'Violent' video game ad condemned
A poster for a computer game has been strongly criticised by the advertising watchdog after complaints that it encouraged violence and vandalism. The advert for Burnout Dominator showed a wrecked sports car, broken glass and a burning tyre, and had the slogan "Inner peace through outer violence". (Read on Source)
The Restaurant Guide
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Study: Doctors Should Inquire About Use Of Nonprescription Diet Aids
ATLANTA - Physicians should raise the topic of nonprescription weight-loss supplement use, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, because more than 15 percent of adults in the United States have taken them and most do not volunteer the information to their doctors. Full story on lexis.com
Resignation Of Defendant Coordinating Counsel Member Approved
NEW YORK - During a May 3 ephedra multidistrict litigation status hearing, a federal judge approved the resignation of Thomas B.K. Ringe of Duane Morris in Philadelphia from the Defendants' Coordinating Counsel (In Re: Ephedra Products Liability Litigation, 04 M.D. 1598, S.D. N.Y.). Full story on lexis.com
Frasers Hospitality signs 10 New Serviced Residences in China
Frasers Hospitality signs 10 New Serviced Residences in China.
Apple Expo: MacGeneration best of show
... Mac and iPod repairs at our Mayfair and Spitalfields shops. 100% Mac focussed broadband, web hosting and FTP solutions. No appointment necessary New FileMaker 9 product line delivers 30 ease-of-use ...
Io HD sports 10-Bit HD editing in ProRes 422
AJA Video is now shipping Io HD, a tool that delivers HD editing to the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro Pro via a Firewire 800 (IEEE-1394b) interface. The device natively supports Apple's ProRes 422 video format in hardware, and includes a similar feature set to AJA's industry-leading KONA lineup; 10-bit hardware-based up-conversion, cross-conversion, and ...
BIGLIST SEO Blogs Update 050908
What a week! Spring is officially here in Minnesota. Don’t laugh, it snowed just 2 weeks ago. This week’s BIGLIST of SEO and SEM blogs includes a nice mix of search, social and online PR content. When I co-hosted the Daily Searchcast on Thursday it was great to have Danny Sullivan mention the [...]
A Concrete Fix to Global Warming
A new process stores carbon dioxide in precast concrete.
Local Las Vegas Businessman Goes from NASCAR Pit Crew to Internet Tech Frontier
Forward-Thinking Entrepreneur Unveils FindAnyFloor.com (PRWeb Aug 14, 2008)
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/Flooring/Information/prweb1210794.htm
SearchBrains
The Google Webmaster Central blog documented five new Google Group posts, based on the Popular Picks thread, asking webmasters for questions they want answered. So Google answered five of the most popular questions. The answers are on image search ranking , Sitelinks , reconsideration requests , redirects and communication . I am not going to go ... (Read on Source)
FDA Seizes $71,000 In Dietary Supplements It Says Were Misbranded
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Food and Drug Administration on Oct. 9 ordered that U.S. marshals seize $71,000 in dietary supplements that the agency said were being improperly promoted as treatments for serious diseases. Full story on lexis.com
MicroRNAs Are Found In Animals That Appeared A Billion Years Ago
MicroRNAs, the tiny molecules that fine-tune gene expression, were first discovered in 1993. But it turns out they've been around for a billion years. Evidence reported in Nature on October 1 by scientists in the lab of Whitehead Member and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator David Bartel provides a window into the early evolution of ... (Read on Source)
AP Investigation: Ike environmental toll apparent
AP - Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data ... (Read on Source)
SearchBrains
The other day, I held a poll asking SEOs how long it typically took for their sites to be reincluded into the Google index after submitting a reconsideration request. We have complied 72 responses and I thought I share the. ... (Read on Source)
PageRank Sculpting: Parsing the Value and Potential Benefits of Sculpting PR with Nofollow
Posted by randfish
Thanks to the SEOmoz Q+A, we get to monitor a lot of the hot button issues that hit the SEO world, and as Jane noted to me during a meeting today, they always seem to come in waves. The latest buzz (and flurry of questions) comes around the practice of PageRank sculpting. We've discussed this topic in some detail previously on SEOmoz (1, 2 and 3) and recently published a guide. However, with renewed interest comes a need for renewed focus.
Does PageRank Sculpting Work?
The simplest answer is yes. It definitely does work - the devil is in the details of how well and to what extent it brings value. However, anyone can set up a simple test to watch PageRank sculpting with nofollow in action. Just follow these simple steps:
- Create a new page in a test environment (either on a new domain or in a new section of an existing site).
- Point enough links to this new page to get it indexed in the three major search engines. There are a variety of methods to do this, but for testing sites, I like Jane's clever tactic of leveraging the social media link sources to get the engines visiting regularly and keeping it in the index.
- Create 10-20 links on the new page pointing to completely unique pages, targeting make-believe terms and phrases for which no search engine shows results (like yootermimitank).
- Wait for the engines to visit and see these new pages. Chances are, they won't index all of those new, nonsense word pages (particularly if you've pointed very small amounts of link juice to your test page). If they do index all of them, just keep adding links to new nonsense pages until they stop getting all of them.
