Central Perk

miercuri, 9 noiembrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

The Dark Knight Rises Filming in New York
Promotional Posters for Movies That May Never Exist
The New Workplace Currency: It's Not Just Salary Anymore [INFOGRAPHIC]
Grand Theft Auto V Trailer
Blood Pack of Santa Claus
Strange Rock Formations Around The World

The Dark Knight Rises Filming in New York

Posted: 09 Nov 2011 04:45 PM PST

Christian Bale and Tom Hardy were both spotted on the New York set of The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend. A clash between Gotham City Police and escaped inmates from Arkham Asylum, led by Bane (Hardy), footage shows hundreds of extras duking it out at a smoke-filled intersection until the sound of air-horns signal the end of the take.

Christopher Nolan's last Batman movie in his Batman trilogy, opens in theaters on July 20, 2012 and stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Juno Temple, Josh Pence, Daniel Sunjata, Nestor Carbonell, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, Joey King, Brett Cullen, Chris Ellis, Josh Stewart, Christopher Judge, Adam Rodriguez and Rob Brown.

Promotional Posters for Movies That May Never Exist

Posted: 09 Nov 2011 04:05 PM PST

Great movie posters play a key role at the American Film Market event in Santa Monica, California, because sci-fi filmmakers often rely on these "sell sheets" to attract production money and distribution deals even before their projects go into production.

While we wait for Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies to hit the Big Screen, feast your eyes on these 19 Insane Posters for Movies That May Never Exist, over at Wired's Underwire blog:

Extending the B-movie legacy of insane posters and catchy titles, legendary showman Roger Corman and other independent producers unleash a fresh barrage of eye-popping genre hype this week at the American Film Market. Great movie posters play a key role at the annual movie marketing event in Santa Monica, California, because sci-fi filmmakers often rely on these "sell sheets" to attract production money and distribution deals even before their movies go into production.

The New Workplace Currency: It's Not Just Salary Anymore [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 09 Nov 2011 03:27 PM PST

Planning on hiring a hotshot kid straight out of college? Here's a checklist for you: Make sure she can tweet or update Facebook while on the clock. Let her get work email on whatever device she wants. Allow her to work from home on her own schedule, even though she's unlikely to really think it makes her more productive. And by the way, an increasing number of your employees don't think they need to be in the office either.

These are all the results of a Cisco survey of 2,800 college students and young professionals worldwide. The survey had a number of questions that make good cocktail party trivia (one-third of students think the Internet is as important as food, air and water) and are rather less impressive the more you consider them (the vast majority, after all, don't believe that for a moment).

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: cisco

Grand Theft Auto V Trailer

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 10:18 PM PST

Rockstar Games has officially released the trailer for its next open-world video game that is sure to be full of cars, guns and illegal substances — Grand Theft Auto V.

The games takes place in modern-day Southern California in the city of Los Santos (a clear rendition of Los Angeles and surrounding areas).

Blood Pack of Santa Claus

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 09:34 PM PST

Designer Kiseung Lee of Helsinki wants people to fill stockings with more vital gifts this Christmas: donations to the blood bank. His conceptual stocking-shaped blood packs were on show as part of Helsinki Design Week in September, although they were filled with red pigment rather than actual blood.

Source: dezeen

Strange Rock Formations Around The World

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 02:37 PM PST

Rock formations are created by the elements such as heat, wind, rain, and erosion. What nature has done with these tools on the palette of the earth is both breath taking and mind boggling. These incredible natural rock formations were created slowly over millions of years using the hardest materials. Thankfully for us, nature is a patient artist.

An overview of the 25 most incredible natural rock formations on the planet:

Balanced Rock, Garden of the Gods, Colorado

Gibson Steps (12 Apostles), Great Ocean Road, Australia

Ko Tapu Island, Thailand

Bisti Rock Formations, New Mexico

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Reed Flute Caves, Guangxi Province, China

Landscape Arch, Arches National Monument, Utah

Torghatten, Norway

El Torcal de Antequera, Spain

Stone Forest National Park, Yunnan, China

Meteora, Greece

Mushroom and Chicken Rocks, White Desert, Egypt

Sahara Desert, Tassili N'Ajjer, Algeria

Giant's Causeway, Ireland

Mono Lake, California

Azure Window at Dwejra Bay, Gozo, Malta

Split Apple Rock, Kaiteriteri, South Island, New Zealand

Arbol de Piedra, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

Devil's Marbles, Australia

Fundy Bay, Canada

Painted Cliffs, Tasmania

Isalo National Park, Madagascar

Cappadocia, Turkey

Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming

Rock Formation, Namibia

Source: shutterstock

An SEO Guide to Adsense, Ads and Placement

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 01:01 PM PST

Posted by Cyrus Shepard

The Internet is made of kittens, but it's paid for by advertising.

