is free. So I might look at the number of searches that were generated. This is going to have to come from AdWords, which is frustrating, but if you can do it for your managed keywords, it is very nice to have that number in there. I might look at visits, conversions, average rank, and if you want, I would add one more here and look at, I like adding keyword difficulty and looking at that. The reason is I can really get a sense of which keywords are going to be easiest for me. If I see this keyword has 4 conversions, 2 conversions, 1 conversion, but if I see something like, oh, and there is only 15 searches, I am ranking #1, there is not a lot of opportunity there. But I see here, oh, I have a 1% conversion rate. If I work on conversion here, and lets' say the difficulty, I don't know, this is 55 and this is 48 and this is 72. So, 72, that's going to be super hard. That's going to be very challenging to increase this. There is not a ton of search volume. I am already capturing some of it. This one looks really good to me. That looks like where I would focus some more actual effort on a single keyword, and that's exactly what this list is designed to let you do, to look at conversions against visits and search volume and difficulty and say, "Hey, I have opportunity. You know what? I'd rank a little better if I can push that up to #3, even 3.5. It's going to really help my business. I am going to capture more customers."

The last place I look from a keyword metric, it's technically not a keyword metric, but I think it is very, very important because of how it captures keywords and encapsulates this data, is top content. This is essentially like, oh, all right, here is my home page. Maybe that's my landing page for product A and this is product B. I can see how many visits from search that I am getting on these. I can calculate the number of conversions on those. I look at the number of keywords that are sending business to these pages, and this really helps to tell me the content that I have produced in the past, how successful is that? Going forward, it informs me what content should I keep creating. For product stuff, great. But when you are doing content marketing, if you're running a blog, you're doing video, you're producing articles, you're syndicating or licensing stuff, you're having guest writers post things for you, you're doing user generated content, finding out the value of that stuff is amazing. Being able to know which content drove the right kinds of actions and is driving lots of different keywords, long tail stuff, head stuff, whatever it is, lots of conversions, lots of visits from search. You might want to segment by the way so that this is conversions, specifically search conversions, so that you are not getting, for example, something mixed up where these are people coming from other sources to these pages and then converting. You actually want to know for the visitors from search how many conversions do you get on these. Having this information is going to be great for analyzing previous content and knowing what types of content to produce.

So, what's great about the analytics process is it makes an SEO a much more data driven marketer. I look out in the world, and I am sure you do this too, and you see, boy, there is the ad team over there, or there is the paid marketing team over there and they're doing sponsorships of events and they're doing branding plays. They're doing television advertising and radio and print, magazines and newspapers. They're not held to kind of these strict standards. A lot of that stuff is uncapturable. The beautiful thing about SEO is how measurable this process is and how much you can do to improve it. When you start to get these metrics up and running, when you start doing this analytics process, oh man, huge super win. Just awesome.

All right, everyone. Take care. I hope you have a great week. We'll see you again for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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West Wing Week: "Pass this Bill"

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, Sept. 16, 2011
 

West Wing Week: 9/16/11 or "Pass this Bill"

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This week, the President took his American Jobs Act to Richmond, Virginia, Columbus, Ohio, and Raleigh, North Carolina, traveled to all three memorial sites on the 10th anniversary of September 11th, and presented the Medal of Honor to former active duty Marine, Dakota Meyer, for his extraordinary actions in Afghanistan.

Watch the full video here.

West Wing Week

In Case You Missed It

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

Making a Digital Promise to our Students
The U.S. Department of Education launches a new unique public-private partnership to develop learning technologies that transform teaching and learning in and out of the classroom.

Innovating our System for Innovation
Today, President Obama signs the historic Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.

First Lady Michelle Obama: Support our Military Families
In an op-ed published in USA Today, First Lady Michelle Obama writes that remembering what happened on 9/11 gives us the opportunity to reflect on all that these families have endured and our obligations to them now and in the years ahead.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

9:45 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:45 AM: The President visits a classroom at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

11:10 AM: The President delivers remarks and signs the America Invents Act into Law

4:00 PM: The Vice President delivers the James R. Soles Lecture on the Constitution and Citizenship at the University of Delaware

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

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Seth's Blog : "But what if it works?"

"But what if it works?"

Dr. Dre licensed his name for a line of headphones. I have no idea how much his royalty is, but figure it's $20 a pair.

At some point during the negotiations, perhaps someone said, "wait a minute! What if it's a hit? What if we sell more high-end headphones than anyone has ever sold, ever, and we sell 5,000,000 pairs. That means that he'll get a hundred million dollars. That's absurd! We need to put a limit on this."

We often hesitate to pay a portion of the upside to someone who is taking a risk, because we're worried that perhaps, just perhaps, his risk will pay off and he'll make a fortune...

The thing is, if they make a fortune, you make five fortunes. Don't worry about it. Go ahead and give people the opportunity to have their risk pay off. More than ever, people are motivated by the opportunities that come with scale.

 

 

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joi, 15 septembrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Zandi Loses His Mind (Assuming He Ever Had One)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 04:44 PM PDT

I have really had it will bailouts, all of them, but especially bailouts that come at with a huge cost to taxpayers.

The latest heap of Keynesian clown bailout madness comes from economist Mark Zandi on how to jump-start HARP (Obama's Home Affordable Refinance Program).

Please consider Experts back expanding Obama mortgage refi effort
At issue is the White House's Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, which has seeks to provide refinancing options to millions of underwater borrowers who have no equity in their homes as long as their mortgage is backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled housing giants.

"Jump-starting HARP requires that Fannie and Freddie not charge add-on rates, even for refinancing borrowers who have lost a lot of equity in their homes or have relatively low credit scores," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics.

As it stands now, the HARP program only allows borrowers to refinance at current low interest rates into a mortgage that is at most 25% more than their home's current value.

