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miercuri, 24 august 2011

Damn Cool Pics

P-Tree Urinals at Roskilde Festival 2011
Homemade Chewbacca Suit
How Companies Are Using Social Media To Hire & Fire Employees [Infographics]
QWOP: The Movie
25 Ways To Tell You’re A Kid Of The ‘90s
Giant Coin Makes Stuff Look Tiny In Tilt-Shift Photos
The Daily Diet Of The Woman Who Hopes To Be The Fattest Person in World

P-Tree Urinals at Roskilde Festival 2011

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 02:23 PM PDT

The P-Trees were a great success at the Roskilde Festival 2011 in Denmark, with more than 100,000 visitors and many of them using the P-TREE more than once. For Roskilde Aandeboom produced 50 P-Trees in the typical Roskilde Orange color. The P-Trees were placed on 2 different spots near the main stage. By using the P-Tree the festivals problem with public peeing was significant reduced. The P-Tree can be hooked up to a central sewage system or connected to a tank with a pump.

Source: dezeen

Homemade Chewbacca Suit

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 01:31 PM PDT

Most Star Wars fans would be happy with a store-bought, plastic Chewbacca costume, but not this person. This homemade suit comes complete with boots, faux fur, and more. This is a step by step guide on how to make your own Chewbacca suit at home.

How Companies Are Using Social Media To Hire & Fire Employees [Infographics]

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 01:19 PM PDT

Ever wonder how companies are using your social media profile to screen their employees? We've found the answers. This infographic done with Mindflash, will teach you just how companies are finding out everything they need to know about you through social media, and how you can ensure that you never get hired.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: mindflash

QWOP: The Movie

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 09:48 PM PDT

Remember QWOP? The flash game that was driving everyone on the Internet crazy last December? He's come to life.

The guys over at The Busted Pixel were brave enough to imagine what that little unbalanced man would look like if tried his hand at a real life track meet, and it turns out he's still not talented.

25 Ways To Tell You’re A Kid Of The ‘90s

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 09:29 PM PDT

Let's face it, nothing beats the '90s! And just because you were born a decade or so ago, doesn't mean you embraced all of its perks. Here's a list of what you absolutely must remember to consider yourself a '90s kid.

Source: buzzfeed

Giant Coin Makes Stuff Look Tiny In Tilt-Shift Photos

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 09:28 PM PDT

Norwegian design studio Skrekkøgle — the one that printed a photo with a cremated dog — has a creative project called "Big Money" in which they made a giant 20:1 replica of a 50 cent Euro coin. They then placed the coin next to large objects and photographed them together, making the objects look like tiny toy replicas.

Finally, here's a photo showing how big the coin actually is:

Source: petapixel

The Daily Diet Of The Woman Who Hopes To Be The Fattest Person in World

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 08:55 PM PDT

Susanne Eman of Casa Grande, Arizona—currently weighing in at 720 pounds—hopes to become the fattest woman of all time and surpass the standing record of 1,600 pounds. Here is what she eats every day to try and shatter that record. It's a 21,962 calorie menu of sadness. Why is she doing this? Because she's considered hot by the SSBBW (Super-Size Big Beautiful Woman) community.

Image Source: Barcroft Media

Image Source: Barcroft Media

Breakfast
6 Scrambled Eggs Cooked In Butter=468 cal.

Half Pound Of Bacon=1,168 cal.

4 Hash Browned Potatoes=672 cals.

6 Pieces Of Buttered Toast=600 cals.

Ice Cream Shake=1,160 cals.

Bag Of Animal Crackers=1,950 cals.

2-Liter Of Soda=800 cals.

Bag Of Barbeque Chips=1,650 cals.

3 Ham And Cheese Sandwiches=1,576 cals.

LUNCH
3 Beef, Bean And Green Chili Burritos With Sour Cream=1,453 cals.

Salad With Bacon, Cheese And Chicken=1,479 cals.

DINNER
12 Tacos=4,906 cals.

2-Liter Of Soda=800 cals.

8 Scoops Of Ice Cream=2,080 cals.

Pan Of Brownies=1,200 cals.

A GRAND TOTAL OF 21,962 CALORIES
Source: dailymail

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Content Marketing for the Talent-Impaired

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 12:27 PM PDT

Posted by Dr. Pete

There’s a reason people balk at content marketing – it’s hard. Not only do we have to be marketers, but now we’re supposed to be subject-matter experts, writers, and designers? Sure, we can hire it out, and sometimes we should, but there’s something to be said for crafting a piece of content entirely on your own. It’s not just ego – it’s your vision and only you really understand what you want in the finished product.

