marți, 22 noiembrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Flash Mob Invasion of Dubai Airport

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 09:56 PM PST



A flash mob broke out at Dubai's International Airport in what appears to be the duty-free area. A medley of songs were mashed up, as airport workers, travelers and bystanders started dancing to songs such as "Moves Like Jagger", "Disco Inferno" and "Proud Mary".

Some observers look thrilled to be standing there watching, while others look a little dubious.


Spiderman 3D Street Art by Kurt Wenner

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 09:15 PM PST

With his NASA background, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that artist and architect Kurt Wenner has an out of this world imagination and the skills to bring passerby into the picture. When viewed from the correct angle, people standing on top of them look like they are floating in thin air, and solid concrete can look like gaping chasms. Kurt has been perfecting his technique since 1982. Now, using the skills he has perfected over 30 years, he is able to create stereoscopic images, such as the one above enabling people to walk along imaginary webs slung by Spiderman.




Source: telegraph


The Crashed Ferrari Coffee Table

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 08:19 PM PST

The Crashed Ferrari Table by French designer Charly Molinelli is a coffee table containing a wrecked Ferrari. To make the table, Molinelli found a totaled Ferrari and had it crushed to fit the dimensions of the table. The table now resides in a private home.
























Here's how much more you'll pay


The White House, Washington


Good afternoon,

I'll cut to the chase: If Congress doesn't act soon, middle-class Americans will see their taxes go up starting on January 1st, taking almost $1,000 out of the pockets of a typical family next year. 

Last year, President Obama and members of both parties in Congress cut the payroll tax for 155 million workers, putting money in your pockets.  Now, that tax cut is expiring. So in September, the President and I proposed extending that tax cut and cutting your taxes even further: giving the typical family a $1,500 tax cut.  Steps like this won't just help families feel more secure in their budgets, it'll give them more money to spend at local businesses that will hire more people and make investments in new equipment too.

We thought the extension would win bipartisan support again. How could Republicans in Congress, some of whom have pledged not to raise taxes by a penny, oppose extending the same tax cuts they just passed? But after years of protecting expensive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, many Republicans now say we should let this middle-class tax cut expire.

There's a lot at stake here for you and your family, and the better folks understand how much more they may have to pay, the easier it will be to get Congress to do the right thing. We've put together a calculator to show how much of your money hangs in the balance.

Try it out.

Check out the calculator and share it with other tax payers.

Last week, we finally got some good news from Capitol Hill. Congress passed another measure from our American Jobs Act, creating tax credits for companies that hire veterans – and yesterday President Obama signed the bill into law. 

But folks, as important as that is, it's not nearly enough.

There is not a single good reason – not one – why Congress should stop there. Just like that tax credit will help ensure returning service members can find a job, the American Jobs Act helps put Americans back to work by jump starting the private sector and creating an economy that’s built to last. Congress ought to pass the rest of our proposals, too.

And Congress should start with protecting your paycheck.

Let me lay out the facts: Today, because of our tax cuts, everyone who collects a paycheck contributes 4.2 percent of their wages in payroll taxes. But if Congress doesn't act, that tax will go up two percentage points, to 6.2 percent. That might not sound like much, but to an average family, that's a difference of almost $1,000 a year.

President Obama and I have proposed cutting the rate even further – down to 3.1 percent. That would give a tax cut to 160 million workers next year, providing a $1,500 cut to the typical middle class family. 

We have 40 days for Congress to take action. That's 40 days for Republicans in Congress to do the right thing for the country – or 40 days before they force middle-class families to pay almost $1,000 more.

Take a minute to calculate what's at stake for you: 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/economy/jobsact/calculator

Sincerely, 

Vice President Joe Biden 




 
This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com.
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


Gaming Social Media Signals For Fun And Profit

Gaming Social Media Signals For Fun And Profit


Gaming Social Media Signals For Fun And Profit

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 12:52 PM PST

Posted by joehall

About two weeks ago I gave a talk at Pubcon titled, "Global Social Media Signals For SEO". During the end of the talk I briefly mentioned several techniques used to "game" social signals. Afterwards it was apparent that many were interested to learn more about gaming these signals. So without further ado, I would like to talk more about how to game social media signals.

Oh wait a second! It looks like I got a little ahead of myself, before we go any further I think we should try to answer one question:

Why should anyone try to game social media signals?

If you are a giant dork (like moi), then gaming social media signals can be fun! However, if you have friends in the real world then I would suggest you try and identify actionable goals with the signals you are gaming, otherwise this might turn into a waste of time. Some actionable goals would be to push content with in networks, increase user "authority", or even game outside channels like search results.

