Damn Cool Pics

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• Surging tide of Qiantang River, China
• New York: Ten Years After 9/11
• Former Chinese Farmer Builds Homemade Flying Saucer
• Portal: No Escape, A Live Action Short Film Based on Portal
• Skype Office in Stockholm

Surging tide of Qiantang River, China Posted: 01 Sep 2011 11:58 AM PDT The Qiantang river, running from the west to the Hangzhou Bay, is known for its tidal bore, caused by the tide rushing into the river from the bay. The tide bore generally travels up more than 10 meters high. It is very dangerous but also creates the marvelous spectacle! Annually, lots of people from both home and abroad are attracted there to watch this natural wonder, and in Hangzhou, citizens living aroud the Qiantang River hold various activities to celebrate the International Tide Watching Festival, which opens August 16 in the Chinese Lunar Calendar every year. In these days, the typhoon hit Southeast China, and TV stations flocked there to shoot the natural wonder. At 1 pm August 30, 2011, a female reporter and photographer from Hangzhou Satellite TV Station were almost washed away by the surging tide, even though they were at the security center for tide-watching. Check out the photos.

New York: Ten Years After 9/11 Posted: 01 Sep 2011 11:35 AM PDT USA will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 events. Let's compare the photos taken back then and today.

Former Chinese Farmer Builds Homemade Flying Saucer Posted: 01 Sep 2011 10:41 AM PDT A former Chinese farmer with little formal schooling who later worked as an automobile mechanic has designed and built at least one ultralight that briefly flew (before crashing) -- he has now moved on to a flying saucer. Shu Mansheng's project is a structure powered by eight motorcycle engines mounted vertically. They drive individual fixed-pitch wooden propellers. The engines are arranged in an inner and outer group of four engines each. An open cockpit located in the center is mounted above spokes that both support the engines and extend to an outer circular ring. Supporters will be hoping for a more positive outcome than the innovator's last attempt. Shu Mansheng built his first aircraft in October 2010. It was saved by an inadequate powerplant that failed to lift it off the ground. A second effort was aborted when the innovator determined it would be too heavy to fly. This April Shu built another aircraft in a span of about 15 days. He managed to fly that one over approximately 30 meters at an altitude less than seven meters above the ground before he crashed. Shu Mansheng has been able to focus on his aviation exploits after some advances in his career led him to a financial windfall. He retired from his day job and now works full-time on his aviation adventures. His latest scheme has consumed the equivalent of nearly $10,000. His dream is to create a school "where kids can learn things not taught in regular school," he told WorldTourist.com. Mansheng (in red) tests the engines of his flying device ahead of his first test flight. The round steel flying device, which cost more than 20,000 yuan, was the fifth model made by Shu, a junior middle school graduate. It measures up to 5.5 meters in diameter, and is powered by eight motorcycle engines. (Jason Lee / Reuters)

Portal: No Escape, A Live Action Short Film Based on Portal Posted: 31 Aug 2011 07:51 PM PDT "Portal: No Escape" is a beautiful live-action short film based on the game Portal starring Danielle Rayne as Chell. It was directed by Dan Trachtenberg, with visual effects by Jon Chesson and matte painting by Maxx Burman.

Skype Office in Stockholm Posted: 31 Aug 2011 07:09 PM PDT The newly Skype office was designed by Swedish architecture & design firm PS Arkitektur. This cool cheery-cherry-berry office (wow! that was a tongue twister) is located inside of an old brewery (Münchenbrewery) in Stockholm, Sweden The office design is based on the spirit of Skype, how it is a useful and playful tool that connects the world. The in-between shapes of interconnected nodes has given us romboid and triangular shapes that is visible in the flooring and in the design of some of the hard furniture. The playful happy theme in colours and soft furniture comes from the Skype graphics and the Skype cloud logo is reinterpreted as cloud-shaped lighting throughout the office space. The Stockholm office predominately works with audio and video development and this is manifested in the special made wallpapers with cables, earphones and other devices linked to audio-video technique. Photographs by Jason Strong Source: archdaily

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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

