marți, 22 aprilie 2014

Protecting our planet

Hello everyone,

44 years ago today, 20 million Americans came together to celebrate the first Earth Day. Over the past few decades, people across the globe have continued to use the day to demonstrate their commitment to a healthier environment.

As we celebrate Earth Day this year, I'm reminded how beautiful our planet is -- and how much work we have to do to keep it that way.

Climate change is a growing threat to our world, and some of the effects are already evident. Heat waves are lasting longer, and more extreme weather events -- such as floods, severe storms, and droughts -- are happening each year.

That's why the President released a Climate Action Plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare America's communities for the consequences of climate change, and lead international efforts to address global climate change.

But he can't do it alone. Share what you're doing in your own community to help our environment.

It's crucial that every one of us does our part to protect our planet.

Whether you're taking part in a community garden, or just riding a bike instead of driving some days, every little bit helps. Small changes in your daily activities can really make a big difference.

Share your own story of what you're doing in your community to help the environment, and to protect our planet from the effects of climate change.

Thank you,
John

John Podesta
Counselor to the President
The White House
@Podesta44

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The President's Trip to Asia

Featured

The President's Trip to Asia

Tonight, President Obama will board Air Force One for the start of his eight-day trip to Asia.

The President’s visit to Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines will focus on our major priorities in the region: modernizing our alliances; supporting democratic development; advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and commercial ties; investing in regional institutions; and deepening cultural and people-to-people ties.

Watch a preview of the President's eight-day, four-country trip.

Starting Over, Part 2: Launch

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 05:15 PM PDT

Posted by Dr-Pete

This post is a part of the "Starting Over" series, the story of starting a blog (MinimalTalent.com) from scratch. See the end of the post for links to the rest of the series.

Launching a new site is exciting, and it should be, but we sometimes let excitement get the best of us. After months of building and planning, it's understandable to want to finally pull the trigger, but launch is important and rushing it can delay real success. This is the story of how I got Minimal Talent off the ground.

Goods news and bad news

Online marketing has evolved a lot in the past decade, and changes to search and social have brought good news and bad news for webmasters. First, the good news – it's relatively easy to get a new site indexed in 2014, and even ranking for long-tail terms. You don't have to wait for Google to discover you or pay a search submission service (remember those?). Unfortunately, the bad news is that ranking on real, competitive terms has gotten harder, and it takes longer. Why am I telling you this up front? You need to have realistic expectations, or launch will be an unpleasant and ultimately unproductive experience.

Alerting the bots

You can't win if you don't play – if you want to eventually rank in search, you need to get indexed. In part 1, we set up Google Webmaster Tools and created an XML sitemap, which can be great for discovery. Next up is to submit your site.

Yes, submissions services may be [mostly] [hopefully] dead, but Google does allow direct submission of new pages. Go to Webmaster Tools, select the "Crawl" menu and click on "Fetch as Google" – you'll see something like this:

To submit your home-page, just leave the field blank and click [FETCH]. Your URL should show up at the bottom, and your "Fetch Status" should soon return "Success". Once it does, just click [Submit to index]. There is a limit to how many pages you can fetch, but typically I only use this to launch a site or refresh a page that is outdated or isn't getting re-cached.

Within minutes, I was showing up for a "site:" search (site:minimaltalent.com), with seven pages indexed (which was about right):

I promised this series would be transparent, so I have to admit that I messed up a little here. Apparently, Google had managed to crawl the site prior to my official launch, and had actually cached it a few days earlier (checked with cache:minimaltalent.com).

For me, this was no big deal, but it bears warning that, if you don't want your site to be out in the world prematurely, you may have to take steps to keep Google from crawling. Google has a way of finding new sites, which can be good and bad, depending on your plans.

Later on launch day, I was also ranking for my tagline ("Misadventures in Minimalism"), on page 1 in the #2 position:

I'd highly encourage you to track a few non-competitive, long-tail phrases (and, if you're a Moz customer, set them up in Moz Analytics). They may not seem sexy, but you'll see progress much sooner than with competitive phrases. It's important to know that your site at least has the ability to rank, in order to detect any issues early.

Link chickens & Search eggs

Which came first, the link chicken or the search egg? Ok, let me try again. If you want to rank, you're going to need links, but you can't get natural links if no one can find you to begin with. This is the fundamental problem of modern search marketing.