Quick note about, gaming search results with social signals: Social media signals for search are still in its infancy. Over the last several years we have seen the engines employ a variety of different techniques to integrate social signals. However, each of these have had fluctuating significance. Therefore, I would advise that you integrate social signals as a part of a much larger marketing plan that also includes all of the fundamentals of SEO. Social media is not replacing SEO, it's making it better.


Get Inside Your Target's Head (psychology)

Your target here is your audience, and it's important that you understand what they are motivated by to get them to act. Most economists will call these "incentives". However, most of the time we aren't using direct calls to action in social media, so these are more likely akin to dangling a worm in-front of a fish. We aren't telling the fish to bite; we are hoping that the worm looks good enough for the fish to bite on its own.

One of the most well known psychologists of the 20th century on the topic of motivation was Abraham Maslow. Maslow is widely known for his "hierarchy of needs" which he first published in a paper in 1943. Here you can see that Maslow has classified needs into 5 sections: Physiological, Safety, Love/belonging, Esteem, and Self-actualization. Despite the fact that each of these sections clearly articulate an individual need within the human experience, I tend to disagree with the concept a hierarchy because it implies that each are separate of the others. For example I might want self-actualization and crave a cheeseburger at the same time. However, understanding Maslow's theory can help you position your content and your sharing strategy in a way that aligns with an individual's basic needs.

A much more recent study [PDF] published by the Journal of Marketing Research looked at what types of content are more likely to go "viral". They concluded that content that invoked high physiological arousal was more likely to be shared or engaged.


Leveraging The Right Content

Recently Matt McGee showed us data that reveals that images draw more Facebook interactions than any other posting type. Remember that interactions aren't the same as content consumption. For example Its clear that video consumption on the web is constantly rising. But the nature of social media relies on metrics that tend to have quick shelf life. In other words, users might watch a video or read a blog post, but when done they are ready to move on to the next piece of content, not click "like" or +1. Images are quick and can be consumed without a click through, which keeps the user close to the "share", "retweet", "like" buttons.

While images are ruling Facebook, animated images are killing it on Google+. Some of you might find them annoying, but it has become increasingly apparent that these zany GIFs are very popular with "shares" and "+1"'s. Just a few days ago I got over 200 shares in less than 12 hours with an animated GIF. Check out GIFBin and browse the top rated or top tagged for animated GIFs that will work well with in Google+.

If blog posts are your cup of tea, you should learn to embed viral factors to increase on page sharing. Things like uniform image sizes and emphasizing white space can motivate more social clicks.

Images (both animated and not) can get a lot of traction, but other content types can be just as successful. The trick is finding (or creating) what works. What I typically do is troll other networks like reddit or digg looking for content that is already trending. Then I re-post on other networks. I used to call this "Retweet Bait", but it can be applied anywhere that inner-network sharing is available.


Identifying The Right Signals

Share/Spread Signals:

  • Retweets
  • Facebook shares
  • Google+ shares

Authority Signals:

  • Relationship ratios.
  • Mentions
  • Inbound activity

Simple Quantitative Signals:

  • Google +1
  • Facebook likes.
  • "Up/Down votes"

Discussion Signals:

  • Comment threads
  • In stream mentions.

Share/Spread Signals - Gaming these signals can help not only distribute content to the widest audience, but will also put your name in-front of other users, increasing relationship metrics and improving authority. If you are a "breaking" news publisher you are going to want to focus on these metrics to influence Google's recent freshness update and trip the query deserves freshness signal. For best results you are going to want to use clear straightforward calls to action like, please retweet, "please share", or any other appropriate variant.

Simple Quantitative Signals - These have got to be the simplest social signals available. They are great for measuring content quality and act as a baseline for other metrics. You can easily game these by including clear straight forward calls to action. "Please support us by liking this post!" If you are using WordPress, you are going to want to check out the WP Greet Box it allows you to include a custom call to action above or below the post based on the referring URL. So if a user comes to your blog from Google+ you can include a call to action similar to: "Hey there! If you enjoy this post please +1 it!"

Authority Signals - Search engines and social networks are constantly trying to judge authority. These signals are vital to having strength in social media. The most obvious authority metric is relationship ratios on asymmetrical networks like Twitter. With asymmetrical networks we can judge authority [PDF via] by looking at the ratio to following and followers. Facebook recently added the subscribe feature which will give the ability to use this same type of analysis. Authority can also be weighted by inter-network mentions and even inbound activity.