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Why Your Linkbait Fails and How to Fix It Posted: 01 Sep 2011 04:00 AM PDT Posted by Fryed7 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. Howdy Mozzers, I've been spending a couple of weeks this summer in the Distilled office looking at the way they do linkbait in order to write up a guide on it. Whilst researching and reading around what people had posted before, it became clear there were a handful of problems which kept cropping up why people were failing at linkbait. In this post, I hope to address some of the biggest headaches SEOs had. We've Had Very Limited Success 1. No Outreach Plan Don't wait until you've hit publish to start thinking about outreach. Like a marketing campaign in itself, you wouldn't build prototypes, injection-moulding systems and have a container load of widgets shipped across from China before you've spoken to and got reassurance from your customers well in advance that they'd love to buy it; ideally with pre-orders. The same applies to linkbait. You want to reach out to at least some of the linkerati beforehand and get your "guaranteed five links" before you even start your piece of linkbait. The good news is if lots of people are interested from the beginning and think it's a good concept, other people will probably like it and link to it later on too. I interviewed some of the London Distilled SEO and PR team on their tips for effective outreach. Here's a sneak peak: If you've already launched, Wiep Knol has some excellent tips for breathing life back into your linkbait here. 2. Your Concept Sucks Tough love, but if your concept doesn't keep your linkerati wide awake at night buzzing about what you've just created (or have told them you're going to create) then your concept needs some improvement. Even in the most boring industries this is possible - harder perhaps, but possible. Find out the motives for the linkerati being online; is it their job? Their hobby? Something they're expert in? Perhaps offer to interview them to build up a relationship to post on your website in advance to figure out what they're really passionate about - this will help with refining a pitch to them, even better when it's a warm lead. 3. You're Not Working Hard Enough It's simple enough. You haven't worked hard enough. Now there may be some genuinely good reasons for that - family bereavement, hospitalization or some other horror - but most of the time it's down the lack of effective work. You probably need a to hire a link building trainer... … or get on a diet of productivity tips from the99percent pronto! It's probably rooted in the fact that you're not excited enough. You haven't got a team around you grinning as you show them the latest update or the graphics back from the designer. You haven't got a clear purpose why you're creating a piece of linkbait. It'll help to identify why your creating this linkbait and what it means to people involved - that can be motivating. My Linkbait Gets Copied by Competitors 1. You've Got Nothing or Little Unique You don't have or you're not using something that's unique and can't be copied. Use proprietry data, your own contacts or something else which competitors don't have and can't acquire easily. It's only a really big problem if it's cannibalizing your links and preventing you from reaching future link targets. If it isn't though, don't fret too much - use it as a link prospecting tool though for future. 2. You're Not Thinking Creatively Don't forget, you can still play the "first mover advantage" game if your kind of linkbait can be replicated fairly easily. That includes mashing up different linkbait tactics and hooks; perhaps an infographic linking back to an interactive tool. Try to maintain at least two different assets which are unique to you - that way you've got enough of a one-up over your competitors. We Haven't Got the Resources This one sounds plausible, but I still don't buy it for a second. Bootstrapped linkbait is harder yes, but still possible. You've just got to be more choosy in picking tactics and hooks to get links; there are some easy wins on a budget: 1. Design If you've got a designer, or a designer friend or someone who's good but not ridiculously expensive. Designers expect money in exchange for work. That's the way it works, even if you are on a wafer-thin budget. Look at crowdsourcing designs perhaps via 99designs or looking at the people using Fiverr for cheaper designers, at least to get in touch with them. 2. How-to Tutorials You can't always outspend your competition, but you can out-teach them. Think of all the countless books on learning to program, and then Y Combinator startup Codecademy comes along - I can't wait to see what else they've got in store, but it's a fantastic, interactive how-to tutorial. 3. Interviews Provided you can put together some riveting questions and pitch an interview in a way that doesn't tie up all their time. Wil Reynold's Pro Tip: Call them up with Google Voice [US only. Grrr...] during their commute or other "dead time", record your call and get it transcribed. A good time to grab top end interviewees is when they're just about to launch a book. Hat tip to Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com for that one - when you're in a self-promotional mood, an interview opportunity is hard to turn down. 4. User-generated linkbait Perhaps you've got a small email list, blog or twitter following you could work with to brainstorm and create effective linkbait? One of my favourite tactics is to sound out a forum, put together a skeleton outline of what the article or guide might look like in Writeboard, then let the community edit it. If you establish yourself in the community first - be human and sincere like you would be face-to-face, not a self-promotional a-hole! - then it can be a incredibly effective way to crowdsource expert content. I've even had my spelling mistakes corrected for me :) Make sure to cite your contributors however; always be sincere. It's All Overwhelming and Chaotic. I can't cope with it. You've got no effective process. Try and map out the big picture of what needs to happen where before you start. With that all mapped out (maybe even as a printed chart on the wall), you can work on the very next step. By forcing yourself to jump over little hoops and checkpoints regularly your far more likely to produce effective linkbait.   There's plenty more tips and ideas like this in the linkbait guide, as well as a chance to get your questions answered in our Q&A Linkbait Webinar where two Distilled SEO Consultants will be answering your questions. What's been your experience creating linkbait? An exhausting path of misery or a thrilling success story? Do you like this post? Yes No

