luni, 6 iunie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


8 Animal Myths Dispelled

Posted: 06 Jun 2011 01:29 PM PDT

Myths include: one dog year equals about seven human years, goldfish have a three second memory, chameleons change their color to match their environment, and several others.

More Infographics.

Click to Enlarge.

Source: misconceptionjunction


Passport vs. Reality

Posted: 06 Jun 2011 01:05 PM PDT

This is a project about how different can look a person in real life and his own passport photo. People change every minute and the only thing that stays still is their passport photo.

All the same person but such different looks. Lovely side-by-side comparable photo project by Suren Manvelyan and Biayna Mahari.

Passprot photoes on the left side (from valid passports) and present-day portraits on the right side:






















Source: behance


SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog


8 Tips for Blogger Outreach

Posted: 05 Jun 2011 01:49 PM PDT

Posted by robmillard

Hi there SEOmoz readers - I’m Rob and I work at Distilled as an SEO Consultant. Blogger outreach is a topic I’ve spoken about recently at SMX London and I wanted to share some of the tips with you here on the SEOmoz blog.

It’s worth quickly covering off why I think SEOs should be building relationships through outreach - a responsive network of bloggers with whom you have an ongoing conversation can help make your promotion efforts much easier. Contacting bloggers cold and only when you want something is bound to be less successful than if you put the groundwork in first. Like Michael Gray tweeted recently:

So here’s a collection of tips for better and more efficient outreach that have come out of some of the work I’ve been doing recently.

1. Flattery is easier on Twitter

Link request emails typically contain some sort of compliment about the website’s design or content. The trouble is that it often comes across as forced, and sometimes there’s not even a great deal to be complimentary about. When a compliment is obviously a thinly veiled attempt to get in the website owner’s good books, it can have the opposite effect.

Twitter is a much more natural place for this sort of activity - people are always bigging each other up. They RT, #FF, list people, post each other’s blog content, interact, ask questions, and share. It’s totally natural and can be much more subtle, so don’t forget to use all of these tools to get yourself noticed by your link targets.

For example, a month of gentle, regular retweeting and interaction could be the perfect way to build up to a link request email.

2. Finding email addresses can be tough

Website owners often go out of their way to hide their email addresses. They replace them with images, they use contact forms, and often use generic inboxes like contact@website.com.

At the same time, website owners go out of their way to promote their social media accounts pretty much everywhere they can. They add themselves to directories, put badges all over their sites, link to their profiles at the end of blog posts and more.

It’s pretty easy to work out how some website owners would prefer to be contacted, and finding social media profiles can often take a fraction of the time.

If you know the person’s name then you can often find them with a search like site:twitter.com rob millard. If you don’t know their name, how about searching LinkedIn for their job title and company name? site:linkedin.com inurl:/in/ distilled SEO consultant - easy!

You can also use tools like FollowerWonk, WeFollow, and Twitter’s internal search to find Twitter accounts that are relevant to your niche. Facebook’s internal search can help you do the same.

If you’re familiar with Google Docs and importxml() it’s relatively simple to scrape directories like FollowerWonk and WeFollow, and pull in each user’s web address from their Twitter bio. Once you’ve done that, you could use the SEOmoz API to find out which influential Twitter users actually have blogs worth getting links from.

3. Use Twitter's search to find opportunities

There are a whole host of ways to find link building opportunities using Twitter search. Firstly, check out some of the hashtags used by journalists and bloggers such as #journorequest, #journalistrequest, and #HARO. Combine them which a keyword relevant to your niche and you often get some great opportunities. Speed is crucial though, so make sure you’re quick to respond. 

Twitter Search Results

Advanced search queries for guest posting opportunities are fairly well documented, but you can use a similar approach with Twitter. Check out “guest post” + keyword or “guest blog” + keyword. These aren’t typically blogs asking for guest posts, but they’re promoting guest content which shows that they are likely to accept something similar by yours truly.

If you find that searches and hashtags like the ones mentioned above are yielding opportunities, why not set them up as an extra pane in a Twitter client such as TweetDeck so that you can scan them regularly.

4. Tailor your Guest Posting ideas

When contacting a blogger about guest posting opportunities, I’ve found that I have a much higher success rate if I include a few ideas for headlines straight off.  You can make this technique even more effective if you do some quick research to find out what sort of content has worked well for them in the past. Who’s likely to turn down a free post on a subject that earned them loads of links last time round?