Discussion Signals - When users comment on your content they are effectively sending a signal that your content holds value. Content that starts dialog generally also gets shared. To game this signal you are going to want to ask open-ended questions that inspire debate or dialog.


Make The Signals Pop

Getting a handful of Facebook likes or +1's can be a good start. But to see real traction you have to make the signals "pop". It's hard to tell exactly what is needed to get each signal to register on the various networks, but one starting place is taking a second look at Facebook's EdgeRank. EdgeRank is responsible for pushing the most popular content with in each Facebook social stream. From what we know, Facebook is using three main factors to influence EdgeRank:

  • Affinity Score - This is a relationship metric that measures how close you are to others. If a user visits another's page often, or sends them multiple messages the score is higher. If a user has a high affinity score with another they are more likely to show up in their social stream. You can game this score by getting users to regularly visit your Facebook page.
  • Edge weight - Every time a user engages content with in the social stream, the content is given an "edge" over other less popular content. Comments, likes, and shares all count towards "edge". You can game this metric [PDF] by asking open ended questions with an inherent bias. Here's an example: "How badly do you think the republicans will do in this election?" Democrats will "like" (or +1) this question because of the inherent bias. Republicans will comment on it, because of the inherent bias. As a result we are gaming two of the needed metrics to influence Edge weight.
  • Time decay - Fresher content is more likely to be included in the social stream. The best way to game this metric is to develop evergreen content that you can re-share periodically.

While EdgeRank is exclusive to Facebook, other networks have similar systems of ranking internal content. It is clear that Google+ is using something analogous to EdgeRank, but with two main differences: Google+ doesn't filter content in the social stream, it just reorders it. Also, it appears that Google+ doesn't put as much weight on affinity as Facebook does.


Kitchen Sink Strategy

In marketing (and life) I often execute what I call the kitchen sink strategy. Basically this entails throwing "everything but the kitchen sink" at a problem and seeing what works. Gaming social signals are no different. Which is why when I promote content I try to include as many of the tactics described above as possible.

For example, not long ago we launched a small site to test various marketing strategies. When it came time to test Google+ I wanted to attack the signals from all corners. Therefore, I embedded the OpenGraph image meta tag to pull a large version of our logo into the social stream. Then I designed a question with direct calls to action embedded into multiple choice answers. Coaxing the user to engage with multiple choice questions is an example of manipulating inherent cognitive biases. The result? We get basic feedback about a design and gamed Google+'s social stream with all the elements needed to make the signals "pop".


Keep Pushing The Limits

Social media signals are gaining significance every day. However, as information sharing changes and the various social channels rise and fall in popularity, there is no set methodology you should follow now or in the future. Instead, it is important to constantly test new strategies and ideas. Good luck gaming!


Do you like this post? Yes No

Yahoo Sunsets Site Explorer (A Eulogy)

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 12:39 AM PST

Posted by iPullRank

Bing, Yahoo!, members of the Microsoft family, Tim, distinguished guests, inbound marketers and fellow Mozzers today we say goodbye to competitive link intelligence as offered by one of the Big 3 Search Engines. The SEO world will remember the brainchild of Tim Mayer, Yahoo! Site Explorer, as the first comprehensive tool that allowed users to find out which sites and pages were indexed, inbound links to any site and submit and track XML feeds. Yahoo, the search engine that could -- and did invent the precursor to not only Bing and Google’s Webmaster Tools but also link indices such as LinkScape/Open Site Explorer and MajesticSEO. Yahoo Site Explorer was born September 29th, 2005 and has been laid to rest November 21st, 2011; you had an amazing run.

Yahoo! Site Explorer or YSE as you were known to those closest to you, we will remember your sleek easy to use “Don’t Make Me Think” user interface.  It was very clear what you wanted us to do and once we did it you generously shared your data with us as though we were family. You asked no questions of us unless of course we were trying to change your mind. Only then did you require us to prove ourselves. 

Yahoo Site Explorer Screenshot

We will remember you for allowing us to submit feeds, URLs, sitemaps to “Tell us what we don’t know. If you don’t find a URL that you expect to be in the index, use free submit. In case you hadn’t heard, we are also accepting lists of URLs, so you don’t have to provide us one URL at a time” as Yahoo! declared at your birth.

Yahoo SIte Explorer Submission Screenshot

YSE we will remember you for charming ability to show us more about ourselves and where we could improve to be better in the eyes of the Internet. You shared what information you knew about us almost as fast as you could collect it. 

Yahoo Site Explorer Indexation Screenshot

YSE we will remember you for your special ability to tell us about everyone else that knew about us and where they’d shared it on the web, before you there was no comprehensive way to do that. Sure Google had the “link:” operator but it was never as forthcoming as you were.