Yes, you can manually build links (and there's a place for that, done well and in moderation). Sometimes, though, we get so hung up on the mechanics of SEO that we forget that there are plenty of other channels to get the word out.

Alerting the humans

In other words, it's time to tell people you launched. I'm not one to broadcast every post I write to my friends, family, and tax guy, but launch is different – if you've created something you're excited about, then tell people. Who did I email?

Friends (IRL)
Industry peers
Co-workers
Private mailing lists

In most cases, the email was customized to the list and even the individual. These things are worth the effort. As a marketer, emailing my peers isn't just about a few pageviews – it's a way to seed social sharing and potentially even drive links.

The other way around the chicken-and-egg problem is taking full advantage of social. We tend to obsess about whether or not social signals (Tweets, Likes, +1s) have a direct impact on ranking, and when we do that we miss two important points. First, sharing equals visibility, regardless of what happens on Google. Second, sharing can drive links, and better yet, those links are editorial, or as we call them, "natural".

I shared the initial site and blog post on my main Twitter, Google+, and Facebook accounts. Since this project naturally has a visual aspect (the parody logos), it was well suited to Google+ and Facebook sharing, which tend to benefit from strong visuals.

I've wanted to put some time into Pinterest, so I set up a new folder just for the blog in my existing account, re-organized that account a bit, and then pinned some of the logos from the first post. Again, this project is visual, so Pinterest was a good fit.

My social screw-up

Ironically, I did on Pinterest what I tell everyone not to do on social media. I went to an account I rarely use and just started posting my own content. Since I'm not active, and I'm not sharing anyone else's content most days, guess what happened? That's right – absolutely nothing. A social media account is not a dumping ground for your crap. I failed to participate, and it's going to take time to make up that lost ground. Luckily, I'm more active on other networks, but give-and-take matters quite a bit.

You may be thinking that, because I have a strong existing network, success with a new project on social is guaranteed. I wish it were that easy. A year or so ago, I launched a personal project that soundly flopped. Part of that was in my execution and commitment, but part of it was that the topic was a bit far afield for my existing audience. One of my goals with Minimal Talent was to find a topic that could tie minimalist design into something my existing audience was already interested in – in this case, branding. Be aware how your audiences overlap (or don't).

Monitoring results

It can be hard to wait for results to come in, and patience is not one of my virtues. Luckily, Google gave us real-time analytics. While watching your numbers in real-time is an exercise in vanity most days, it can be very useful on launch day and during other big events. Are your social shares resonating? Which networks (if you stagger them in time) were most effective? Is it worth re-sharing on any particular network? Your real-time numbers can help make these calls.

I'm happy to say that I could actually see the needle move on launch day:

Fourteen active visitors isn't going to make me rich, but it was definitely a start. At least I could tell that my social shares were leading to actual visits.

As the days went by, traffic from my launch and first post showed a pretty normal pattern:

Opening day was solid, with 383 visits, there was a tiny bump a couple of days later, and then little or nothing (the bigger bump on the right is the second post and sharing). This is the reality of most launches – sustainable traffic comes later. For now, you're fighting for traffic post by post. If you expect launch day to be a benchmark of your day-to-day activity, you'll be in for a very rude awakening.

I especially liked Moz Analytics overview of my first week's traffic:

That's right: PLUS INFINITY AND BEYOND!

Finally, I set up Fresh Web Explorer (available to Moz Pro subscribers) – FWE lets you track fresh mentions of your site and keywords. Unfortunately, my brand "Minimal Talent" contains common words, and can trigger false alarms, but FWE also lets you track things like root domains. Here's how I set that up:

You can use the "rd:" operator to find new links to a root domain. On the main FWE screen, just click "Show search operators" to see a full list of options.

It felt good to be finally off the ground, and now I had the tools to start measuring my progress. Next time – how I handled initial SEO problems I discovered and finally started ranking for more interesting terms.

Read the full series

Use the links below to explore the entire "Starting Over" series:

Part 1 – Pre-launch
Part 2 – Launch

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!

