Central Perk

miercuri, 27 iunie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Furniture for Cats
Orsos: A Moveable Floating Island
The Official Shakira Aging Timeline
Can You Afford to Die? [Infographic]
Lego Album Covers
Man Fights Goose with a Lightsaber [Video]
2012 World's Ugliest Dog Contest
Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 34

Furniture for Cats

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 02:12 PM PDT

Just look what some cat lovers do for the sake of their pets living in comfort.

Orsos: A Moveable Floating Island

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 01:54 PM PDT

Orsos Islands is a luxury floating island that has the ability to be moved and re-anchored. I should clarify that it technically hasn't been completed yet and that the photos you see are renderings — the finished product is expected to be completed in 2013.

The estimated 4.6 million dollar island is over 20 meters wide (65+ ft) and more than 37 meters in length (121+ ft). The Orsos is state of the art, powered both day and night by a noiseless wind energy system, as well as more than 120 m² of solar panels.

With accommodations for up to 12 guests, the possibilities for the tourist industry to employ some of these places anchored close to small islands or having several out on the water from mainland would appeal to many who have the means to pay the stiff price.

Via Twistedsifter

The Official Shakira Aging Timeline

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 12:32 PM PDT

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll born February 2, 1977, known simply as Shakira, is a Grammy-award winning Colombian singer-songwriter, musician, composer, record producer, music-video director, dancer, choreographer, instrumentalist and philanthropist who has sold over sixty million records worldwide. Presented below is her official aging timeline.

Can You Afford to Die? [Infographic]

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 12:10 PM PDT

While few people want to think about their death, it's becoming increasingly popular for folks to prepare for the inevitable by preplanning their own funerals. How much do funeral services cost, and how can you save money if you're on a budget?

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via Insurancequotes

Lego Album Covers

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 11:04 PM PDT

UK designer Aaron Savage has recreated various album covers using only LEGO bricks in a series he calls 'Brick the LP'. We never thought Bowie, Pink Floyd, Saturday Night Fever or the Smiths would looks so good in LEGOS.

Read full story >>

Man Fights Goose with a Lightsaber [Video]

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 10:08 PM PDT

Alright so the man and goose didn't fight with real light sabers, but this is still awesome. Originally, this video consisted of a man defending himself on a sidewalk as a goose repeatedly attacked him. Next, someone who has far too much time on their hands added in Star Wars' light sabers.

2012 World's Ugliest Dog Contest

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:24 PM PDT

The 2012 king of ugly-cute is Mugly, a Chinese Crested. 8-year-old Mugly came all the way from Peterborough, England to show off his unusual appearance, which included weirdly placed whiskers and an aloof gaze. His owner, Bev Nicholson, told the Associated Press that this isn't the dog's first big win. Mugly also won Britain's Ugliest Dog in 2005.

Bev Nicholson of Peterborough, England is overwhelmed with emotion as her Chinese crested dog, Mugly, wins the title of World's Ugliest Dog.

Via National Post

Funny Demotivational Posters - Part 34

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:07 PM PDT

Check out these new demotivational posters below and tell me what you think about them in the comments. If you love my demotivational poster collection, please link back to it.

Will you share this?

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Will you share this?

We've been talking to you about President Obama's plan to cut through the red tape keeping millions of responsible homeowners from refinancing their mortgages, but we want to make sure your friends get the message, too.

We've put together an graphic that boils the President's proposal down to the five things that everyone should know, and the information is all right here -- you don't even need to visit Whitehouse.gov.

Will you share it online or forward this email to your friends?

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Headsmacking Tip #21: Write Better Headlines Than Anyone Else

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:07 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

This tactic is so simple and obvious, it's probably illegal somewhere.

Every day, the web produces millions of pieces of content. Several thousand are almost certainly of interest to folks in your niche - those who might be reading your blog or sharing the content you produce. Creating unique stories requires creativity, research and time that many in the field don't have. But... writing the best piece, or even just a decent piece of content about an interesting topic and giving it a fantastic headline? Well, let's just say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but this one costs just pennies.