So the Top Pages report in OSE is a great place to start – are there any recurring themes that you can pick up on? For example, as a technology blog smartphone content might be way more popular than anything else, so pitch some ideas in that area.

Possibly a better approach would be to look at their site using PostRank as this includes other signals such as social media and number of comments.

Or, again, you could build a tool in Google Docs similar to the one Tom Critchlow outlined here and run the exported list of top pages through it to get social metrics.

5. Twitter Lists FTW

My favourite use for lists is to create a private list for users that I’ve identified as outreach targets. This way, you can set up a pane in TweetDeck to monitor what those users are up to and look for opportunities to retweet, interact etc. Obviously a private list is preferred because you’ll blow your chances if somebody realises they’re on a list called “Bloggers to get links from lol”. 

On the other hand, you could use public lists as a form of flattery. Create a list called “The world’s best travel bloggers” and then tweet about it. There’s no guarantee that they’ll see it, but you’d hope at least a few of the people on it would check it out.

6. Get an introduction

This is one of my favourite uses for LinkedIn. Typically I tend to avoid actually contacting people through LinkedIn as it can come across just as forced as a cold email. But if you know who you’re targeting, find their profile and check out this box on the right hand side:

LinkedIn How you're connected

 It could be that one of your colleagues already knows them, in which case you can leverage that existing relationship. Or it might be that another business contact knows them, in which case you could ask for an introduction which gives you an easy in.

7. Show your credibility

Apart from the domain name, there’s very little in an email address that demonstrates the credibility of the user. This is another area in which social media’s strengths lie as outreach targets can easily check your profile and work out if you’re the sort of person they want to collaborate with.

As a result, it’s really worth putting in the time to make sure your profile looks authentic and credible. Even the simple things like your profile picture can make a difference – use a photo of your actual face rather than a logo so that people can see who they’re talking to. You can also build credibility by participating in relevant conversations and communities so that you demonstrate that you’re genuinely interested in your niche.

8. Set up custom RSS feeds for key bloggers

This is really at the end of the outreach process, but I often find that I’m contacting bloggers that operate in a niche within my niche. For example, a food blogger might build a relationship with a cupcake blog. If they like to consume content using RSS, it would be much better to give them a feed of posts which are strictly relevant to cupcakes.

Fortunately this is super-easy in Wordpress. Find the relevant tag page or category page such as:
http://www.robsfoodblog.com/tags/cupcakes/
and add /feed/ to the end of the URL:
http://www.robsfoodblog.com/tags/cupcakes/feed/
Score! Obviously this won’t work exactly on every wordpress install as it depends how you’ve got your permalinks set up, but it should be possible if you have a play around.

That’s all for now! Hopefully this post gives you some ideas that might freshen up your outreach strategies. If you’ve got any further ideas or questions, I’d love to hear them in the comments.


Do you like this post? Yes No

Photo of the Day: President Obama Grabs Lunch in Toledo

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, June 6, 2011
 

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day 

President Barack Obama has lunch with Toledo Mayor Michael Bell at Rudy’s Hot Dog in Toledo, Ohio, June 3, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

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

“Thank You”: Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden to Our Service Members in Naples, Italy Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden visit with troops and their families at a U.S. Naval Support Activity base in Naples, Italy.

President Obama on the Passing of Lawrence Eagleburger: “Our Nation Has Lost a Distinguished Diplomat and Public Servant”
On the passing of former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, President Obama and Vice President Biden release statements.

Weekly Address: Growing Manufacturing with the Auto Industry Turnaround
Speaking from a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, the President commends the work of America’s dedicated autoworkers, who have helped reinvigorate the domestic auto industry.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

9:30 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the President Daily Briefing

10:00 AM: The President meets with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan; the Vice President also attends 

12:00 PM: The President is interviewed by Hearst DC Bureau, WEWS Cleveland and WDIV Detroit about the importance of the auto industry resurgence

1:30 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live

2:15 PM: The President meets with senior advisors 

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

Get Updates 

Sign Up for the Daily Snapshot 

Stay Connected     

 

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Manage Subscriptions for e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Sign Up for Updates from the White House

Unsubscribe e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com | Privacy Policy

Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111 
    
  
 

 

 

Seth's Blog : The taskmaster premium

The taskmaster premium

How much are you paying for the privilege of having someone else tell you what to do?