Cutting out the noise; reviewing writing tools for the easily distracted

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 12:30 AM PDT

As much as I hate to admit it, I get distracted easily. In fact, in the time that it’s taken me to write these first two sentences, I’ve watched two films, played on the Xbox for 3 hours and have made, and eaten, roughly 12 sandwiches.

In this age of laptops, tablets and phones, it’s never been easier to be distracted. The seemingly endless number of texts, emails and notifications we receive on a daily basis is staggering, and certainly enough to pull our attention away from the task at hand, even if just for a moment at a time.

The reality, is that it can be difficult, if not almost impossible, to switch off. Our phones are glued to our side “just in case”. There is always something going on, some social media platform constantly vying for our attention, some hilarious picture attempting to tear us away from our current job, which, in this case, is writing.

Unfortunately, we can’t all retreat to a secluded cabin overlooking a sleepy beach that borders the clearest, quietest ocean you’ve ever seen when we need to get some writing done. However, what we can do is use some excellent writing tools that have been created with the sole intention of improving our writing through the art of being distraction free.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with a number of these tools and below I’ve presented my findings for you, so don’t go anywhere or give me the “I just need to check my Twitter in case I’ve been tweeted by a celeb” excuse. Stop. It’s not going to happen.

WriteMonkey (Windows)

My first foray into the world of distraction free writing, WriteMonkey still remains a firm favourite for me. Although, unfortunately I can’t use it at home (not Mac compatible, sigh), it is always my weapon of choice when some writing needs doing. A perfect combination of simplicity and customisation makes WriteMonkey a must for any writer, even for those of you who have mastered focus.

WriteMonkey

What I like about WriteMonkey is that it can be as simple as you want it to be. Want to open it up and just start writing? You can do that. Want to change the background colour, font, and make it sound like an old-fashioned typewriter every time you press a key? You can do that too.

On the surface, WriteMonkey is a great, distraction-free writing tool, one that upon opening presents you with nothing more than a page to write on. But with a bit of exploring, you’ll quickly realise that WriteMonkey integrates a number of features that not only help you to focus, but help your writing process in general.

So what can you do with it? Besides write fantastic copy, you can display your progress and set yourself writing goals based on time and number of words. You can write with mark-up language, set columns widths and line spacing, you can even dim the screen so you can see the screen behind WriteMonkey. Snazzy.

The most important part is that, while WriteMonkey implements a plethora of features, you’re never distracted by them. In fact, they even help. By presenting you with the ability to customise your writing environment, you can make it as relaxing and helpful as you want, thus helping you focus on the task at hand.

Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

WriteDown (Mac)

Unable to run WriteMonkey at home, I was forced to look elsewhere for a writing tool. After 20 minutes of exploring the App store and munching 3 sandwiches, I stumbled upon WriteDown. A ‘minimalistic text-editor for distraction free writing’, WriteDown looked perfect and I somewhat hesitantly (it had 0 reviews or ratings) paid the £1.49 asking price. Fortunately, I was well rewarded.

WriteDown

My now tool of choice for distraction free writing at home, WriteDown is incredibly easy and as simple as you could want. While it borders close to a level of simple I might have considered not paying for, it was a reasonable price and I like the design. So what do you get for your £1.49?

WriteDown has four simple features. You can change the font, the theme (black or white), and the width of your page – narrow, normal and wide. While this might not sound like much, this is all you really need. It’s enough customisation to allow you to make it look like you’d like it to but not so much that to confuse you.

The fourth feature, and one that attracted me as a trainee SEO and new pupil of coding, allows you to style your writing with mark-up language, then view it instantly within WriteDown. This is great for improving your skills with mark-up language and is extremely simple (See image).

There’s not much else to say really, it’s simple, it’s cheap, and most importantly, it’s distraction free!

Ommwriter (Windows/Mac)

Light up an incense stick and dim the lights, it’s time to use Ommwriter. Delivering a writing experience like no other, the aptly named Ommwriter (Omm, get it?) is guaranteed to keep you focused on the task at hand. Why? Well it won’t let you do anything else.

Ommwriter

So what does it offer?

You’ll find no preferences or settings tabs for Ommwriter, everything you need is easily selectable on the page upon opening. When you start it up, you’ll immediately notice two things.

Firstly you’ll notice the bright background which is one of three available; a snowy field, plain white, and metallic grey, all of which are easily selectable within the side menu. The background images are nice enough, although a few more options might have been nice, especially an option for a plain black background.

