Seth's Blog : "It's not prime enough"

"It's not prime enough"

"That number is too even... can you make the next one even odder?"

The thing about math is that it's right or wrong, on or off, yes or no. Seven is a prime number, there's no improving it.

The thing about life/business/culture and the things we make and do is that they are not math.

 

• Email to a friend •

More Recent Articles

• www.stopstealingdreams.com is ready to read and share
• Stick to what you (don't) know
• Perfect and impossible
• The Trip Advisor tail wagging the real world dog
• Ad agencies don't run many ads for themselves

[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.

---

Click here to safely unsubscribe from "Seth's Blog." Click here to view mailing archives, here to change your preferences, or here to subscribe • Privacy

---

---

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

 

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

---

• Sarkozy Breaks Campaign Pledge, Says Treaty Too Complicated For A Vote
• Capital Flight From Italy, Greece, Portugal Accelerates; Two Trillion Fantasy; Merkel Weaker Every Week; Crude and Geopolitical Risks
• Mathematical Case for Brokered Convention; How Ron Paul Can Throw a Big Wrench Into Romney's Campaign

Sarkozy Breaks Campaign Pledge, Says Treaty Too Complicated For A Vote Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:53 PM PST French president Nicolas Sarkozy is campaigning on a pledge to consult people directly on "significant issues". However, despite trailing in polls, Sarkozy refuses to agree to referendum on EU fiscal treaty. Mr Sarkozy, who is trailing the socialist François Hollande in opinion polls seven weeks before the presidential election, came under pressure to promise a referendum on the pact after he pledged to consult the people directly on significant issues if re-elected. "No," he replied when asked on French radio yesterday if he would put the treaty to a public ballot. "If you're dealing with a treaty with 200 articles, 250 articles, I can't see how you'd formulate a clear question." The French electoral calendar means the treaty cannot be passed by parliament until after the election. Mr Hollande has said he will seek to renegotiate parts of the deal if he wins, a move that has been criticised by Mr Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Arnaud Montebourg, a prominent party figure who came third in the presidential primary last autumn and has been campaigning for Mr Hollande, went further than the candidate by predicting the treaty "will never be ratified". Mr Montebourg said a left-wing majority in France would never vote for the pact, while there was "not a majority" in favour of it in Ireland, the UK or other European countries. "The 'Merkozy' treaty would inflict austerity on all of Europe and plunge us dangerously into recession," he said. Too Complicated To Form a Clear Question? Sarkozy says "I can't see how you'd formulate a clear question." Mish Attempt to Formulate Clear Question For Voters Punch Yes to Approve Treaty Punch No to Disapprove Treaty Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Capital Flight From Italy, Greece, Portugal Accelerates; Two Trillion Fantasy; Merkel Weaker Every Week; Crude and Geopolitical Risks Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:49 AM PST Via Email, here is a nice summary of European events from Steen Jakobsen at Saxo Bank in Denmark. Topics include the G20 Summit, Extend-and-Pretend Dogma, Capital Flight , and Geopolitical Risks. Steen Writes ... Two Trillion Fantasy This week-end's G-20 came and went without any real new information. Yes, the policy makers wants us to believe ultimately IMF will have 2 trillion US dollars at its disposal. No, the US, UK and rest of non-Europe is not really interested before we all get more clarification on how Europe will ring fence the debt crisis. This is more and more Wall Street vs. Main Street: Underfunded banks buys underfunded government bonds and underfunded governments guarantees underfunded banks. The real loser being the unemployed - Edward Heath put it more elegantly: Unemployment is of vital importance, particularly to the unemployed. Meanwhile the real economy and unemployment is exploding higher adding further burdens to already stretched government deficits. The new EU forecast for GDP growth in 2012 of minus .3% from this past Friday down from plus .05% is great example of how EU and the debt crisis non-solutions continues to lack behind fundamentals. Soon the rising disconnect will hit the politicians games of buying time. Capital Flight Merkel Weaker Every Week Chancellor Merkel is weaker, week after week. She soon will have to rely on SPD votes if she continues down this path. 62 percent polled over weekend are against giving more money to Greece and 2/3 don't believe Greece can be saved according to German newspaper Bild. Finland will have an interesting vote this week. Follow it closely. The G20 did not give more credibility to more funds but they sure talked the talk of extend-and-pretend dogma. Geopolitical Risks Crude: We are potentially a few weeks from some sort of confrontation unfortunately. IEA