4 Tips for Creating Link Bait Posted: 31 Aug 2011 03:18 PM PDT Posted by Geoff Kenyon While link bait is frequently seen as more "fun", and it's definitely more creative, than doing things like guest blogging or emailing people asking for links, it has its challenges. I wanted to share a few things I've learned about creating link bait from my experiences. If you have other insights, I'd love to hear them in the comments.   Keep a Tight Scope In most cases you will want to keep your content extremely focused around your target, or the person that you are going to get to link to you (Justin wrote more about this process here). While it’s tempting to try and cast as wide of a net possible, typically you will be more successful focusing on targeting one or two targets (and shaping the content around these demographics) rather than trying to create content that targets everyone.   While this is really important for a lot of link bait content, there will obviously be exceptions to this rule. A couple examples come to mind (if you can think of others, feel free to leave a note in the comments):   If your content or subject really is universally applicable – While this is very rare, there is some content topics that apply to almost everyone on the web. A good example of this would be Facebook; just about everyone on the internet has a Facebook account and has an interest in changes (especially when it involves privacy settings). Creating exhaustive guides – Super in-depth and extensive guides and documents can receive a lot of links if they are done really well. Think about how many links SEOmoz’s Beginners Guide has received. Keep the scope tight especially with revisions and additions. When you want to add in more content to make it better, or the client wants additions, you need to ask: “Will adding X improve the linkability of the link bait”? Offer Something New There are two aspects of this: perspective and information.   Perspective The internet is huge; sometimes it feels like everything has already been written about. Fortunately people tend to write the same thing. If you want to write about a topic that has already been written about a lot, come at it from a different angle. If everyone is writing about why something sucks, write about why it’s awesome. And don’t just say it’s awesome, back it up and make a case for why it’s awesome.   Information Though it seems like just about everything has been written about think about what you can contribute that other people don’t know.  Here are a few types of information you can use:   Sales data – you can analyze your sales data and segment it by population, gender, or other information you collect in the sales process to contribute something new. Yes this data might not be completely accurate as it is your sales data and may not be representative of the market. That said, it is still new and typically unavailable to people. User data – When users register, ask them for information. If they have profiles on their site, ask them for information. Then anonymously aggregate this information and present it with pretty charts and graphics (More on this from Dr. Pete). OK Cupid does a great job of this with most of their blog posts. Check out this one on stuff white people like (original stuff white people like). Do your own research – Offering brand new data is great because no one else has it so you get to be the definite (linked) source for forthcoming references. This can be really helpful with infographics – if you are having a hard time finding research that someone has published, do the research yourself. Tools like Ask Your Target Market are great for this as they provide you with a large panel so you can get quick responses and you can focus your time on creating your link bait, not doing research.   Publish your data from the research you did and provide excel/csv downloads for people to be able to use the data to do their own research as a way of earning links. You can even go as far as requiring attribution to use the data. Feedback is Key  You need to make sure that your infographic is correct and there aren’t mistakes or typos. These will get your link bait torn apart on sites like Reddit. You should minimally have people looking at:   Spelling/Proofreading – do you have typos or misspellings. It happens. A lot. Get someone who is really nitpicky and uptight to go over it. Technical details – Make sure that the content is technically correct and that you aren’t wrong. Find a subject matter expert and have them verify your work. Readability – While the linkbait might make complete sense to you and your cohorts, you this is your baby (and nobody thinks their baby is ugly) so some things that might seem obvious to you really aren’t obvious to everyone else. Have your mom look at this, kind of like when you were in grade school and your mom checked your homework. Get someone object who isn’t invested in the project verify that it makes sense (and that it’s cool).   Get subject matter experts (especially those who you would like a link from) involved in the project – reach out to them before the project launches, tell them they are awesome and ask them to review it because they know so much more than you. When it goes live tell them and thank them for their help. Then encourage them to share it. They have invested time in the project and are more likely to share. Have a Killer Hook You can have great data but if you don’t have a hook, then it is significantly less likely to succeed. Todd Malicoat has a great overview of link baiting hooks here that you should take a read through. I will list them here quickly for you though - to get the full explanation you'll have to read the post ;):   News hook Contrary hook Attack hook Resource hook Humor hook Ego hook Incentive hook   While each of these hooks are effective, you should choose the hook based on who you are ultimately targeting and who you want to link to you. While a humor hook may work well for broad appeal, if you want to increase topically relevant links you might want to go with something like a resource hook or contrary hook.   If you have a strong community you can often use the ego hook to scale your link building and get your community to build links for you. Likewise Copy Blogger has a crash course on magnetic headlines that you should read through. Having really strong headlines will not only help improve the number of people reading your content but can have a big impact on how well-shared your link bait is. As such make sure your title contains a hook.     What insights do you guys have? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you when you've been working on creating link bait. Do you like this post? Yes No

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Why You Can Almost Guarantee Google is Using Your Analytics Data Graywolf's SEO Blog

