Central Perk

miercuri, 14 martie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Funny and Clever Street Art from OaKoAk
Hill Of Crosses in Lithuania
Cool as a Carrot - Women's Body Shapes [Infographic]
Cute Baby Cheetah Kitten Mewing

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 06:41 PM PDT

Playful and cute, the art of French street artist, OaKoAk can be found randomly in the streets. With a highly aware set of eyes he takes otherwise boring objects like hand rails, street signs and potholes and creates a narrative around them to make funny and interesting works of art. They are simple statements done very well.

For More.

Hill Of Crosses in Lithuania

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 02:46 PM PDT

The Hill of Crosses is a site of pilgrimage in northern Lithuania just outside the city of Siauliai. Standing upon a small hill are an estimated 100,000 crosses, crucifixes and rosaries that represent Christian devotion and a memorial to Lithuanian national identity.

The city of Siauliai was founded in 1236 and occupied by Teutonic Knights during the 14th century. The tradition of placing crosses dates from this period and probably first arose as a symbol of Lithuanian defiance of foreign invaders. Since the medieval period, the Hill of Crosses has represented the peaceful resistance of Lithuanian Catholicism to oppression. In 1795 Siauliai was incorporated into Russia but was returned to Lithuania in 1918. Many crosses were erected upon the hill after the peasant uprising of 1831-63. By 1895, there were at least 150 large crosses, in 1914 there were 200, and by 1940 there were 400 large crosses surrounded by thousands of smaller ones.

On September 7, 1993, Pope John Paul II visited the Hill of Crosses, declaring it a place for hope, peace, love and sacrifice.

Cool as a Carrot - Women's Body Shapes [Infographic]

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 01:37 PM PDT

Our latest survey, involving hundreds of participants, has revealed some fascinating facts about body shapes and the way we see ourselves. In this infographic theres a charming look at women's body shapes, including a brand new one - the carrot!

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via: vitalitylive

Cute Baby Cheetah Kitten Mewing

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 08:59 PM PDT

When this video was recorded, Nala was cared for by a foster family in Namibia after her mother was killed by a car. She's a squeaky toy!

Via: Neatorama

A Visual Guide to Rich Snippets

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 01:57 PM PDT

Posted by snarayanasamy

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.

Rich snippets -- we see them everywhere in the SERPs, with some verticals having a higher abundance of them than others. For the average searcher, these rich snippets help show them what they're searching for is within reach on a particular site.

A few benefits of rich snippets include:

1) Drawing a user's attention to your relevant result.

2) Providing instant information as related to their query.

3) Increasing click-through rates and lessen the amount of bounces due to not searchers not finding the content they were looking for.

For companies leveraging content strategies, there's an especially large benefit of having mark up for authors being displayed in the SERPs with the emergence of AuthorRank. For instance, a "know" based query (informational search) that displays an author with a photo, name, and a link other articles they've written creates a feeling of trust and authority. It can also encourage them to click-through and read other articles they're written, essentially making that author a new resource.

As another example, "do" based queries, such as going to a concert or event, can end up displaying results from ticket sites that have a quick and instant snippet breakdown to help them in the purchasing process.

In order to consolidate and decode some of the information you need to sift through when learning about rich snippets, we've created this visual guide to walk through the basics, fundamental types, implementation, and benefits of utilizing them.

Enjoy! Some food for thought: How do you see rich snippets evolving in the future?

Rich Snippets Guide

Feel free to display this Infographic on your site. Just please use the code below. Thanks!

<a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets"><img src="http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/blog_imges/Rich-Snippets-Guide.png" alt="Guide to Rich Snippets by BlueGlass Interactive on SEOmoz" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets">Visual Guide to Rich Snippets on SEOmoz</a> created by <a href="http://www.blueglass.com">BlueGlass Interactive</a>.

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Watch Live: UK Arrival Ceremony

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Watch Live: UK Arrival Ceremony

Outside the White House, the Union Jack is flying alongside the flags of the United States and the District of Columbia on street lamps down Pennsylvania Avenue.

This morning, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will welcome Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha Cameron, to the White House with a formal arrival ceremony at 9 am EDT and a State Dinner to follow this evening.

Watch the arrival ceremony on WhiteHouse.gov/Live starting at 9 a.m. EST.

Check out a slideshow of notable British visitors to the White House since World War II.

Seth's Blog : Speaking when they care (reorganizing the economics and attitude of customer service)

Speaking when they care (reorganizing the economics and attitude of customer service)

Advertisers struggle to be heard through the noise. Customer service reps, on the other hand, can whisper.

A few organizations have figured out how to turn customer service into a marketing opportunity and thus a profit center. They figure if they've got your attention, if they're talking to you at a moment when you care a great deal, they can turn that into an opportunity to delight. And being delighted is remarkable and worth talking about.

That means that if your organization has a stall, deny and avoid policy when it comes to customer interaction, you will almost certainly be defeated if a competitor comes up with a scalable way to delight.

Overseas call centers and online chat handled by untrained workers with no incentives seem like clever ways to cut costs during stressful times. What they actually are is scalable engines of annoyance, time-sucking processeses that raise expectations and then totally dash them. Better to not even have a phone number. (You can't call Google but you don't want to call Adobe--which one generates more animus--the inability to call, or the promise, unfilled, of respect and thoughtful help?)

Or consider: Some airlines are starting to realize that a delayed or cancelled flight is actually a chance to earn some remarkability. In the two hours that someone is stranded, they're paying very careful attention to your brand. What are you doing? Notifying them by email that the flight is late, offering them free wifi, even giving them a link to a free book or movie online--none of that costs more than caring...all of them important opportunities to be heard and remembered.

Investing in delight via customer service is cheap to experiment with and easy to prove. Just siphon off 1% of your calls to a trained person who actually cares and wants to help--and see what happens to customer satisfaction and word of mouth. Cancel a few TV ads and you can pay for it--soon it will pay for itself.