Yahoo Site Explorer Backlink Screenshot

Most importantly YSE we will remember you for telling us who linked to our competitors. This is how you truly changed the world.  We respect you and commend for all your efforts and the API that once fed a variety of tools such as BackLinkWatch and the SEOBook Link Tool Suite. Your knowledge, speed and freshness will be missed.

Yahoo Site Explorer Competitor Backlinks Screenshot

Many Search Marketers will pause and reflect on Yahoo Site Explorer with feelings of inspiration and serenity:

Y!SE was the inspiration for me to raise capital and build the Linkscape index w/ Nick+Ben. I felt the web's link graph should be a resource that's available to anyone, and that's why we always made sure that users of OSE could get the same functionality Y!SE offered for free (up to 1,000 links, unlimited runs, etc.)” - Rand Fishkin (CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz)

“YahooSiteExplorer, to me, has become like a well-loved piece of furniture, think Grandma's old couch, that served its purpose at one point, but now sits forgotten in the parlor. Much like Grandma's old couch, I have not used it much in the past year, since I have had full access to OpenSiteExplorer and MajesticSEO, but YahooSiteExplorer will always be remembered fondly." John Doherty

 “Feels like I'm one of the few that will miss it! I used to love some of the combinations of operators you could use on it” - Paddy Moogan  

 “cos 'All good things are wild, and free' - Henry David”Himanshu Sharma

"Free backlink research on your competitors will never be the same"Dennis Goedegebuure

“YSE was simple to use and a great way to find links to competitors other tools might miss.”Joe Youngblood

"I 'grew up' with it as an SEO, had a nice little link from my desktop, was easy and convenient to access." Carla Marshall

“No alternative is as fast as YSE. Gone are the days of same-week link reports. We'll have to get smarter (as always in SEO).” - Tre Jones

“I will miss it because it was a very fast way to see if a link was there. And because it was my 1st SEO tool (with other)”Gianluca Fiorelli

"Even after I switched to OSE for everyday use, it was always strangely comforting to know that YSE was there. It was kind of like that friend you rarely talk to, but you know will be on the other end of the phone if you need them." -Dr. Pete

While others will dance on your grave and celebrate your death:

 “YSE was an inspired flank-attack by Yahoo on Google at the time and was the SEO tool of choice for years. But its time has come.” - Dixon Jones (Marketing Director of MajesticSEO)

“I actually won't miss it! Sorry YSE!, it was good while it lasted.”Richard Baxter

“I won't miss YSE. There's really been little to no value in site explorer since Yahoo gave up on being a search engine.”Bill Slawski

“I won't miss it, it was a brain melt of information with no logical organisation. There are plenty of tools that give better data” Wayne Barker

“I agree with Bill Slawski I quit using YSE 2 years ago.”Joe Hall

However no one can deny that you’ve changed the game and gave birth to variety of children that have continued to walk in your large footprints. 

Yahoo Site Explorer Rest in Pixels

Save for Blekko, no search engine offers the transparency that you did YSE. And while some third party tools have surpassed you in presentation, metrics and breadth of data most are still attempting to attain your speed, freshness and accuracy. Although via the Bing-Yahoo! alliance Bing Webmaster Tools is your named successor Open Site Explorer and MajesticSEO clearly lead the pack with their extensive link indices and in-depth analysis of that link graph only time will tell which of your offspring will emerge victorious as the king of backlink analysis.

The Creator in his Own Words

I've asked Tim Mayer, the father of Yahoo Site Explorer to say a few words about his about his brainchild, particularly about how it came about, the pitfalls, how he feels it was handled and the future. Without further ado I give you Tim in his own words:

"There were a few reasons for launching site explorer in no particular order:

  • Improve comprehensiveness of the Yahoo Web Search Index so webmasters could let us know what pages were missing in a very transparent manner

  • Attempt to move the Webmaster robotic queries off of the user interface and move these queries onto another interface/api where we could more easily and separately manage it. This would provide cleaner user metrics for the search team

  • Create a site where Yahoo search could interface with webmasters and site owners and improve relationships between webmasters/publishers and Yahoo.

The need was that webmasters needed to know who was linking to them, which of these links were being recognized by the search engines as well as how many and what pages were being indexed by the search engines.

There were not many pitfalls as I saw them and it became a popular tool for many people. I am sure some SEOs such as Dave Naylor, Greg Boser and Rae can give you some pitfalls...