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Why You Can Almost Guarantee Google is Using Your Analytics Data Posted: 01 Sep 2011 10:40 AM PDT While many webmasters and publishers use Google analytics without a second thought, smart publishers, marketers, and SEOs are left to speculate… Is Google using this data? What might they use it for? And am I doing myself more harm than good using it? if you aren’t paying for a product or service, you are the product being sold… Truth be told, unless Google ever does a full disclosure about analytics data (which to date hasn’t happened), we are left to conjecture and guess. However, if we look at Google’s business decisions, especially since Larry Page has assumed control, the only conclusion you can logically come to is that yes, they are using it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Conference attendees have been using Q&A sessions to try and pin down Google engineers about whether or not they are using bounce rate, exit rate, time on site, or other specific factors. But, by asking these narrow questions, they allow the engineers to sidestep the real question with carefully worded answers. What we need to do is stop trying to figure out exactly what factors they are using so we can try and exploit them–instead, we need to get answers to the larger question: “Is data from Google analytics currently used in search engine ranking pages?” Why is focusing on Google’s use of one factor bad? Much like that kid in class who asked “Is this going to be on the test?” you’ve lost the plot. That kid has stopped focusing on learning and simply wants a good grade by regurgitating specific facts back to the teacher. It’s unlikely that Google is looking at any single factor; instead, they are looking at more than one aspect to determine overall quality. Engineers from Google constantly tell us to stop focusing on these narrow factors (like pagerank) and focus on the big picture and what it says about our website. The question you need to ask yourself is at what point does it become easier to spend more time building these signals the right way and less time on faking it via black hat spam techniques …  Ever since Larry Page has assumed control, one of his big focuses has been shuttering some of Google’s non profitable projects, like Google Labs. It’s not that Google is no longer innovating; it’s that they are taking a more pragmatic approach. Projects need to be cost effective, and they’re not giving them the same length of time as they did in the past to get to that point. Let’s take a look at analytics. Maintaining uptime for the massive number of sites that Google analytics runs on requires a huge investment in hardware, software, and skilled engineers and technically skilled labor. Next we need to add in the programmers, Q&A, and resources associated with maintaining and updating the user interface/reporting side of gGoogle analytics. Simply put, it’s a huge investment of time, resources, and money. With Google’s recent shift in direction about projects needing to be profitable to stay alive, there simply isn’t any logical conclusion you can reach except that they are using the data. There’s a true saying about this situation: “if you aren’t paying for a product or service, you are the product being sold“. There are multiple business uses for this data, including forcing up prices on adwords keywords, determining adwords quality scores, understanding consumer usage, and validating organic search engine ranking factors–to name just a few. Yes, Google adwords may have started as a supply/demand bid driven market system, but once adwords quality score got factored in, it became a black box model and prices could be raised artificially as needed. Don’t believe me? Try and explain why quality score forces me to bid $5 to display ads for my own name in adwords, but I can show ads for Matt Cutts for $0.30. Unless, of course, you want to defend the bizarro logic that I am more relevant for someone else’s name than I am for my own. The real takeaway here is that Google is the data Borg. Without feeding the Borg signals that people are visiting, using, and returning to your site, you have little chance of ranking organically. These are the types of signals that real businesses and brands will send the search engines. These are the signals that become difficult and expensive to fake without large distributed botnets, malware, or hacking. The question you need to ask yourself is at what point does it become easier to spend more time building these signals the right way and less time on faking it via black hat spam techniques … Related posts: Google Analytics Why Do You Make Me Distrust You So I logged into Google Analytics this morning and I... Google Analytics Broken Hey Google analytics did you guys monkey with something cause... Google Analytics Hiring and Sheepwalking So I came across something from the Google analytics page... Google Analytics iPhone App Review I was asked to take part in the beta test... Are Search Engines Using ClickStream Data Recently there was a big kerfuffle over Bing copying Google... Advertisers: Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed! Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price. This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review. Why You Can Almost Guarantee Google is Using Your Analytics Data

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Seth's Blog : Thursday bonuses

Thursday bonuses

First, two signs, each telling a very different story:

This sign says, "we're in power, we're going to use newspeak and double-talk and pretend we've done something to benefit you, which of course, we haven't." It also uses "conveniently" as an adverb, which is just annoying. Why not tell the truth, straight up?

On the other hand, this sign screams transparency and honesty. The farmer explained that on days when the corn was picked that day, he erases the scribbles on the bottom of the sign, but if the corn was picked just one day earlier, it's just not right to say 'fresh'. It's worth noting that instead of having two signs, one for each condition, he uses his own hand to tell the truth, quite vigorously. Guess who has the most popular corn stand in New York, even on days when it is not, apparently, fresh?

...and here's a fascinating, generous and over-the-top-in-a-good-way article on infographics by Ed Fry. Sometimes, earning attention is about being all three, not about gaming the system or getting lucky.

 

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