For me, the gap is often in the design and illustration. I’m assuming you’re a subject-matter expert in something and can write about it competently (it’s ok if you’re not a poet). If you’re like me, and your expectations are bigger than your talents, I’d like to offer a few shortcuts I’ve learned for designing your own content.

1. Liven Up Text

It’s amazing what you can do with a few words and a splash of color. For example, I started a recent post by writing out how much money Google made last year:

With just one font and strategic use of color, I was able to not only emphasize that $29B is a lot of money, but I tied it to Google’s identity. Best of all, it only took a few minutes.

I have to come clean and admit that I learned this trick (a couple of these tricks, actually) from Rand. Here’s another example, from his recent post on the responsibilities of a modern SEO:

The image looks great, and it really livened up Rand’s post, but what is it, really? It’s just well-placed text with a splash of color. I’m not picking on Rand – my point is that these small touches can make a huge difference.

2. Keep It Simple

Even if you go beyond text, you don’t have to be an artist to create a simple illustration that effectively communicates an idea. Justin Briggs had a great post here recently on how Google might detect spam, and it included images like this one:

Practically speaking, it’s just some circles and arrows, but these images really helped illustrate the complex ideas in Justin’s post. It wasn’t the complexity of the design that mattered, but the depth of the ideas behind the design.

Let’s pick on Rand again. Here’s an image he did for a recent post on inbound marketing:

I’ll let you in on a little secret – boxes and arrows are one of Rand’s favorite tricks. It’s hard to argue, because this image is a lot more compelling than a bulleted list. I hope you’re also seeing a pattern here – it’s the quality of the thought behind the image that really matters.

I admit that I’m trying to keep this post to mostly SEOmoz examples – not to pat ourselves on the back, but to show that we practice what I’m preaching. Here’s an outside example I really like, though, a Minimalist Muppet poster created by Eric Slager:

Obviously, this one is a bit more complex than my previous examples, but the actual design elements are pretty simple. The concept is genius, but the graphic itself really is minimalist. The minimalist meme has been going around – here’s another example with superhero posters (via ScreenRant.com):

My minimalist Roger Mozbot illustration should make a bit more sense now. The moral of this story: you can do a lot with some basic skills, if the core concept is strong enough. Clearly, this is the work of talented designers, but you don’t have to be an Adobe Illustrator guru to create something similar. You just have to start with great ideas.

3. Plagiarize Yourself

It’s not stealing if you take your own stuff – good content creators learn when and how to re-use their own content. That doesn’t necessarily mean using the same image over and over (although there are times when even that can be very effective). It means learning how to re-use elements of your own illustrations, sometimes even within the same post. Recently, I did a post on marketing ethics, and I illustrated the post with whiteboard-style drawings like this one:

It won’t hang in a museum anytime soon, but I think the series of illustrations helped simplify a difficult topic. If you look at the 5 illustrations, you’ll see each of them have some variation on the same 5 elements:

You don’t have to be a connoisseur of the fine arts to realize that element #2 is just the same guy with a bowtie and element #5 is the blue car “painted” red. Take away the brick wall in the 1st image and the gray box, and I essentially created 5 illustrations with 3 main elements.

Last year, Rand did a great piece illustrating indexation issues. Some of the illustrations were pretty complex, like this one:

Before the days of Roger Mozbot (or, as we call it, the Time of Despair), Rand used to frequently create illustrations that were essentially Googlebot + Page icons + Arrows + Text. Again, I’m not picking on him – the finished products were great. Break them down, though (and pay attention over years of content), and you’ll see that Rand was re-using a lot of work he’d already done. That’s one of the reasons he can pound out an amazing blog post between 2-4am on a trans-Atlantic flight.

Re-use starts with being a curator of your own content. Eventually, you may even build some custom illustration libraries. Here’s an example – back in 2008, I wrote an e-book on CRO that started with an illustrated guide to conversion metrics. It included images like this one:

If you read my recent post on duplicate content and Panda, this may seem oddly familiar. That post used a number of similar web-page images, including:

In that post, I easily converted this basic template into 8 different illustrations. Condensed, those illustrations look something like this:

I don’t want to beat you to death with this point, but I think it’s often easy to miss how elements can build on each other. This kind of approach not only saves time, but it gives your content a consistent look and feel and can make your work look more professional.

