Central Perk

luni, 18 iulie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Marilyn Monroe Sculpture in Chicago
Women's World Cup 2011
Final Image From Famous Movies
The World’s Top Selling Cars By Country (Infographic)
Star Wars in Tunisia

Posted: 18 Jul 2011 04:40 PM PDT

A 26-foot-tall (8 m) sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in her most famous pose was unveiled on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. It is made of stainless steel and aluminum, and weighs 15.5 tons. Sculptor in charge is Seward Johnson.

Passers-by wasted little time positioning themselves under her billowing skirt to get a subway-grate view of Monroe in the same stance as she appeared in the 1955 film "The Seven Year Itch."

Women's World Cup 2011

Posted: 18 Jul 2011 04:10 PM PDT

These are very exciting photos from the 2011 Women's soccer World cup that was held in Germany. Japan became the first Asian nation to win the Women's World Cup, beating USA in a penalty shoot-out. The USA missed their first three penalties, and Japan were crowned world champion.

Source: theatlantic

Final Image From Famous Movies

Posted: 18 Jul 2011 02:46 PM PDT

Can you guess which movies these 45 images are taken from? Some are easy but others are a little tougher. I'll bet you can't guess all of them. Here are the final images of many famous and well known movies.

Titanic

Big

Edward Scissorhands

9 to 5

12 Angry Men

Adaptation

Almost Famous

Monsters Inc.

The Others

Black Swan

Annie Hall

Rain Man

American Graffiti

A Place in the Sun

Beetlejuice

Blue Valentine

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Gosford Park

How to Marry a Millionaire

Brokeback Mountain

Inception

Good Will Hunting

Cry Baby

Jaws

Dirty Dancing

Moulin Rouge

Grease

Groundhog Day

Mystic River

Romancing the Stone

The Sound of Music

The Shawshank Redemption

Kramer vs. Kramer

The Graduate

The King's Speech

The Departed

Toy Story

Interview with the Vampire

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Manhattan

The Muppets Take Manhattan

The Shining

Working Girl

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The World’s Top Selling Cars By Country (Infographic)

Posted: 18 Jul 2011 12:47 PM PDT

This map shows some of the world's top selling cars by country.

Click image to enlarge

Source: carinsurancecomparison

Star Wars in Tunisia

Posted: 18 Jul 2011 12:34 PM PDT

When you say Star Wars, most people think of galaxies far far away. But all these exotic planets from the movies were filmed on earth. Four of the Star Wars movies were partially filmed in southern Tunisia (the planet Tatooine in the movies) and the good thing is that many of the locations are still in relative good state.

You can stay in Luke Skywalker's home (now a hotel) and wander around the desert bumping into moisture vaporators and other Star Wars stuff around the Mos Espa set.

Because Star wars is not well known in Tunisia, this article will introduce you to some famous locations from the movies and show you how to get there. So when you go on vacation to Tunisia, check out some of the locations over there. Sometimes you'll think you are on Tatooine instead of Tunisia.

Source: wolfgrel

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Multiple XML Sitemaps: Increased Indexation and Traffic

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 01:56 PM PDT

Posted by Kate Morris

Utilizing XML sitemaps and sitemap indices is an advanced tactic that we recommend to all of our clients at Distilled. In fact, Rob wrote an exceptional how to post on this topic earlier this year, looking at diagnosing indexation issues using sitemap structure. We knew it was a good way to track indexation better than using site: but would you believe me if I said it can increase traffic to your site as well?

It can. And we have proof from a client that is willing to share their story. Thanks a bunch to Razoo, a site that helps others raise money for charity, for letting me use them for this post.

Added Clarification: Adding a multiple sitemap structure does not guarantee better indexation or more traffic, but it CAN have that affect. Razoo did have sitemaps implemented before, but they were not updated and did not reflect the site's content. The results shown at the end of this post are after they implemented new sitemaps.

This tactic is not just for large sites, it can be used by sites of any size because we are always growing right? Right. And it is a tactic that should be employed from the beginning if possible, the earlier the better. The more data you have on indexation the better. But more than just data, the earlier you give the search engines a clear path to your content the better. So let's start from the beginning and go over sitemaps and sitemap indices.