SEOs don't talk about advertising much, perhaps because it's the conceptual opposite of “great content.” The truth is, advertising is the gasoline that runs much of the web. Without ad revenue, great sites we love like Search Engine Land, Smashing Magazine, and even Wired might cease to exist.

Ads are great, but as SEOs we need to present them as the commercials that they are, not the main show.

Optimizing for CTR the Old Way

Not long ago, it was common to see sites like this dominating the SERPs.

Ads the Old Way
(Thanks to Michael Gray for the lead)

When Panda struck, sites like this got hit hard, time and time again. Even websites with superior content were penalized if they contained over-aggressive ads above the fold. I don't know if the site above was penalized by Panda, but I'm guessing their traffic is not as healthy as it could be, and a simple layout change would help significantly.

1. Ads as a Ranking Factor

The 2011 Ranking Factors showed a slight negative correlation between rankings and the amount of Adsense on a page.

Ads as a Ranking Factor

Several Panda updates have rolled out since this data was collected, and I would expect the relationship today to be even more negative.

Although Adsense isn't the only game on the market, it's the one ad network SEOs get the most information from. Matt Cutts has said that his team sends one way messages to the Adsense team in order to help webmasters comply with Google quality guidelines.

In April, after Panda hit, Adsense changed how they advocate best practices for ad placement. Gone (or at least tucked away) were the old heat maps.

2. Panda Friendly Layouts

The new layouts specifically advocate for ads that do not push content below the fold.

New Adsense Layouts

These are the types of layouts that should be safe no matter what kind of ads you run. You can see earlier versions in their one-click optimizer, but these older layouts don't go very far in placing content first. Use at your own risk.

3. Balance Your Template Footprint

Ads are a component your template footprint. A template footprint is any non-unique content that appears on every page, as opposed to content that makes the page unique.

It's best to keep your ratio of unique content to footprint as high as possible. If you can't reduce your template footprint, at least place your content in the highest, most prominent place possible in order to stay out of the penalty zone.

4. Future Proof Your Ads

The new Adsense recommendations are great for this round of Panda, but what about next year? In my opinion, they represent the minimum of what you should do to avoid a penalty.

The New York Times does a good job of balancing ads against content. Their strategy neither ignores users nor puts them at risk for near-future algorithm changes.

Aggressive ads tend to alienate users, which can effect your bounce rate, time on site, pageviews and other user engagement metrics. All of these can have undesirable long term consequences. For publishers dedicated to long term profits, there is a better approach.

5. Beyond CTR – Smart Ways to Increase Ad Revenue

It's true that higher click-through rates give webmasters incentive to place ads above content. But CTR isn't the only way to increase earnings. You can optimize several other factors to your long term advantage. If you are an Adsense publisher, you are familiar with these concepts.

1. Coverage
2. Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
3. Cost Per Impression (CPI or CPM)
4. Impressions

All of these can be optimized for higher earnings. Number 4, impressions, is the most actionable from an SEO point of view. If you're producing great content and promoting it the right way, then your pageviews will soar. Here in the States, the SuperBowl will always make more in ad revenue than reruns of Murder, She Wrote.

If you sell ads, be the SuperBowl of content publishers. Produce the best content you can, and you can sell your premium ad space for top dollar.

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Life After Google is Now: 9 Pieces of Advice on How a New Site Can Succeed Without Search

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 03:05 AM PST

Posted by Stephen

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Illustrated London News has a 170 year history as a content and print company. Recently we made the obvious move to bring one of our print publications online - PODIUM an intelligent view of sport.

Our major articles are in-depth interviews with sports stars, our commentary is from globally renowned pundits and we often do our own photo shoots. Cover stars so far have been Usain Bolt and Frankie Dettorri. Other Articles have focused on Golf, F1, The All Blacks, horse racing and the 2012 Olympics.

On the face of it, that sounds like an SEO's dream – rich, unique content that search engines will love. It's a pity that does not help us one little bit.

Am I going to get Search Engine traffic for "Usain Bolt" on a brand new website? To beat his own website, his sponsor Puma, the BBC or The Guardian? Not a chance.

So I decided to abandon the un-loyal scraps of long-tail search and to Design for Social

This is the tale of what I did to grow traffic for www.thepodiummagazine.com/ when SEO wasn't a viable option. There is still a lot more to do, but I think we have learned enough that it's worth sharing, for the attitude, strategy and outcomes so far.

By engaging people in a social context, we can keep them coming back with each release and create own our own traffic streams and marketing channels outside of Google and search engines.

WHAT DOES DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL MEAN?