You can also see how easy it would be to split these web-page templates into a basic library of layers (I actually have multiple Photoshop files, but the core concept is the same):

As you develop these design libraries over time, especially with an image as flexible as a basic web-page, you find more and more creative ways to use them. Best of all, the quality of your illustrations improves even as they take less time to create. You may even find yourself earning a reputation for your distinctive talent-impaired style.

So, Get to Work

Stop saying you’re “not a designer” and design something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be based on a good idea. Over time, you’ll get better, even if you can only put in 10-15 minutes a day. If you find yourself staring at the computer screen for an hour, pick a new medium. A few months ago, I got up, walked to Office Depot, and bought a box of Crayola markers. It was one of the best creative decisions I’ve made in a long time. Whatever it takes, get started.

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How to Choose Keywords for Your Blog Graywolf's SEO Blog

How to Choose Keywords for Your Blog

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 10:04 AM PDT

How to choose keywords for your blog? If you’ve ever seen me at a conference, giving a presentation, or ranting on any of the social media hangouts, chances are good that you’ve heard me pick on bloggers for not choosing their keywords properly when writing their posts. In this article, I’ll explain what I see as the real problem, why it persists, and what you can do to fix it.

You need to understand that you can’t have flowery, creative language and be keyword focused. The two are mutually exclusive goals…

IMHO bloggers who fancy themselves as writers are their own worst enemies. Maybe they think they are modern day novelists or maybe they think they will eventually turn their blogs into books by pulling a miraculous Julia & Julia move. Whatever the reason, they think of their words on the blog as a lovingly crafted piece of artwork instead of as a tool designed to do a job and do it well. When they sit down to write something, they strive to make it as interesting and noteworthy as possible. Keyword focus, using common language, and being easy to read and comprehend are lesser goals, if they are even considered at all.

As a case in point, consider this recent article from the Lonely Planet: Rio de Janeiro on a shoestring

Rio de Janeiro on a Shoestring

Even if you have a only a cursory knowledge of the travel space, chances are good that Lonely Planet is a brand name you recognize. If you take the time to read the article, you will see it has useful information. So where’s the problem? We need to discuss how someone discovers that the document exists.

If you are someone who enjoys reading travel blogs, you will come across this article and read it. If visiting Rio is on your bucket list, you might even bookmark it or send it to a friend. However, people who are searching for information on “how to plan a trip to Rio de Janeiro” or “how to save money on a trip to Rio de Janeiro” are unlikely to ever come across this article. Why? Because the author chose to go with a clever title instead of one with common language or keyword search volume. As humans, we can make the leap from ” shoestring” to “cheap” or “budget,” but the search algorithms can’t do it yet.

This is the point where bloggers moan and throw up their hands in disgust at the mere idea of being so pedestrian as to dumb down their artful language for the great unwashed masses, the common folk–or, worse yet, having to write for machine or search engine algorithm. If you are writing for yourself or for enjoyment, go ahead write about whatever you want and use what ever language and title you like. But if you want to make blogging an income source, yes, you will have to write using common language and for machines and search engines. Many many moons ago, Andy Hagans taught me a lesson: the value and monetization of your blog comes from your archives. Not all your posts will be winners but, when you’ve done your homework, found the right keywords, and kept the post interesting, you are sitting on the goose that laid the golden egg (in other words, passive income from an ATM machine) for years to come. If you’re willing to swallow your pride, put your ego in check, and write using keywords that people are searching for, your blog could become your car payment, mortgage payment, kid’s college fund, retirement fund, or even the key to a bathrobe lifestyle at your very own beach house.

So let’s talk about how to go from your flowery, poetic prose to getting posts that rank, drive traffic, and make money. You need to understand that you can’t have flowery, creative language and be keyword focused. The two are mutually exclusive goals. You can, however, be interesting, useable, and have a keyword focused post if you’re willing to try. First, sit down and write the post you want. Get it to the point where you are happy with it. Bask in its artistic glow. Then reach for the battle axe and get ready to hack it apart. Hopefully your post has a key concept that people are looking for and you just obfuscated it from search engines with artsy prose. Here’s an example:

Your title:
My weekend visit to Sin City for less than 50 sheckels

Now compare it to these with greater keyword focus:
How to Plan a Weekend in Las Vegas for less than 50 dollars
How to Plan a Cheap Vacation to Las Vegas for under $50

If you think someone will go to Google and type in “visit sin city for less than 50 scheckles” or something equally obscure and witty, close the laptop and step away from the keyboard. There’s nothing I can do to help you. However, if you agree that my suggested titles are much more likely to match terms users will actually type into a search engine, read on.