report from Iran is due this week. Israel's time window is closing if you believe the media coming out of Israel. Iran's finances are running out of time as well. Iran failed to pay for Indian rice last week. High energy prices will soon spill-over into gasoline and survey data and will start to impact data and sentiment negatively. Greece Controlled Default: Greece will have a controlled default and a vacation from Europe. Portugal CDS Spreads: Portugal is the real issue and containment is almost impossible. CDS spreads suggest the probability of default within five years is about 65 percent. Nice money printing week, Steen Jakobsen Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mathematical Case for Brokered Convention; How Ron Paul Can Throw a Big Wrench Into Romney's Campaign Posted: 27 Feb 2012 12:33 AM PST There are 2,286 republican delegates. It takes 1,144 delegates to win the Republication nomination. With four candidates remaining, many are wondering about the likelihood of a brokered convention where no candidate wins in the first round. Conventional wisdom suggests there will not be a brokered convention. From where I sit, one is increasingly likely. Following is a table of delegates won so far (totals from Real Clear Politics Delegate Count), plus my projections of all primaries and caucuses through Super-Tuesday on March 6 (based on recent polls). State Primary Count Romney Santorum Gingrich Paul Total to Date - 243 99 47 32 20 Iowa Jan 3 28 6 7 0 0 New Hampshire Jan 10 12* 7 0 0 3 South Carolina Jan 21 25 2 0 23 0 Florida Jan 31 50* 50 0 0 0 Nevada Feb 4 28 14 3 6 5 Minnesota Feb 7 40 2 17 1 4 Colorado Feb 7 36 9 17 2 1 Maine Feb 11 24 9 3 0 7 Michigan Feb 28 30* 13 11 2 4 Arizona Feb 28 29 29 0 0 0 Washington Mar 3 43 13 17 5 8 Georgia Mar 6 76 19 22 27 8 Ohio Mar 6 66 19 27 13 7 Tennessee Mar 6 58 16 25 7 10 Virginia Mar 6 49 49 0 0 0 Oklahoma Mar 6 43 11 18 9 5 Massachusetts Mar 6 41 28 8 2 3 Idaho Mar 6 32 32 0 0 0 North Dakota Mar 6 28 10 12 3 3 Alaska Mar 6 27 10 11 3 3 Vermont Mar 6 17 11 4 1 1 Super Tuesday Est Mar 6 782 359 202 104 72 If Paul Wins Idaho Mar 6 782 327 202 104 104 * States penalized half of their delegates. Thru Super-Tuesday Scenarios Romney 359 Others 423 (Romney wins Idaho) Romney 327 Others 455 (Romney loses Idaho) Notes I assigned delegates by expected percentages based on recent polls except in winner-take-all setups. All state delegates were assigned to the above four candidates. In no instance did I assume Romney would do worse than his most recent polls. In several instances I bumped up Romney's poll percentages substantially. Points one and two were not done to favor Romney per se, but rather to to give a modest boost to the prevailing idea there would not be a brokered convention. Michigan Prediction 30 Delegates Percent: Romney-40% Santorum-35% Gingrich-8% Paul-12% Delegates: Romney-13 Santorum-11 Gingrich-2 Paul-4 Real Clear Politics Michigan Primary Poll Arizona Prediction 29 Delegates Arizona is "Winner Take All" Romney wins all 29 Delegates Real Clear Politics Arizona Primary Poll Washington Prediction 43 Delegates Percent: Romney-30% Santorum-38% Gingrich-12% Paul-17% Delegates: Romney-13 Santorum-17 Gingrich-5 Paul-8 Real Clear Politics Washington Caucus Poll Georgia Prediction 76 Delegates Percent: Romney-24% Santorum-26% Gingrich-33% Paul-10% Delegates: Romney-19 Santorum-22 Gingrich-27 Paul-8 Real Clear Politics Super Tuesday Poll (Georgia, Ohio,  Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Vermont) Ohio Prediction 66 Delegates Percent: Romney-26% Santorum-38% Gingrich-19% Paul-10% Delegates: Romney-19 Santorum-27 Gingrich-13 Paul-7 Tennessee Prediction 58 Delegates Percent: Romney-26% Santorum-40% Gingrich-12% Paul-16% Delegates: Romney-16 Santorum-25 Gingrich-7 Paul-10 Vanderbilt University Tennessee Primary Survey Virginia Prediction 49 Delegates Romney wins all 49 Virginia delegates. Virginia has a proportional allocation with a twist. Should any candidate take 50% in a district, the candidate will all votes in the district. In a display of complete ineptitude, Santorum and Gingrich failed to collect and turn in enough signatures on time and are not on the ballot. Romney is currently polling about 53% and Paul 23%, but Paul can only win delegates if he outright wins a district. Oklahoma Prediction 43 Delegates Percent: Romney-23% Santorum-42% Gingrich-20% Paul-9% Delegates: Romney-11 Santorum-18 Gingrich-9 Paul-5 Massachusetts Prediction 41 Delegates Percent: Romney-64% Santorum-16% Gingrich-6% Paul-8% Delegates: Romney-28 Santorum-8 Gingrich-2 Paul-3 Idaho Prediction 32 Delegates Romney wins all 32 Idaho delegates January Straw Poll Results Romney-34% Santorum-10% Gingrich-12% Paul-43% February Straw Poll Results Romney-45.4% Paul 42.7% A third straw poll will be held March 1-3 and my answer may change based on the results of that poll. Ron Paul or Mitt Romney will likely take all of the delegates based on the explanation below. Whether or not Paul or Romney takes all the votes depends entirely on whether or not Gingrich or Santorum can win any counties which at this time looks doubtful. Idaho Caucus Explanation: Voters will go to