From One to Many

There are standard single XML sitemaps: one file of XML code explaining to the search engines what pages are important. This is a set of instructions to the search engines, and are more guidelines rather than rules. Here is an example from the sitemaps.org site of standard protocol.

From sitemaps.org

Whether you are starting fresh or taking one 50,000 URL sitemap to many, it may seem daunting. That code seems daunting even. Did you know that a sitemap can consist of a text file with just URLs? That can be it. And that can be submitted as a sitemap. #justsayin Complexity is not the issue here, this is all about organization.

The best way to break that out to many sitemaps is a matter of how your site is structured. Do you have a blog based system with categories and content in each category? Do you have sets of products? Or many locations for your business?

Simple: Groups of 100 pages per sitemap (or 1000, or 10000, but try to keep it smaller)
Better: Static Pages (homepage, about, etc.), Products, Blog
Best: Static, Categories, Subcategories, Locations, Blog by Date, etc.

The key will be to structure your sitemaps by how deep your pages go and by section. For instance, if I were to take a site about Unique Doll Clothing and design a sitemap structure from that site I would do:

*Main Sitemap
- Static Pages
  - Home
  - About
  - Shipping
  - Gift Certificates
- *Doll Footwear
  - Doll Shoes
    - Category Page
    - Backless Canvas Mules
    - Balloon Shoes
    - Etc.
  - Doll Boots
- Doll Dresses
- Doll Pajamas
- *etc.

Sitemap Indices

In the example above, the asterisk next to the name is indicating that the sitemap file is an index, not a sitemap as mentioned above. Sitemap indices are sitemaps to point to other sitemaps. This what makes your life easier and more structured. If you loaded each section of your site as a separate sitemap, that's fine, but rather annoying to page through on webmaster tools. If you were to use indices, you could drill down and see more detail in specific areas. Let me show you.

Level 1: Main Sitemap Look in Webmaster Tools

Level 2: Notice the "Format" in the upper left.

The second screenshot shows that Google knows that we are looking at a sitemap index, not a sitemap file. If this company went further, they'd be able to see even more detail. The more you parse the data, the more you know about what isn't being indexed. Rob described this as a tree-structure. Note: you can't put page listings in a sitemap index, they are just carriers of sitemaps. You can get all the gorey details of how to write a sitemap index on the sitemap.org site, so I won't bore you with that.

Just wanted you to see why they are helpful. Sitemap indices help:

Indicate where indexation issues are.
Allow an overview look (the numbers for sitemap.xml) all the way down to specific areas. Great for reports!
Show the search engines what your site structure is supposed to be.
Identify possible duplicate content. (Have a section for doll shoes and doll boots? Those might cause duplicate content if they share products and their URLs are different)

Please note that an intricate structure is not necessary to get the results Razoo saw. This is just better for you and the things I mentioned above. There has been some confusion on this so I wanted to clarify.

Remember that case study I talked about with increased traffic? You wanted to see that right? Time is now, because they are the ones that used it to help with indexation and structure. They just happened to have the best metrics ever from implementing this. Have better metrics? I'd love to hear how this has worked for you!

Case Study: Razoo

Razoo is not my client, it's Mike Pantoliano's client and they recently saw an awesome spike in traffic. We checked it to be sure nothing else could be the cause and for sure, it was the use of XML sitemaps. See the chart below (smiley courtesy of Mike). The arrow is where the sitemaps were implemented.

I checked the stats again tonight, and sure enough, for over two weeks now, it's still going up.

We looked into it and sure enough, the number of pages sending traffic shot up, more than doubled (486 to 1240). The same with keywords sending organic search traffic, more than doubled (548 to 1347). Nothing could be attributed to a fluke keyword or page, just everything went up. This is the power of good indexation and giving the search engines some help.

So take some time to think through your site and it's structure. Talk to your IT team and see if they can break up the XML sitemaps into a tree structure. It'll help you diagnose issues down the road (indexation and duplication) and may even bring an influx of traffic as the search engines find content they might not have found before. The power of backroads. *big smile*

Do you like this post? Yes No

Standing Up on Behalf of Consumers

Monday, July 18, 2011

Standing Up on Behalf of Consumers

A year ago, in the wake of the financial crisis that pulled the economy into the worst recession we've seen since the Great Depression, President Obama passed financial reform to help tackle the problems that led us into the recession in the first place.