Secondly, you’ll notice the background music. Again, a choice of three is available, ranging from high and medium pitched bells, to deep, low-pitched bells. While these songs are relaxing, the option to listen to your own music would be nice. Fortunately, the integrated songs aren’t catchy and you won’t find yourself humming along to them; you can turn them off easily if you want to.

Other customisations that Ommwriter features are the ability to change your font (from a small range), alter the font size, and select whether you want to hear a noise when a key is pressed.

While Ommwriter is a great experience and offers a completely unique way of writing, at times it feels like it’s trying so hard to put you into this Zen state, that it’s actually quite distracting. It’s obvious a lot of work has gone in to making this software a real experience, but for many people it’s likely not what they want; the very features that are meant to prevent distraction end up distracting you.

For example, at the bottom of the page is a word count, very handy. Unfortunately, once you start writing it fades like everything else, and the only way to see it again, is to move your cursor. What's more, you can't use a second screen, Ommwriter does not allow it. While this is sure to keep you from being distracted, when it comes to writing I usually need a second screen for research. The option to include or exclude a second screen would definitely be an added bonus.

While it left me longing for my own music and a second screen, Ommwriter certainly didn’t leave me longing for my £2.99 back. Though it has its flaws, it’s a fantastic experience and one that every writer should at least try. Besides, it’s the closest you’re going to get to that cabin by the beach.

–

One day in the future maybe, just maybe, we will all have access to our own personal holo-deck, where we can sit at a desk on the moon and stare down at the world and get our best writing done. But for now, we have some great tools to aid us in ridding ourselves of those pesky distractions and getting down to business. Go forth, try these out, search for your own, find the one that helps you shut yourself off from the world even for just 10 minutes, and start writing.

–

Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear about any writing tools that you use in the comments below, as I’m always on the lookout for new ways of getting my writing done! Also, if you have a holo-deck, please get in contact right away.

Featured image credit: “Distraction” by Stefano Corso

The post Cutting out the noise; reviewing writing tools for the easily distracted appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : Does corporate trust have to be an oxymoron?

Does corporate trust have to be an oxymoron?

Brands are based on trust. Corporations extract enormous value from the relationships they have with suppliers, employees, partners and customers. Yes, it's possible to trust a corporation, we do it all the time. But it's not free.

The two key choices a brand makes to be trusted in the long run:

1. You will postpone profit-taking. There are always shortcuts available to you, always ways to make money sooner rather than later, plenty of chances to do a little less or charge a little more.

2. You will do things that are difficult. We know it’s not easy or convenient for you to keep every promise, especially the little ones. That it’s expensive or a hassle or emotionally risky for you to extend yourself and your brand, but that’s where the trust is earned.

And so, when people on your team say things like, “due to unusually heavy call volume,” “we sold your data, the fine print in our terms and conditions says we can,” “I’m sorry, but my hands are tied,” “Well, because you complained, just this one time I’ll have our executive response team get involved, but don’t ask us to do it again,” “It doesn’t matter what the contract says, this is all we can do,” “I know Bob told you that, but he doesn’t work here anymore,” “Sure, we used to do that, but too many people took advantage of us and we can’t do it for you,” or, most common of all, silence, then yes, we trust you less. That's because we really prefer to trust people, and when people act to deny their humanity, we trust them less.

It’s easy to seduce yourself into believing that you can be trusted at the same time you take short-term profits and cut corners when it suits you. Alas, that’s not going to happen.

Trust is expensive and trust is worth it.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 21 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Inane Step in Wrong Direction: Germany Plans to Lower Retirement Age for Some Workers From 65 to 63

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 06:10 PM PDT

With people living longer and longer, and with Germany forcing higher retirement ages on Greece and Spain, lowering the retirement age in Germany for any set of workers makes no sense whatsoever. Yet, that is exactly what's slated to happen.

Wrong Signal

The Financial Times reports Germany Attacked Over Plan to Cut Retirement Age.

Speaking to national paper Die Welt, Günther Oettinger, German EU commissioner, said that Germany's plans to allow longer-serving employees to retire at the age of 63 sent the "wrong signal" at a time when countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are struggling to introduce tough labour market reforms.