locations for their county and use ballots or tokens to support a candidate on Tuesday, March 6th. There are five candidates for Idaho voters to choose from and they will keep voting until a winner is selected. In each round the candidate with the fewest votes or anyone with less than 15% is out of the race. The voting ends at the county level when there is a final vote for two candidates or one has more than 50% of the vote for that county. The delegates assigned for that county will then represent the winning candidate. Counties will report their winner to the state office in Boise. If one candidate has more than 50% of the vote for all of Idaho, they get all 32 delegates. Otherwise, the candidates split delegates they won in each county I cannot find any recent polls for North Dakota, Alaska, or Vermont. Romney should do extremely well in Vermont and fair at best in North Dakota and Alaska. North Dakota Prediction 28 Delegates Percent: Romney-35% Santorum-40% Gingrich-10% Paul-10% Delegates: Romney-10 Santorum-12 Gingrich-3 Paul-3 Alaska Prediction 27 Delegates Percent: Romney-35% Santorum-40% Gingrich-10% Paul-10% Delegates: Romney-10 Santorum-11 Gingrich-3 Paul-3 Vermont Prediction 17 Delegates Percent: Romney-64% Santorum-16% Gingrich-6% Paul-8% Delegates: Romney-11 Santorum-4 Gingrich-1 Paul-1 How Ron Paul Can Throw a Big Wrench Into Romney's Campaign I purposely bumped up Romney's percentages to see if a brokered convention would still be possible. I also awarded Romney all 32 delegates in Idaho even though that race is a statistical dead-heat with Ron Paul. If Ron Paul wins Idaho, and the rest of my numbers above are close, the odds of a brokered convention are well above 50 percent in my estimation. There may be a brokered convention anyway, provided Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich stay in to the end. Fuzzy Math The New York Times discusses The G.O.P.'s Fuzzy Delegate Math. There are 2,286 delegates to the Republican National Convention, of which 1,144 are required to clinch a majority. The Web site TheGreenPapers.com, which has extensive information on delegate-selection procedures in each state, divides them into two broad categories, what it calls "hard" and "soft." Hard delegates are formally bound to a candidate on at least the first ballot at the convention, while soft delegates are not. Although this is a useful conceptual framework, it probably simplifies things too much. Instead, Republican delegates exist along something of a spectrum between bound and unbound, pledged and unpledged, hard and soft. Contributing to the confusion is that there are a series of three interrelated ideas about delegates which are often treated as interchangeable, even though they are not: Bound vs. Unbound Delegates. Is the delegate officially bound to a particular candidate on at least the first ballot at the convention?   Pledged vs. Unpledged Delegates. Whether or not she is formally bound to a candidate, will the delegate's candidate preference be known in advance of the convention and reported upon by the news media?  . Elected vs. Selected Delegates. Was the delegate selected through some relatively direct means, such as based on the popular vote in the state's primary? Or through some indirect means, like through the series of conventions that often take place in caucus states, and which may not correspond to the popular vote there? Category of Delegates Legal Challenges on the Way I did not take any of the bound, unbound, super-delegate counts into consideration. However, I was rather generous to Romney in other ways. Moreover, there are legal challenges pending in Arizona and Florida. Winner-Take-All primaries are a violation of Republican National  Committee rules if held before April 1. As it stands, Romney 50 Florida delegates and 29 Arizona delegates that could dramatically change the totals. Should Romney loses those challenges and also lose Idaho, a brokered convention would be all but certain. If Wishes Were Fishes If wishes (mine) were fishes, then Ron Paul would win the nomination outright. A more realistic wish is for a brokered convention because Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich are all likely to lose to Obama. I believe Paul would defeat Obama although polls don't currently support that idea. Republicans Need to Face the Facts Of the four candidates, only Ron Paul balances the budget, only Ron Paul wants to stop the war-mongering, only Ron Paul does not alienate the majority of women, only Ron Paul can ignite a fire in independents, and independents (not the radical right), are the key to this election. Republicans are not going to vote for Obama so appealing to the far right makes little sense in terms of an overall strategy. Moreover, independents are likely horrified by the war-mongering and misguided statements on religious and social issues of all the candidates but Paul. If Republicans lose this election, it will be because they all outdid each other in foolish attempts to appeal to the far right on issues where a huge majority of the population of the US is in the middle. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Damn Cool Pics