I feel it was handled well [by Yahoo! after I left] for a while. Now Yahoo is no longer an algorithmic engine and the responsibilities to engage and interact with the webmasters and publishers has now become the responsibility of Bing. I have had the opportunity to spend some time with Duane Forrester at Bing and he is a great interface for the webmaster community for Bing.  Google has always done a great job interfacing with the webmaster community via people like Matt Cutts, Vanessa Fox and Mail Ohye. It was fun working with them on standards such as open site maps. We also developed some webmaster features of our own such as NOODP and NOYDIR tags to opt out of using directory data in the search engine title and descriptions. 

I think it is awesome that others have created similar tools such as Majestic and SEOMOZ [Open Site Explorer]. I am always very excited when people come up with upgraded features that site explorer did not have such as when Majestic came out with historical link data which is so cool. I have always been interested in this space having launched a very basic product called URL Investigator when I was at FAST/All The Web in March 2003 then Site Explorer in September 2005. It is important for search engines to focus on the users but also to interface with webmasters and publishers as well. I feel that there are a lot of great tools in the space. I do see a lot of opportunity for these tools to improve and progress in the future as well.

For the last year I have been in the Paid Search space working for Trada, a company in Boulder, Colorado. I left Trada the week prior to Pubcon and have been working on a new product. There are a lot of new marketing channels  which are causing fragmentation to occur. These new channels are often influencing one another such as social's influence on search which will become more influential in the future. These shifts bring tremendous opportunity for someone with my passions and experience."

Thank you Tim for you and your teams hard work and Yahoo Site Explorer, thank you for everything you shared with us and may you rest in pixels.


Do you like this post? Yes No

President Obama is Fighting for Middle Class Families

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, Nov.22, 2011
 

President Obama is Fighting for Middle Class Families

This morning, President Obama will speak about the American Jobs Act and why it is so important to pass the payroll tax cuts for middle class families.

See how the payroll tax cuts will put more money back in your pocket and watch President Obama speak at 12:15 p.m. EST on WhiteHouse.gov/Live.

In Case You Missed It

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

President Obama on the Supercommittee's Failure to Reach a Compromise
President Obama talked about supercommittee's failure to reach a compromise from the White House Briefing Room.

Fighting to Help Our Heroes Find Jobs
Veterans share their own stories about the difficulties returning service members face when transitioning into the civilian workforce.

President Obama: "Hire a Veteran"
This morning, President Obama signed the "VOW to Hire Heroes Act" into law. 

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

9:10 AM: The President departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews

9:50 AM: The President departs Joint Base Andrews en route Manchester, NH

10:30 AM: The Vice President chairs a regular meeting of senior officials to assess progress in Iraq

11:00 AM: The President arrives Manchester, NH

12:15 PM: The President delivers remarks on the American Jobs Act WhiteHouse.gov/live

1:20 PM: The President departs Manchester, NH en route Joint Base Andrews

2:40 PM: The President arrives Joint Base Andrews

2:55 PM: The President arrives at the White House

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates that the event 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 problem with amortization

The problem with amortization

It costs more than a hundred dollars a day to use the wifi at the convention center in Toronto.

A 2 ounce bag of chips at the airport costs $4, the same price a pound costs at the local market.

A three-minute visit to the doctor might cost $250, even though the doctor clearly isn't making $5000 an hour...

What's happening is obvious: you're paying extra to subsidize something else. In order to have a clean lobby or repaired runway or a life-saving but little-used machine on hand, institutions charge some people extra and spread it out over some of their larger costs.

When AT&T first suffered from competition, they accused MCI and others of skimming the cream. They said that a company that sold something like long distance at a reasonable price was taking away their ability to subsidize all the other universal services they offered. They built those services on subsidies.

In the digital age, we get annoyed at these subsidies. That's because competitors are peeling off the cash cows and selling them separately. A $20 cable for your phone costs a penny or a dollar online--because the person selling it to you doesn't have to subsidize all the other costs with an expensive add on, right?

It used to be that the only way to collect the money we needed for roads and facilities and other widely used services was to charge a lot for the few things that were seen as extras. Now, though, it's easier than ever to track actual use, to coordinate consumption with payment. The technology is no longer the problem, it's our habits that are holding us back.

Simple example: a combination of gas tax and digital toll collection could instantly move the vast percentage of transport cost from society to the individual. Drive more, pay more. There are social implications (it's a regressive shift) but more important, people would be outraged--the same ones that don't like paying for a $20 cable(!).

Those that have been subsidized hate having it end, and even those that will save money don't really like the truth of their consumption so clearly exposed.

 

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