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Get Informed

Follow the right accounts of Twitter for your niche (those that share a lot of good stuff)
Set up some smart Google Alerts (particularly "news" and "blog" alerts)
Subsrcibe to Google News' subsections if there's an appropriate one
Use aggregation services like Reddit's subreddits, PopURLs, Topsy, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Metafilter, Alltop, etc.

E.g. The other day I found a research paper from Cambridge (via Reddit) on how negative thinking adversely impacts problem-solving ability.

Step 2: Choose the Best Pieces Each Day/Week

Find stories that have high overlap with your audience's interests
Don't exclude things that aren't "on topic!" Your goal isn't to only talk about your exact niche; it's to provide value to those who might be potential customers (big difference, probably deserving of its own blog post and illustration at some point)

E.g. That research paper had been written up in some small press pieces (as seen via this Google News query), but had yet to receive any major writeups, suggesting it's a perfect target.

Step 3: Rewrite the Headline Phenomenally Well

Get two solid writers in a room and have them brainstorm 10 ideas and angles for the headline
Have those two folks hash through and come up with the top three
Share with a wider group and get feedback about which will earn a click
OR if you have time, you can A/B test by sending an email to a small group with click tracking on each one and see which performs best (make sure to control for or randomize position in the email, as the first link often gets the click)

E.g. "Stay Away from Negative Thoughts to Improve Problem-Solving Ability" could be transformed into headlines like "Scientific research suggests haters really are harming your productivity," or "Is distraction a better problem-solving technique than deep thought?"

Step 4: Cover the Story from Your Angle

Relate the story back to your audience, but cover it accurately and be sure to cite your sources (linking out to these folks can have positive benefits all its own from trackbacks, traffic driven, future reciprocity, etc)
Include a graphic or image if at all possible (but stay far, far away from most stock imagery)
If possible, gather input from folks in your field via social channels or email; a few well-placed quotes can help the reach get wider and creates incentivized sharers

E.g. If I were writing for the marketing world, I might take an angle focusing on what gets marketers stuck in ruts, provide suggestions for distraction and draw on some of my own experiences (like those frequent ideas in the shower moments).

Many folks will presume this only works for news-focused sites or news-focused content. False! You can relate news and events to nearly anything you desire and make it function with the brand and voice you're trying to craft. E.g. "How the Facebook IPO Will Change Commuting Patterns in the Bay Area," "Will Rising Sea Levels Affect Your Favorite Beach Getaway?" "Dental Implants May Be a Thing of the Past Thanks to Gene Therapy," "The Privatization of Space Flight Will Come at a Cost for Floridian Home Owners." I'm not suggesting any of these are particularly excellent, but hopefully you can imagine how to extend the concept of headline-writing into your field.

p.s. If you're looking for some headline advice, I particularly liked this piece on Why Gawker's Writing Better Headlines Than the Rest of the Web and this section on Copyblogger.

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Watch Out for Long Title Tags - An SEOmoz Case Study

Posted: 20 Jun 2012 01:53 PM PDT

Posted by RuthBurr

Here is the all-true story of some intriguing events that have transpired at the MozPlex in the last couple of weeks.

It all started when Jamie wanted to look up his fantastic post from last year, "Custom Reporting Using Google Analytics and Google Docs - The Ultimate Analytics Mashup." Not having the URL committed to memory, he did what any of us might do: he Googled it.

Imagine his surprise (and my consternation) when instead of a useful, keyword-rich, call-to-actiony title, he saw this:

URL displaying in title tag

For some reason, Google was displaying the text from the unique part of the post URL, rather than the title. A quick survey of Mozzers found that several of us had seen similar results when Googling old blog posts:

wrong title tag text

But it definitely was NOT happening on all blog posts!

I'm gonna be honest with you guys: I could NOT figure this out. I checked various factors for correlation. Could rel=author be causing this? Was something happening with the way title tags were being generated on the back end of the blog? Nothing seemed to match up.