Podium V1

PODIUM Version 1 with Facebook given equal weight as a web article

We had a clear strategy to leverage Social from Day One

1. Only the best goes online

I chose to put less online. Only the best articles, and pieces we thought would spark debate, made it online. This means we didn't water down the user experience – readers only get the good stuff. Where Search would say "Stick everything online and pray for longtail" I believe the mantra for Social is "Don't bore me. Blow me away!".

2. Twitter is for the Insider's View

Twitter would be owned by the Print Editor, (Andy @sportingpodium). This means we have a highly knowledgeable sporting writer who is able to engage online with the people we cover. When you cover Usain Bolt and your writers are guys like F1's David croft, getting them to retweet your coverage of them IS your Twitter strategy.

This is a virtuous circle of promotion, everybody taking part wins. Build this into your products and you have a marketing beast.

3. Facebook is for Debate

For Facebook, we decided to pick the most contentious article each edition and put it behind a like wall on Facebook.

The article would sit on the site homepage, looking like an article, but when clicked on, would take people to the Facebook page. Our hope is that people will debate these articles on our Facebook page, thereby taking advantage of Facebook Edgerank, to make these articles pop up into everyone's feeds.

4. It's all one product concept = better use of time and energy

This meant we could cut down our energy expenditure on where we were trying to funnel people. Instead of diluting our energy trying to get people to Facebook, Twitter and the Website, we focus on the website and allow the strategy and mechanisms built into our use of Twitter and Facebook to naturally accrue users on those platforms.

WHAT WE LEARNT

Podium v2

PODIUM Version 2 with Twitter and Facebook taking pride of place

5. Do more of what is successful

By the time we got round to Version 2, we found that Twitter was a steady audience builder. We wanted to promote Twitter in the same way as Facebook. We didn't do that by slapping a Twitter button onto the webpage.

In the new design, we made Twitter and a Facebook a living part of the website. Social is not an afterthought, the website is now a Social Content Delivery Mechanic.

6. Not everything succeeds

Facebook is hard for us and we haven't cracked creating the conversation there yet. This is partly due to the exciting rigours of turning print writers into digital writers. But each success that we do make, in traffic spikes and twitter followers, builds a stronger and stronger internal business case to pursue this route with other titles.

7. Jump on every opportunity

This means monitor your Analytics daily! We need to turn every scrap of attention into engagement. To do this you need to react quickly.

Data

The debate piece

The first spike was a forum that had picked up our F1 piece, which certainly provoked some controversy.

I read their discussion and realised I could add something to it, so joined the forum and posted. This engagement kept the debate going, drove more traffic to the site and means we can go back in future and promote other F1 stories.

Note: I posted openly and clearly as Podium, clarifying a point without appearing spammy.

The Wow! Piece

Pixorama

I saw this traffic spike in the Analytics and tracked it back to the artist's Dribbble page. He had created a Pixorama for us to illustrate a story and linked to us from his Dribble account to say it was going to be in the Magazine shortly

This was not going to appear online but when I saw it and the traffic it was generating to our site from Dribbble, I knew it had to go on the site. I'm sure it is going to turn into awesome linkbait.

8. Partnerships = Win

This comes in two forms

Firstly, competitions for partners help us drive traffic but also allow us to make connection with brands in a scenario in which our first interaction is that we help them

Secondly, as we write our own, exclusive content with major stars, we can share some of it with another website. They will send traffic and link to us to read the full article. Sharing your unique content is something that would be hard to do if you had your SEO hat on, but in the social world, its fine.

As long as you have mechanisms set up to capture that visiting traffic on Facebook and Twitter, you are building your long term marketing channel.

9. Tools help

We learnt what generated buzz and discussion and tried to work that into our future thinking. F1 has a crazy community!

A tool like Followerwonk would be heresy to traditional print journalists as a means for deciding who is newsworthy, but it can now become part of our process in choosing who to cover, and who to talk to about specific sporting articles.

followerwonk

Followerwonk allows you to see the most influential people who have a keyword in their bios.

IN CONCLUSION

We still have a ton to do. But we have great, unique content at our disposal and real subject matter experts to create our conversations.

Long term, I am sure (and relieved) that the traffic we have seen and the community we are building will be a much better investment of our time and scarce resources than pure SEO.

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Help Choose the 2011 SAVE Award Winner

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011

Help Choose the 2011 SAVE Award Winner

In 2009, President Obama launched the SAVE Award (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency), seeking ideas from federal employees to make government more effective and efficient, and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

This year government employees submitted over 20,000 ideas online, and today the four finalists will be joining senior administration officials for a video teleconference.

You can watch the teleconference live on WhiteHouse.gov/Live at 11:00 EST and vote for your favorite idea on WhiteHouse.gov.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama says goodbye to students lining a second floor hallway at the Yeadon Regional Head Start Center in Yeadon, Pa., Nov. 8, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)