---

How Happy is the Meal You’re Paying For [Infographic] Posted: 27 Feb 2012 02:47 PM PST With iconic products, especially food products that are marketed primarily to children, I think it's beneficial to take a moment to investigate how products this recognizable and loved have become so iconic. 37% of children say McDonald's is their fast food chain of choice, and no other company gets more than 10% of their vote. This infographic lays out some of the details of the recent San Francisco Healthy Food Ordinance, and it also explores some of the facts behind how McDonald's has become such a popular chain with children. I didn't know before reading this, for example, that Happy Meal toys have made McDonalds is the world's largest toy distributor. This infographic also lays how some of the backlash has inspired response from McDonald's. I think it will be interesting to see how what they change and adapt to please both the customers that want more nutritious options, as well as the ones that want to be able to order one that may be less healthy. Click on Image to Enlarge. Via: frugaldad More Infographics.

You are subscribed to email updates from Damn Cool Pictures To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

The Epic Failure of Google+ Graywolf's SEO Blog

---

The Epic Failure of Google+ Posted: 27 Feb 2012 10:30 AM PST In the past, I’ve not been shy about hiding my dislike for some of Google’s practices. In fact, I’ve called them everything from an arrogant bully to an incestuous circle jerk, trapped in a filter bubble world . But recently I’ve been reading all of the press and counter press about how Google+ is growing faster than the waistline of your average McDonald’s customer along with the incessant blood sucking social media guru’s top ten posts about how to leverage Google+ for everything from attention, mindshare, links, SEO, and Fritos covered with caviar. It’s all a bunch of BS: Google+ is doomed to fail. The only people too blind to see it are the techno-weenies, social media charlatans, or any other clueless half wits who think getting on the homepage of techmeme is a meaningful goal worth achieving. if you are a Silicon Valley reporter, talking with a Googler on video chat is the equivalent of a 13 year old girl talking to Justin Bieber… Let’s get one thing straight: Google is an amazing company. They have built some amazing top of the line products that I love and use by choice daily because they are top of the line (like Google Apps). Other products (like Google buzz and Google wave) suck worse than a Bethany Getting Married weekend marathon on Bravo. But what makes a Google product work and what doesn’t? It’s really quite similar to way things work in the rest of the world.  What works is building products that solve problems for CONSUMERS and are things that “normal people” want to use, not products companies want to ram down the throats of normal consumers for the company’s own best interests. The reason Facebook works is because it allows “regular” people to connect and socialize with their friends. The reason people loathe Facebook ads and Facebook pulled their online stores is because it was like trying to sell things to your friends while they were hanging out at the bar. You were the annoying Amway dude that no one wanted to talk to or be around. So why does Google+ suck despite all the free hippie love from the tech community fan boys? First off the tech community has the attention span of a squirrel on ADD medication. This is the new shiny cat toy of the moment. They all want to play with it. To be honest, they are like political commentators on CNN: they have 24 hours a day to fill with programing (or, in their case, a day’s worth of page view journalism). They will say anything for 15 more seconds of air time time, more attention, or a boost in klout score. You should pretty much ignore 90% of the things that come out of their mouths. Secondly, deep down inside they all want to work for Google. Maybe it’s the peer respect, the pay, the perks, or just maybe it’s the free lunch. Since Google tied all of the Google employee’s benefits to the success of Google’s social network, Google employees are now highly motivated to engage with “the common folk” using all the nifty things on Google+ like video chat. This is all smoke and mirrors to get you to think Google+ is where the cool kids are when they’re really not (its the real world equivalent of paying celebrities to show up at a party). However, if you are a Silicon Valley reporter, talking with a Googler on video chat is the equivalent of a 13 year old girl talking to Justin Bieber. Yea, I went there–but just try and tell me it’s not true. But you can’t build a data collection system and Rube Goldberg it into a social network When Google started out, their goal was to build a great search engine. They did, and it changed everything. Nowadays when Google sets out to build something, they don’t do it to build the best product in its class; they do it to extract more data from/about you, profile you better, and sell you to advertisers as a more targeted and qualified prospect (ad retargeting anyone). Google wallet wasn’t designed to build a great, frictionless commerce system. It was designed to pull you away from PayPal and to extract as much data as possible about your purchasing habits. Google buzz wasn’t designed to help you discover cool fun stuff on the web. It was designed to build a set of trust data about your friends (aka your social graph) and what they read and like. Then it filters out the fake social media spam and SEO BS with social proof so companies can make their SERPS better to charge more to advertisers. They just were too good at it and got busted. Google+ wasn’t designed to create an amazing social network to allow you to connect with your friends. It was built to validate your social graph data, keep you off Facebook and Twitter, keep you in the filter bubble of your “friends likes” and, more importantly, keep you in the Google ecosystem as much as possible. Aside from the naive delusional tech press, who are little more than puppets on strings at this point, regular people “know without knowing exactly why” that Google is being disingenuous and lying to them. But for now, thanks to SPYW being integrated into Google’s SERPS, if you sell anything on the web, you have to play with social media to remain competitive. However, you should never put all your eggs in one basket, especially one you are going to let Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ carry around for you. You’ll never know when they will decide to change or phase out your mission critical business functions or take your data and keep it to themselves, leaving you to swing from the gallows. photo credit: Shutterstock/Akva Related posts: Dear Matt Cutts, What We Have is a Failure to Communicate Dear Matt Cutts, I know you and I don’t always... Linkbait Failure – Not Understanding the Need For Instant Gratification Whenever I see someone else’s linkbait that fails, one of... I Wish We Had Google Understand Not Google Instant Search Earlier this week Google launched the latest iteration of the SERP’s, Google... Why Google Thinks SPYW is a Good Idea and You Probably Don’t In a recent statement Larry Page said if you don’t... Is Google Playing Monkey Games With Real Time Search Last week Google launched real time SERP’s, which included the... Advertisers: Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed! Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners. Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation. Join 500+ top agencies & publishers who rely on The HOTH every day. US based, enterprise-grade support. High quality, contextually relevant links. 100% money back guarantee. Try it now. Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website Krystal Glass Whiteboards - Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms. Performance-Based White Label SEO SEO Cockpit Advertisers: Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed! Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners. Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation. Join 500+ top agencies & publishers who rely on The HOTH every day. US based, enterprise-grade support. High quality, contextually relevant links. 100% money back guarantee. Try it now. Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website Krystal Glass Whiteboards - Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms. Performance-Based White Label SEO SEO Cockpit This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review. The Epic Failure of Google+