Example: if you go to your gym and work out for an hour, the cost of that session is zero.

Hire a personal trainer to follow you around and give you instructions and that's $70.

If you take a job as a freelancer writer doing short service pieces on assignment to a local paper, you might earn $3 an hour. Which is about 97% less than you'd earn if, like some writers, you dream up amazing pieces, write them on spec and turn them into blogs, books or films. This writer doesn't wait to get hired. He hires himself.

If you do publicity for an agency, working hard and precisely following the VP's and the client's instructions, you might earn $25 an hour. On the other hand, when you do your own PR, when you build a sensation and turn it into a following, you might earn many times that. (And enjoy it more).

Work for a coal mine and make minimum wage. Discover a coal mine and never need to work again.

We happily give up our freedom and our income in exchange for having someone else take responsibility for telling us what to do next.

How much are you giving up?

 

More Recent Articles

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.




Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498

 

duminică, 5 iunie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Could you endure 15 seconds of waterboarding even if you knew it was a setup and could cancel it at will?

Posted: 05 Jun 2011 10:22 PM PDT

Unfortunately the video is not embeddable, but please consider this short link on waterboarding where Playboy.com journalist Mike Guy underwent waterboarding by a trained member of the U.S. military in the site's new Lab Rat feature.

Personally I believe that it torture. So does Senator John McCain.

Regardless of whether you think it is torture, the fact is, waterboarding is counterproductive.

For more details, please consider the following articles


My position is simple: "Thinking that torture is wrong is not a liberal or conservative value - it is simply a value."

Waterboarding is torture.

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


Guru Focus Interview with a Value Investor; Dissimilar Starting Points, Many Similar Conclusions

Posted: 05 Jun 2011 11:46 AM PDT

Inquiring minds are reading a Guru Focus Interview with Investor Arnold Van Den Berg, a value investor.
Guru Focus: You seem to believe that there will be high inflation risk in the coming years. What is the best strategy in this inflationary environment?

Van Den Berg: It is important to define what we mean by inflation. Inflation rates in the low single digits (1% to 3.5%) generally meet the definition of low and stable inflation. Inflation rates greater than 4% or lower than 0% have a high risk of destabilizing the economy. The primary risk of inflation stems from the potential for monetary policy errors. Monetary policy makers do well when the underlying environment is relatively stable. But when conditions change suddenly, there is a possibility for error. Thus, monetary policy errors can be either deflationary or inflationary. The risk is especially high in unstable monetary environments, like we are experiencing today.

Both inflation and deflation compress valuations. In the 1970s, stocks sank to single digit P/E ratios. We all know what happened to markets in the early 1930s. Generally, economic instability is bad for valuations.

We believe that we could go through a period of above-average inflation (on the order of 5%), but nothing like we saw in the 1970s. This period will be very poor for stocks. Since it is difficult to predict the timing of such episodes, we adjust for inflation (and deflation as well) by adjusting our valuations for lower price multiples. When we find bargains, we will buy them; when we cannot find bargains, we will hold cash. We expect that conditions in the economy and in the market will run counter to our investment philosophy for short periods of time, but we know that over the long run value investing outperforms.

Guru Focus: There was a piece in OID approximately eight years ago where you discussed the post-bubble periods. It was transformative for me but I wonder where you think we are at present. It seems the risks are greater than ever as our government tries to solve an over-consumption problem by issuing massive amounts of debt.

Van Den Berg: A major characteristic of bear markets is that things that would normally cause the market to explode — like low interest rates — have either minimal or temporary effects. In bear markets, earnings could continue to grow, but multiples become compressed. This causes stock valuations to trade up one to two years, but then revert back to low levels and start the cycle over. Over the duration of the bear market, the prices of stocks may not significantly appreciate. Stocks that may look cheap on a multiple basis may often get even cheaper. This is exactly what we have been seeing since 2000.

At the end of the bear market, multiples have compressed to very low levels. This sets the stage for the next bull market.

How much longer will we be in this bear market? Bear markets typically last about sixteen years, so I would say that we have about five more years to go. This coincides with our earlier comments on how long we think it will take for the real estate, unemployment, and fiscal problems to be reconciled. The way to invest in this kind of environment is to stay focused on the valuations of individual companies. You can still make money in this environment by buying stocks when they are cheap and selling when they are near fair value (remember that multiples are compressing, so stocks won't go as high as one would expect in a normal environment). When bargains can't be found, hold cash.
The Guru Focus interview is well worth a read in entirety.