As the President described today, the law did three things: "First, it made taxpayer-funded bailouts illegal, so taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill if a big bank goes under. Second, it said to Wall Street firms, you can’t take the same kind of reckless risks that led to the crisis. And third, it put in place the strongest consumer protections in history."

President Barack Obama announces the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, right, as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) during a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House, July 18, 2011. At left is Elizabeth Warren, interim director of the CFPB. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

As part of financial reform, President Obama put one consumer watchdog, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in charge with the sole task of "looking out for regular people in the financial system."

The President got the idea from Elizabeth Warren, who has spent the past year setting up the bureau and starting the process of setting up protections for consumers – like making sure loan contracts and credit card terms are simpler and written in plain English and ensuring men and women in uniform are protected against fraud and deception in financial practices.

Today, President Obama nominated Richard Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In his remarks, the President spoke about the tens of millions of dollars lobbyists and lawyers have spent this year trying to undo progress by weakening the laws that protect consumers:

The fact is the financial crisis and the recession were not the result of normal economic cycles or just a run of bad luck. They were abuses and there was a lack of smart regulations. So we’re not just going to shrug our shoulders and hope it doesn’t happen again. We’re not going to go back to the status quo where consumers couldn’t count on getting protections that they deserved. We’re not going to go back to a time when our whole economy was vulnerable to a massive financial crisis. That’s why reform matters. That’s why this bureau matters. I will fight any efforts to repeal or undermine the important changes that we passed. And we are going to stand up this bureau and make sure it is doing the right thing for middle-class families all across the country.

Middle-class families and seniors don’t have teams of lawyers from blue-chip law firms. They can’t afford to hire a lobbyist to look out for their interests. But they deserve to be treated honestly. They deserve a basic measure of protection against abuse. They shouldn’t have to be a corporate lawyer in order to be able to read something they’re signing to take out a mortgage or to get a credit card. They ought to be free to make informed decisions, to buy a home or open a credit card or take out a student loan, and they should have confidence that they’re not being swindled. And that’s what this consumer bureau will achieve.

Also, in case you missed it, today Elizabeth Warren published an op-ed endorsing Richard Cordray’s nomination and discussing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s transition this week to a real, live agency with the authority to write rules and supervise the activities of America’s largest banks.

Stay Connected

Manage Subscriptions
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

A Big Week for the New Consumer Agency

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, July 18, 2011

A Big Week for the New Consumer Agency

Today the President will announce his intent to nominate Richard Cordray to serve as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You can watch the announcement live at 1 p.m. EDT at WhiteHouse.Gov/Live.

Also, read an op-ed from Special Advisor Elizabeth Warren about Mr. Cordray and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's transition this week to a real, live agency with the authority to write rules and supervise the activities of America's largest banks.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama, Ruby Bridges, and representatives of the Norman Rockwell Museum view Rockwell’s "The Problem We All Live With,” hanging in a West Wing hallway near the Oval Office, July 15, 2011. Bridges is the girl portrayed in the painting. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : From Asimov to Zelazny

From Asimov to Zelazny

When I was in high school, I read every single science fiction book in the Clearfield Public Library. Probably 250 books altogether.

I don't think I had a big plan, I was mostly looking for something to do. What I discovered, though, was that domain knowledge, edge to edge knowledge of a field, was incredibly valuable. It helped me understand where the edges were, and it gave me the confidence to be selective, to develop a taxonomy, to see what was going on.

As the deluge of information grows and choices continue to widen (there's no way I could even attempt to cover science fiction from scratch today, for example), it's easy to forget the benefits of acquiring this sort of (mostly) complete understanding in a field. I'm not even sure it matters which field you pick.

Expertise is a posture as much as it is a volume of knowledge.

Reading every single trade journal, for example, or understanding the marketing, engineering and sales of your field--there are countless ways to go deep instead of merely paying lip service to the current flavor of the moment.