You are subscribed to email updates from Graywolf's SEO Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Backstage at White House Red, White & Blues Concert

Your Daily Snapshot for Monday, February 27, 2012   Backstage at White House Red, White & Blues Concert  Legendary American music duo, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks were on hand in the East Wing, for our "In Performance at the White House: Red, White & Blues" concert. Check out this behind the scenes video of the two performing "Rollin' and Tumblin' " at the White House.     In Case You Missed It   Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog: Weekly Address: An All-Of-The-Above Approach to American Energy President Obama talks about how important it is to embrace an all-of-the-above approach to addressing our nation’s energy challenges. Backstage with Warren Haynes The Blues giant was at the White House last week for the Red, White & Blues event, and he sat down for a backstage performance of "River's Gonna Rise" in the East Wing. By the Numbers: $4 Billion Oil companies receive $4 billion every year in taxpayer-funded subsidies, despite bringing in record high profits. Meanwhile, gas prices are on the rise—just like they were this time last year—and the same people funding those subsidies are paying more at the pump for the gas they need to get to school and work. Today's Schedule All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST). 9:30 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing 10:00 AM: The President meets with senior advisors 11:20 AM: The President and Vice President deliver remarks to the National Governors    3:15 PM: The President and Vice President meet with Secretary Geithner 4:30 PM: The President attends a campaign event    Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live Stay Connected Sign up for the Daily Snapshot     Facebook Twitter YouTube Flickr iTunes     This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com Manage Subscriptions for e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com Sign Up for Updates from the White House Click here to unsubscribe | 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

Create Crawlable, Link-Friendly AJAX Websites Using pushState()

