Central Perk

vineri, 2 martie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Michael Jordan's House for Sale for $29M
When Social Consumers Go Viral [Infographic]
Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme
The Happiest Animals In The World
The World’s First Cupcake ATM
The Learning Power of Lego [Infographic]

Michael Jordan's House for Sale for $29M

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 01:16 PM PST

The legendary basketball player Michael Jordan put up for sale his mansion in Highland Park, Chicago for 29 million dollars. The house has 9 bedrooms, 15 baths and 4 without a toilet, five fireplaces, an outdoor tennis court, golf course, a deep pond, pool, 3 separate climate controlled garages with parking for 15 cars, and, of course, full-size basketball court.

The 32,683 square foot house sits on seven acres of gated green space in Highland Park, according to the Baird & Warner listing. The contemporary, luxurious home is being sold fully-furnished, including the customized gate with the Chicago Bulls star's former number, 23.

Check out this house!

When Social Consumers Go Viral [Infographic]

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 12:50 PM PST

Apart from their general entertainment value, and obvious benefits like keeping in touch with friends, and staying up to date on news, sites like Facebook and Twitter offer a united voice to the American consumer. When so many individuals express their opinions via these sites, they gain power as a collective. This infographic shows that companies will stand to attention if enough people post regarding one of their policies or practices.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via: frugaldad
More Infographics.

Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 10:32 PM PST

Autonomous robot quadrotors from University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab play the theme from the James Bond films on a keyboard, drums, maracas, a cymbal, and the "an adapted guitar built from a couch frame." The video premiered earlier today at a TED2012 talk presented by roboticist and GRASP Lab member Vijay Kumar.

The Happiest Animals In The World

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 09:41 PM PST

You are going to laugh to hard you might shed a tear when you see the happiest animals in the world. Elephants, rabbits, cats, dogs, and even sloths and crocodiles are on the list. Careful, you might want to turn yourself into a different animal.

Source: buzzfeed

The World’s First Cupcake ATM

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 08:34 PM PST

Sprinkles bakery has installed a 24-hour cupcake ATM in Los Angeles that dispenses cupcakes, mixes, and apparel with just a few button pushes. Sprinkles promises that the ATM will be restocked with freshly baked cupcakes every day.

Sprinkles also has locations in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Palo Alto, Washington DC, but LA appears to be the only cupcake ATM location, for now.

Here's what Sprinkles tells us about their ice cream:

This automatic cupcake machine dispenses freshly baked cupcakes, cupcake mixes, apparel and even cupcakes for Fido! In the heart of Beverly Hills nestled between Sprinkles Cupcakes and the brand new Sprinkles Ice Cream, 24 Hour Sprinkles will be continuously restocked day and night with a variety of freshly baked cupcake flavors.

Sprinkles cupcakes, from left to right: Chocolate Marshmallow, Cinnamon Sugar, Chai Latte:

Via: LAist, Designboom

The Learning Power of Lego [Infographic]

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 07:34 PM PST

Ole Kirk Christiansen created Legos in the 1940s in Denmark. Ole's company originally sold and made wooden stepladders and ironing boards, until he started making wooden toys. The toys were more popular, so he decided to sell toys exclusively. He named the company LEGO, which came from the Danish phrase "play well".

Lego bricks have withstood the test of time because of their unlimited open-ended possibilities - 400 billion bricks have been produced since 1958. Lego has been going strong for the last sixty years, developing children's creativity, fine motor skills, teamwork, and curiosity. Who knows what the next fifty years will bring!

Check out this infographic to learn some history of LEGO and how it's being used in the education field.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via: onlinecollege

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method” Graywolf's SEO Blog

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method”

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 09:51 AM PST

Online reputation management (ORM) is a huge, and growing market. For others it means they have a huge public relations problem. I have worked with a few companies and individuals with just such a problem. I’ll tell you the story and outcome of one such client, who will remain nameless.

ORM Problem: My client fired an employee who posts negative information about the company on a forum and review site. The truthfulness of the postings are irrelevant and they stand to lose a lot of business for people searching their company name. The negative postings (negatives) were listed in positions 2 and 4+5. Even someone searching for their phone number will see these negative results!

ORM Failed Solution: My client came to me through a referral. They had already hired an ORM firm ranked on the first page of Google and got literally no results after 3 months. They gave me all of the information they had which included a few business listings and web 2.0 type sites that were built with duplicate content. In all, they spent $3500 and had 6 web 2.0′s and 25 business directory listings. None of those 31 pages were showing up on the first 3 pages of the SERP’s. $3500 down the drain.

My ORM Solution: When I explained my approach to his problem my client was shocked and initially not interested at all, and you might be as well.

Step 1: Scrape content and spin heavily. I spun a single 400 word article to 98% uniqueness, then did it again with a different article and combined them into one 400 word article.
Step 2: Throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

When all that matters is the negatives moving down and off the first page or two, who cares what site is showing up in the #2-10 positions? All my client wanted was to have the negatives out of view. I created 8,000 unique pages of content over the course of 48 hours.

Step 3: Wait. For most people this is the hard part. You want to do something, but until you know what is going to stick against the wall. During this time, I’m getting the pages indexed. I usually give this step about a week. After a week I expect to have about 75% of the pages indexed and usually see some starting to show up on the first 5 pages. For this client, I had 5 pages in the top 10, and controlled the entire 2nd and 3rd page. Literally every single page was one I created for this client.
Step 4: Link building to the ranking pages. Now that we know what is sticking to the wall, we need to build some links to these pages to get them to move up. The timeframe is completely dependent on the quality of your link building methods. I generally shoot for 1-6 months depending on the competition of the keyword for this step.
Step 5: Change content so it’s appropriate. After you move the negatives off the first page, you should have 3-9 pages one the first page that you created. If the content isn’t reflective of your client, it needs to be rewritten and changed on the pages you created…You did keep the username and password of every page you created, right? Depending on the client, they might want to provide the content, they might want to review content you have created, or they might not care as long as it’s good.

This method does not work for competitive keywords and should be clearly explained to your client along with a timeline of expectations. In SEO, it’s usually impossible to give an exact timeline and I find it’s usually better to over deliver.

Some clients have a very public brand, are overly concerned about their public reputation, or get themselves into regular trouble. These clients generally need an ongoing ORM relationship. Small companies and single issues can usually be handled in under 6 months.

For my client, the total time from start to finish for 3.5 months. He now owns the entire first page. One negative is at the bottom of the second page, and the other negative is nowhere in the top 100. Success!

Brandon Hopkins owns a complete link building service at DiamondLinks.net. He frequently works with ORM clients and even agencies building links and content for their clients. Contact Brandon if you have a reputation problem!

photo credit: Shutterstock/Josh Resnick

No related posts.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method”