One factor that I considered, but almost dismissed, was a change in how titles are truncated. The Google Inside Search blog had just released their monthly list of algorithmic tweaks for May, including these 3 that specifically had to do with how titles display:

"Trigger alt title when HTML title is truncated. [launch codename "tomwaits", project codename "Snippets"] We have algorithms designed to present the best possible result titles. This change will show a more succinct title for results where the current title is so long that it gets truncated. We'll only do this when the new, shorter title is just as accurate as the old one."
"Efficiency improvements in alternative title generation. [launch codename "TopOfTheRock", project codename "Snippets"] With this change we've improved the efficiency of title generation systems, leading to significant savings in cpu usage and a more focused set of titles actually shown in search results."
"Better demotion of boilerplate anchors in alternate title generation. [launch codename "otisredding", project codename "Snippets"] When presenting titles in search results, we want to avoid boilerplate copy that doesn't describe the page accurately, such as "Go Back." This change helps improve titles by avoiding these less useful bits of text."

In short: When your title tag is too long, instead of simply truncating it and adding an ellipsis to the end the way they used to, Google is trying to algorithmically determine a better title for the post.

But surely, I thought, SURELY this wasn't what was happening here. How could a string of words separated by dashes and pulled from the URL be a better title than the actual title? Even a shortened version of the actual title?

My mistake in my initial round of sleuthing was that I ignored Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I tried shortening the title tags and it worked like gangbusters:

Shorter title tag

What We Learned

Like many blogging platforms, the SEOmoz blog has an option to include a custom title tag. If no custom tag is created, the title tag is generated from the title of the post. We've got some pretty long titles of posts in our library, but many of them had no custom, shorter title - post authors were relying on Google to truncate as needed and focusing more on writing a great headline.

It looks like having a short, search-friendly title tag has increased in importance - without it, Google could replace your title with just about anything, including part of your URL. This doesn't exactly create the user experience we want, and a replaced title tag is a lost opportunity to encourage searchers to click.

How Long Should My Title Tag Be?

There's a great post that just went up on SEOMofo about how long title tags can be and still be displayed in the SERPs. To sum up: the old rule of "70 characters or less" is no longer as hard-and-fast as it used to be. SEOMofo's experiments show that now Google is truncating title tags based not only on number of characters, but also on the pixel width of your title tag. So title tags rich in wide letters like W and A won't be able to fit as many characters in before getting truncated, when compared to title tags rich in narrow letters like i and t.

We'll need to experiment further to figure out exactly where the limit is on title length/width. In the meantime, make sure your pages with long headlines have shorter (still keyword-rich) titles in the title tags, and be aware of your use of wide characters. In my spare time recently, I've been slogging through years of posts and adding shorter titles as needed; I recommend you do the same.

Update: AJ Kohn has more on this topic - including other reasons Google may replace the title tag, such as relevance to the query - over here.

Twitter Office Hours: Ask Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Twitter Office Hours: Ask Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is joining us for special session of White House Office Hours today, June 27th at 2:00 p.m. EDT. During a live Q&A on Twitter, Secretary Duncan will answer your questions about college affordability and the administration’s education policies and priorities.

Ask questions now with the hashtag #WHChat and join live by following @WHLive.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama talks to a group of kids from Lenora Academy in Snellville, Ga., during a stop at the Varsity, a restaurant in Atlanta, Ga., June 26, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Take this simple marketing quiz

Take this simple marketing quiz

Not so simple, actually, and about more than just classical marketing:

There are a hundred people in a room, perhaps a trade show or a small theatre. What's your choice:

Sit in the back, watch, listen and learn.
Cajole your way onstage so you can make a slick presentation that gets everyone on their feet, buzzing and excited, eager to do business with you or hire you.
Set up a booth in the lobby that energizes and engages 12 of the people enough that they tell their friends, while it disturbs or mystifies two of the others and is ignored by the rest.
Provide a service (like cookies and juice in a box at the exit) that many of the people there are appreciative of but few remember or talk about.

Most people say they choose #2. In fact, most marketers actually do #1 or #4, and it's only #3 that gives you the best chance--create a remarkable product or service, don't depend on getting picked to have a lucky break on stage, and gradually spread your purple cow among people who are truly interested.

Apple and Nike and Starbucks are trotted out again and again as marketing gold standards, because they are beloved by many and ignored or distrusted by few. But these are the outliers, the .0001% that don't represent what actually happens when successful ideas reach the marketplace.

The mass market is no longer. There is almost no room left for the next Procter & Gamble or Google. Instead, you are far more likely to do your best work if you are willing to delight a few as opposed to soothe the masses.