---

Create Crawlable, Link-Friendly AJAX Websites Using pushState() Posted: 26 Feb 2012 01:11 PM PST Posted by RobOusbey Many people have an interest in building websites that take advantage of AJAX principles, while still being accessible to search engines. This is an important issue that I've written about before in a (now obsolete) post from 2010. The tactic I shared then has been superseded by new technologies, so it's time to write the update. This topic is still relevant, because of a particular dilemma that SEOs still face: websites that use AJAX to load content into the page can be much quicker and provide a better user experience BUT: these websites can be difficult (or impossible) for Google to crawl, and using AJAX can damage the site's SEO. The solution I had previously recommended ends up with the #! (hashbang) symbols littering URLs, and has generally been implemented quite poorly by many sites. When I presented on this topic at Distilled's SearchLove conferences in Boston last year, I specifically called out Twitter's implementation because it 'f/#!/ng sucks'. Since I made that slide, it's actually got worse. Why talk about this now? I was driven to blog about this now, because after some apparent internal disagreements at Twitter in early 2011 (c.f. this misguided post by one Twitter engineer, followed by this sensible response by another) they seem to working to reverse the decision and replace all those dreadful URLs for good. Even though Twitter shouldn't be held up as the paragon of great implementation, it's valuable for all of us to look at the method that many smart-thinking websites (Twitter included) are planning to use.   In general, I'm surprised that we don't see this approach being used more often. Creating fast, user-friendly websites that are also totally accessible by search engines is a good goal to have, right? What is the technology? So - drumroll please - what is the new technology that's going to make our AJAX lives easier? It's a happy little Javascript function that's part of 'HTML5 History API' called window.history.pushState()   pushState() basically does one thing: it changes the path of the URL that appears in the user's address bar. Until now, that's not been possible.   Before we go further, it's worth reiterating that this function doesn't really do anything else - no extra call is made to the server, and the new page is not requested. Plus - of course - this isn't available in every web browser, and only modern standards-loving browsers (with Javascript enabled) will be able to make use of it.   In fact, do you want a quick demo? Most SEOmoz visitors are using a modern browser, so this should work for you. Watch the page URL and try clicking ON THIS TEXT. Did you see the address change? The new page URL isn't a real location, but - so far as you're concerned - that's now the page you're looking at.   SEOmoz readers are smart people; I expect that you're realizing various ways that this can be valuable, but here's why this little function gets me excited: you can have the speed benefits of using AJAX to load page content (since for many websites, only a fraction of the code delivered is actually content; most is just design & templating) since the page URL can accurately reflect the 'real' location of the page, you have no problem with people copy/pasting the URL from the address bar and linking to / sharing it (linking to a page that uses #fragment for the page location won't pass link-juice to the right page/content) with the #!s out of the way, you don't need to worry about special 'escaped URLs' for the search engines to visit you can rest easy, knowing that you are contributing good quality URLs (as discussed in the post montioned earlier) to the web. The Examples I launched a pushState demo / example page to show how all this performs in practice. Click the image above to visit the demo site in all its glory. If you click between the cities in the top navigation, you'll be able to see that only the main content is being loaded in with each click; the page navigation. (This can be confirmed by playing the Youtube video on the page; notice that it doesn't stop playing as you load in new content.)   If you want to see a bunch of examples of this 'in the wild', you can take a look at almost any blogspot.com-hosted-blog with one of their new 'dynamic views' in place, just add '/view/sidebar' to the end of the URL.   