Are Stocks Cheap?

Stocks look cheap now but they aren't because of three factors.

  1. PE Compression
  2. Earnings are mean-reverting
  3. Record government stimulus globally

Van Den Berg discussed point number one in detail.

I covered points one and two in Negative Annualized Stock Market Returns for the Next 10 Years or Longer? It's Far More Likely Than You Think.

For a follow-up on those points, please see Anatomy of Bubbles; Negative Returns for a Decade Revisited; Is Gold in a Bubble?

Earnings High From Record Global Stimulus

Point number three should be obvious, but obviously it's not given pervasive bullish sentiment nearly everywhere, including smack in the middle of article with bearish sounding titles. For example, please consider a few excerpts from Dow Has Its Longest Weekly Slump Since 2004

  • Michael Shaoul, whose Marketfield Fund Ltd. beat 81 percent of competitors last year, said that while the payrolls report was disappointing, it may also be a signal the slowdown in the economic data is near its peak. He noted that weaker nonfarm payrolls reports in February and July 2004 failed to derail the last bull market, which peaked in October 2007.
  • The biggest decline in the S&P 500 since August is creating a buying opportunity for investors, according to Blackstone Group LP's Byron Wien. The price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 has fallen close to its lowest level in 2011, according to Bloomberg data. The index currently trades at 14.8 times earnings, near this year's low of 14.7 when it fell in March after Japan's earthquake.
  • "The economy is not as bad as it looks right now. Corporate profits will be good, very good. People are asking me, 'Do you still think the market can get to 1,500 by the end of the year?' I do."

In contrast, I think it is crystal clear much of the recovery is a mirage based on unsustainable government stimulus, that stimulus is fading, there is little chance right now for more stimulus, and that corporate profits have peaked this cycle in conjunction with a slowing global economy.

I discussed the slowing global economy in a video: Mish on Yahoo Finance Daily Ticker on Slowing Global Economy; U.S. Manufacturing ISM Plunge; Order Backlog and New Orders Barely Above Contraction

High Inflation Coming?

Van Den Berg clearly has a different definition of inflation and deflation than I do. I prefer to view inflation and deflation in terms of money supply and credit. He looks at prices. He is calling for "high inflation" but high means 5%.

Can we see a 5% CPI with falling demand for credit? Sure, why not? And if it plays out that way, there will be no hiding places at all. Treasuries and stocks both would be hammered. It is one of the reasons I do not like treasuries now.

It is also a good reason why corporate bond rates at 2.33% for 10 years constitute a bubble. , Bear in mind that a renewed credit crunch might send treasury yields lower but it will not be good for corporate bonds, especially junk bonds.

Dissimilar Starting Points, Many Similar Conclusions

Van Den Berg does not like gold. I do. I gave my reasons in a Yahoo Finance video last week. Please see Why I Continue to Like Gold for a discussion. There are other differences as well.

However, we have both arrived at the similar conclusions regarding equity valuations in general even though we have very different starting points about what inflation is.

Conclusions

  • The bear market is not over
  • Valuations are not cheap
  • When there is little value, then there is nothing wrong with cash

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


Seth's Blog : Subscribing (and a color bonus)

Subscribing (and a color bonus)

There are a bunch of ways you can automatically get this blog daily, mostly for free.

RSS is simple and easy. It instantly delivers the blog to your RSS reader.

Email is direct and excepting sometime issues with bouncing and filters, a long-time favorite. To sign up, you can use the little box to the left, just under my head... Of course, your info is never rented or sold.

Twitter makes it easy, just follow @thisissethsblog

You can also get this blog on your Kindle for a buck or so.

Bonus: When designing something new, consider getting free color inspiration from Colourlovers.

 

More Recent Articles

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.




Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498

 

Seth's Blog : Irrational vs. unreasonable

Irrational vs. unreasonable

Customers and team members make irrational requests all the time.

That doesn't make them unreasonable. If satisfying their request moves things forward, it's not always worth the effort to teach someone a lesson. Sometimes, it's more effective to just embrace their irrationality.

Being right doesn't always have to be the goal.

 

More Recent Articles

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.




Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498