"We expect Greeks to work longer for less pay," said Mr Oettinger. "They are now wondering that Germany is going in the other direction."

Warning that the eurozone's largest economy faces a skills shortage, the EU energy commissioner said that politicians should start to talk instead about a retirement age of 70 and help equip people with professional training for a longer working life.

Greece and Spain have agreed to raise their retirement age from 65 to 67, while Portugal recently pushed its retirement age up to 66.

Under draft laws set to come into effect in July, people who have worked at least 45 years since the age of 18 will be allowed to retire at 63 with a full state pension. The official age of retirement in Germany is in the process of being raised from 65 to 67.

Economists at Deutsche Bank estimate the total cost of the coalition's pension reforms will total €230bn by 2030 and have warned that the burden of paying for people in retirement will fall on the country's younger generation.

Demographically Speaking

From a demographic standpoint, with fewer and fewer workers supporting retirees whose lifespan and medical costs continually rise, the change is as puzzling as it is ludicrous.

Note:

Some people reported the Greenwald interview Youtube link in a previous post "was taken down". I am not sure why but I found a replacement: Greenwald Interview:

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Chinese Court Seizes Japanese Ship to Settle WWII Dispute

Posted: 21 Apr 2014 10:37 AM PDT

Tensions between China and Japan escalated once again, this time over a grudge dating back to WWII.

The Financial Times reports Japanese Ship Seized in WWII Claims Dispute.

A Chinese court has seized a Japanese cargo ship over legal claims related to the second world war as escalating tensions between the two countries spill into the realm of commerce.

Japan was quick to denounce the confiscation of the vessel, warning it could have a "chilling effect on all Japanese companies doing business in China". It is the first time a Chinese court has ordered the seizure of Japanese assets in relation to second world war.

The incident underlines strained relations between China and Japan, who have recently sparred over a string of disputed islands that some analysts say is the most dangerous faultline in Asia. Extensive economic ties between the two countries have so far served to stabilise the relationship.

The Shanghai Maritime Court seized the Baosteel Emotion at a port near Shanghai at the weekend, it said on its website. The ship belongs to Japanese conglomerate Mitsui OSK Lines and had been ferrying Australian iron ore to China's flagship steel mill Baosteel.

Japan has consistently argued that the peace treaties it signed after the war exempt it from having to pay compensation to individuals or companies in former enemy countries. But China and South Korea, which nurse the strongest resentment over Japan's often brutal imperial expansion, counter that the agreements only cover government-to-government reparations, leaving private groups free to sue for damages.

Still, for many years China discouraged any claims by its citizens against Japan, whether for forced labour, sexual slavery or asset seizures. Former premier Zhou Enlai explicitly rejected the prospect of any Chinese wartime claims, in return for assurances of Japanese development aid and investment. As a result, Chinese activists have had to pursue claims in Japanese courts.

"Overall China is dissatisfied with Japan, so a lot of matters have re-emerged," said Shen Dingli, an expert in Northeast Asian geopolitics at Fudan University in Shanghai. "In the past they might have discouraged suits like this but now they don't stand in the way."

Last year, South Korean courts ruled against Japanese corporations in two landmark cases involving Koreans forced into labour for the Japanese war effort.

Trade wars, currency wars, and beggar-thy-neighbor tactics are hallmarks of deflationary times. When the global economy is good and jobs plentiful, age-old disputes like these seldom surface.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

marți, 22 aprilie 2014

Protecting our planet

The President's Trip to Asia

Starting Over, Part 2: Launch

Starting Over, Part 2: Launch

Goods news and bad news

Alerting the bots

Link chickens & Search eggs

Alerting the humans

My social screw-up

Monitoring results

Read the full series

Cutting out the noise; reviewing writing tools for the easily distracted

Cutting out the noise; reviewing writing tools for the easily distracted

WriteMonkey (Windows)

WriteDown (Mac)

Ommwriter (Windows/Mac)

Seth's Blog : Does corporate trust have to be an oxymoron?

Does corporate trust have to be an oxymoron?

More Recent Articles

luni, 21 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

marți, 22 aprilie 2014

Goods news and bad news

Alerting the bots

Link chickens & Search eggs

Alerting the humans

My social screw-up

Monitoring results

Read the full series

luni, 21 aprilie 2014

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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