For example, this blog: http://n1vg.blogspot.com can be viewed with the theme applied: http://n1vg.blogspot.com/view/sidebar    If you click posts in the left hand column on that second link, you'll see the content get loaded in with very impressive speed; the URL is then updated using pushState() - no page reload took place, but your browser still reflects the appropriate URL for each piece of content. The Techie Bit If you like the sound of all this, but you start to feel out of your depth when it comes to tech implementation, then feel free to share this with your developers or most tech-oriented friends. (References are linked at the end of this post.)   The important function we're utilizing takes three parameters: window.history.pushState(data, title, url)   There's no value in worrying about the first two parameters; you can safely set these to null. In the brief example I gave at the top of this post, the function simply looked like this: window.history.pushState('','','test/url/that-does-not-really-exist')   Our workflow for implementing this looks like the following: Before doing anything else, make sure your site works without JS; Google will need to be able to follow your links and read content You'll also have to create server-side processes to serve just the 'content' for particular pages, rather than the fully rendered HTML page. This will depend a great deal on your server, your back-end set up; you can ask in the comments below if you have questions about this bit. Instruct Javascript to intercept the clicks on any relevant internal links (navigation elements, etc.) I'm a big jQuery fan, so I rely on the click() function for this Your Javascript will look at the attributes of the link that was clicked on (probably the href) and use whatever JS/AJAX you want to load the appropriate content into the page Finally, get all the SEO benefits by using the pushState() function update the URL to match the content's 'real' location By having your internal links work 'as normal' and then adding this AJAX/HTML5 implementation on-top, you are taking advantage of the benefits of 'progressive enhancement': users with up-to-date browsers get the full, fast and spiffy experience, but the site is still accessible for less capable browsers and (critically in this case) for the search engines.   If you want some code to implement this, you can take a look at the head section of the demo that I shared above - that contains all of the Javascript necessary for doing this.   Basic code for getting this done looks like this:   // We're using jQuery functions to make our lives loads easier $('nav a').click(function(e) {       url = $(this).attr("href");         //This function would get content from the server and insert it into the id="content" element       $.getJSON("content.php", {contentid : url},function (data) {             $("#content").html(data);       });         //This is where we update the address bar with the 'url' parameter       window.history.pushState('object', 'New Title', url);         //This stops the browser from actually following the link       e.preventDefault(); } Important Caveat Although the code above works as a proof of concept, there are some additional things to do, in order to make this work as smoothly as my demo.   In particular, you'll probably want the 'back' button on the user's browser to work, which this code snippet won't allow. (The URL will change, but the content from those historical pages still needs to be loaded in.) To enable this, you'll need the popState() function; this detects a URL change, allowing you to fire whatever function you have for grabbing page content and loading it in.   Again, you can see this in action in the head of the demo page at http://html5.gingerhost.com. Resources and Further Reading: There are plenty of resources that cover the HTML5 History API pretty thoroughly, so I'll defer to them in letting you read about the details at your leisure. I'd suggest taking a look at the following Dive in HTML5: Chapter 11: Manipulating History for Fun & Profit (I'd highly recommended this whole book) Mozilla Developer Network: Manipulating the Browser History And finally, for your own peace-of-mind: Internet Explorer 10 will support the HistoryAPI Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

You are subscribed to email updates from SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610