Sometimes you give up a little focus for text that reads better and makes more sense. But I said sometimes, not all the time…

There are lots of tools to help you do keyword research like Google Adwords Tool, Wordstream, Wordtracker, SEMRush, and many others. Some are free, some are paid. Unless you happen to use a really crappy free one with data from Lycos and Hotbot, it’s pretty hard to completely screw this step up. Will the paid tools give you better data? Probably, but we need to start somewhere, and the goal of this post is to get you thinking about choosing keywords as a first step, not fine tuning for maximum value.

Once you have the keyword(s) concept, go back and start hacking up your original post, editing it for emphasis without making it sound too awkward. Striving for keyword focus is a bit art and science. Sometimes you give up a little focus for text that reads better and makes more sense. But I said sometimes, not all the time. You can use lots of tools to do this. My favorite is Scribe. Let’s get all the cards on the table: Scribe is a paid product (see my Scribe review) and, if you sign up from my link, I get a commission. That said, it’s a product I’ve been using for over a year. By helping me focus the keywords in my posts, I have made more money–far more money than it costs to use.

I use it much more heavily on my commercial blogs and as not as much here because my audience here is more well-established. However, sometimes I want that archive traffic to generate income, so I’ll turn it on. For example, when I wrote a post on how to get more followers for Twitter, Scribe showed the focus was on the term “follower raid,”, not “how to get more followers.” I had become my own worst enemy. I got attached to the jargon in my head. The phrase “follower raid” had that black hat barbarian appeal that resonated with me. However, I swallowed my pride, did the research, realized the core concept people were most likely to be searching for was “how to get more followers on Twitter,” and off I went. Using Scribe, I was able to get the keywordd focus where I wanted it without sacrificing too much of the post.

Scribe Keyword Focuse

Is the post as interesting as some of the other posts on Twitter about getting more Twitter followers? Probably not, but it is easier to understand and (more importantly) absolutely ranks, drives traffic, and makes income via adsense. The key lesson here is that, unless you were born rich, we all have to make artistic compromises to make our products commercially viable. Call it selling out, call it buying in–I call it putting a roof over my family’s head and food on the table. The question that you need to ask is whether choosing a title like “Rio de Janerio on a shoestring” and being artistic is more important and satisfying than compromising, being a common man, and going with “how to plan a cheap vacation to Rio de Janiero,” which will draw dramatically more income. Only you can make that choice.

If you are on a limited budget, go ahead and use free tools for choosing keywords and analyzing your posts. For me, the ability to do that work in WordPress without opening 2-3 tabs and bouncing back and forth is worth it, especially over multiple blogs, where the time saved is compounded.

To be clear, I am a paying customer of Scribe. I don’t get it free or comped. But I can justify the expense: it is more than paying for itself every month. If you would like to give Scribe a try and see how it works for you, you’ve got nothing to lose. They offer a 30 day free trial. So what are you waiting for? Get started today. I bet you’ll be making more money and less shekels …

photo credit: Photospin

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

How to Choose Keywords for Your Blog

Presidential Pets Photo Gallery: Puppies, cats, ponies and raccoons?

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Photo Gallery: Pets in the White House

Check out our photo gallery to learn more about the pets who have called 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home over the years. You'll also find a bonus gallery featuring Bo, the current resident of the White House dog house.

Seth's Blog : Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Zuckerberg

"Mark Zuckerberg" has become a codeword for the truly gifted exception, the wunderkind freak of nature for whom traditional rules don't apply.

Well, sure, Mark Zuckerberg can drop out of Harvard, but you're not Mark Zuckerberg...

Here's the thing: Even Mark isn't Mark Zuckerberg.

This notion that there's a one in a billion alignment of DNA and experience that magically creates an exception is just total nonsense. Mark is successful because of a million small choices, not because he, and he alone, has some magical properties.

Mostly, the best way to be the next Mark Zuckerberg is to make difficult choices.

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 24 august 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

1. Liven Up Text

2. Keep It Simple

3. Plagiarize Yourself

So, Get to Work

How to Choose Keywords for Your Blog Graywolf's SEO Blog

How to Choose Keywords for Your Blog Graywolf's SEO Blog

Related posts:

Advertisers:

Presidential Pets Photo Gallery: Puppies, cats, ponies and raccoons?

Seth's Blog : Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Zuckerberg

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miercuri, 24 august 2011

1. Liven Up Text

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