David Stevens, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, acknowledged that allowing borrowers who are even more underwater, that is they owe even more than that cap, to participate would enable more qualified borrowers to refinance.

Zandi made additional suggestions, including proposing that Fannie and Freddie could forgo borrower income verification and detailed home appraisals to keep costs down.

As of June, roughly 840,000 borrowers have refinanced their mortgages through HARP. However, RealtyTrac reports that about 16 million of the 40 million U.S. mortgages are underwater.

According to CoreLogic, the number of mortgages that are 25% or more underwater is 4.6 million and the number that is 50% or more is 2.3 million
Look at the self-serving circular thinking of David Stevens, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association who acknowledged that including borrowers who are even more underwater "would enable more qualified borrowers to refinance". Of course it would. Loosen standards and more qualify for loans, by definition.

You can temporarily jump-start nearly anything if you throw enough money at it, and that is exactly what Keynesian clown fools want to do. Unfortunately, no amount of taxpayer money is too great for any cause any fool believes in.

Common sense dictates (and history proves), losses accelerate as you loosen standards. Forgo income verification and ignore credit scores as Zandi proposes and losses would soar.

It is ludicrous to propose loan modifications to those with no job or no income, and those significantly upside down on their mortgage. The former cannot afford any payment and history proves the latter will walk away anyway.

No income and no verification liar loans are among the reasons we are in this mess in the first place. Thus, Zandi clearly has a short memory, if any memory at all, coupled with no common sense whatsoever.

The best way to "jump-start" housing is to let the market find a bottom. Once prices get sufficiently low, investors and buyers will step in. Meanwhile, any steps that artificially prop up prices and postpone foreclosures at taxpayer expense will delay the bottom in housing, delay household formation, and delay a jobs recovery as well.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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USD liquidity provisions: EUR relief likely to be temporary says Barclays Capital Research

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 11:14 AM PDT

Via email, I have no link ...
USD liquidity provisions: EUR relief likely to be temporary

The ECB has decided, in coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, to conduct three US dollar liquidity-providing operations with a maturity of approximately three months on October 12, November 9 and December 7. These will be conducted in addition to the ongoing weekly seven-day operations announced on 10 May 2010 at a fixed rate that is yet to be announced. In the past, that rate was equal to 3m USD OIS +100bp.

European banks, in particular French ones, have been reported to be facing USD funding pressures over the past few weeks. These have also been evident in the recent fall in the EUR basis and rise in the spread between Euribor and OIS spreads.

The EUR has rallied as a result of the measure: it offers term USD liquidity to strained European banks and gives some breathing room to the European authorities. However, the move is being amplified by short positioning and is likely to be short lived. This measure just alleviates one of the symptoms of the euro area debt crisis and, if anything, confirms the liquidity constraint that banks are facing. It also illustrates why the USD is the best hedge for real problems in the EA, not European currencies such as the NOK or SEK. If the crisis intensifies, investors will likely continue to favor the greenback: USD haven demand will always be a safe way out in times of trouble.
I agree with Barclay's analysis calling the liquidity measures a Band-Aids and Rubber-Bands Approach earlier today.
Band-Aids and Rubber-Bands

That the ECB, FED, Bank of Japan, and Swiss National bank have to provide liquidity to calm the markets is hardly calming news, yet the market continues to react well to band-aid and rubber-band measures ... for now.

It won't last because nothing has been solved and attempts to revive the Eurobond idea is Dead-on-Arrival.

Either Merkel and Sarkozy are attempting to buy time, hoping beyond hope to preserve their failing legacies, or are delusional.

I suggest a combination of the three.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Sarkozy, Merkel "Convinced" Greece will Remain in Eurozone; Market Convinced of Default; Gold Declines US Dollar Drops; Band-Aids and Rubber-Bands

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 09:22 AM PDT

Equities continued their choppy overlapping rally today on news of more liquidity support from the ECB and statements from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicholas Sarkozy that Greece will Remain in Currency Union.

Bloomberg reports German Bunds Decline as ECB Provides Dollars to Banks; Greek Bonds Surge
German two-year notes slid for a fourth day as the European Central Bank said it will lend dollars to euro-region banks to ensure they have enough of the U.S. currency, damping demand for safer assets.

Ten-year bund yields climbed above 2 percent for the first time since Sept. 5 as stocks gained after French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday they're "convinced" Greece will remain in the currency union. Greek bonds surged as investors trimmed bets the nation will default. Spain's 10-year yields approached a one- month high after the country sold 3.95 billion euros ($5.4 billion) of debt.

The ECB said it will conduct three U.S. dollar liquidity- providing operations in coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank. European stocks and the euro rallied. It will offer the loans on Oct. 12, Nov. 9 and Dec. 7.
Greek Bonds Surge?

The Bloomberg headline reads "Greek Bonds Surge".

Did they really? No, not really, at least in any meaningful perspective if one bothers to look closer.

One-Year Greek Bond Yield



That may be a surge, but all it represents is a possible delay in bankruptcy, not that bankruptcy will be avoided.

Italy 10-Year Bond Yield



No surge where it really matters, that's for sure.

Meanwhile the gold-dollar reverse correlation play is back in vogue today, with gold down $41 and the Euro hitting a high of 1.39.

Band-Aids and Rubber-Bands

That the ECB, FED, Bank of Japan, and Swiss National bank have to provide liquidity to calm the markets is hardly calming news, yet the market continues to react well to band-aid and rubber-band measures ... for now.

It won't last because nothing has been solved and attempts to revive the Eurobond idea is Dead-on-Arrival.

Either Merkel and Sarkozy are attempting to buy time, hoping beyond hope to preserve their failing legacies, or are delusional.

I suggest a combination of the three.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List