- Start nofollowing those links a few at a time, until all the pages that remain with links pointing to them are in the engines' index. Remarkably, the engines all behave fairly similarly, and seem to have fairly similar thresholds for keeping a page in the index (though Yahoo! appeared to be the most lenient when I performed this test several months back).
- You've now used nofollow to "sculpt" where PageRank/link juice is pointing and through it, influenced which pages the engines keep in their index vs. discard. You're also directly observing the phenomenon of how a page splits its PageRank through the links it points to - fewer links means more juice per page, leading to a higher probability of being crawled and indexed.
(BTW - for another fun test, try this one I wrote about at Sphinn a while back)
This illustration shows the basic principle of link flow and how nofollow impacts it:
Looking at the diagram above (which is overly simplistic, but illustrates the basic concept), if Google, for example, had a threshold of 1.4 link juice units to keep a page indexed or re-crawl every X days, this use of nofollow could be exceptionally valuable. It's also the exact behavior you can observe in the test above - at a certain level of link juice, the engines no longer keep the pages in their index and by using nofollow, we can flow more juice to the pages we care about.
At the most basic level, the search engines are using PageRank (or whatever global popularity variable they calculate - StaticRank/WebRank/mozRank) to determine their threshold for indexation. I think Mr. Martinez's prescient comment on this topic (from an Eric Enge post last year) provides excellent insight:
PageRank is now used as a quality filter on the other end — Google divides the Web into pages with sufficient PageRank (the elite pages admitted into the full Main Web Index) and pages with too little PageRank (the pages — probably the majority of Web documents — that are stored in the Supplemental Results Index).
But Google also says it uses PageRank to help determine crawling priorities. In a natural crawling system PageRank would only be an indicator of the probability of a crawl, but Matt Cutts and other Google representatives have made it sound (to me) like Google actually favors pages which meet some internal PageRank threshold requirement...
...PageRank was never very important to RANKINGS, but now it has become extremely critical to INCLUSION.
I somewhat disagree with his final sentence and believe that in many cases, PageRank (or global link popularity/juice) can play an important role in rankings, but I find his underlying logic very sound. Link juice, in whatever form it's calculated, appears to play a substantive role in both indexation and crawl rate. We use it inside Linkscape to help determine which pages are important and deserve crawling, just as the major search engines do, and I don't see it going away anytime soon.
Does PageRank Sculpting Matter for My Site?
That all depends on what kind of site you've got. When we've seen PageRank sculpting provide benefit, it's almost always on large domains with tens or hundreds of thousands of pages. In these types of environments, eliminating juice from passing through 5-10 links per page (everything from the copyright policy to the login/register links to the terms of service) can have a massive impact on how much juice flows down the category stream to the pages that need it most - new content and long-buried archives. Using it on much smaller sites with tight, carefully controlled link architecture hasn't produced the same sort of value.
It also depends on the issues you're having. PR sculpting solves a very particular kind of problem - one where crawl rates and indexation of content are the primary concern. It's barely going to help you rank better for your primary terms on your site's homepage and it's certainly not going to make your site convert better or entice more people to link to you. Applying PR sculpting to problems like these would be akin to taking Viagra to help get rid of a sore throat - only in very weird circumstances could it help. :-)
When Should I Engage in PageRank Sculpting?
A lot of advice in the SEO world suggests that PR sculpting should be used only when all other methods for improving SEO are completed. I disagree strongly. My feeling is that using nofollow to flow link juice is something that should come up at the same time site architecture and link architecture does - when you're trying to figure out how to get the search engines to index all your content and find new content as quickly as possible. Building nofollow into a site's architecture intelligently from the start (or in the planning stages of a redesign) is almost always better than using it as a band-aid after the fact.
Isn't PR Sculpting a Dead Giveaway that I'm an Evil SEO?
Well, considering that nearly 1% of all pages on the web (according to Linkscape's crawl data) engage in internal nofollows to flow link juice, I'd say no. We're talking in the hundreds of millions of pages, so adoption is pretty rampant - more so, in fact, than 301 and 302 redirects combined! Huge sites like Technorati, Delicious, Reddit, About.com, Facebook and millions more are using it. The search engines themselves endorse the use of it and say publicly that it's not a flag for spam or manipulative activity.
If you're incredibly paranoid about nofollow, do what clever SEOs (many of them black and gray hat) used to do back in the days before nofollow and use externally called javascript redirects or some other method for letting humans follow the links while search engines can't. PageRank sculpting has been around a lot longer than nofollow, and back in the early 2000s it was employed to great effect according to a few folks who did so back then. It achieves the same effect (and follows the same principle) - you've got links that engines can follow, and others that are just for human visitors.
Well, I think PR Sculpting is a Waste of Time
That's OK by me. There's a lot of differing opinion in the world of SEO, and this is certainly one where some SEO practitioners disagree. However, I'd urge you to, at the least, try some tests with it and make sure you're not missing out on opportunity before dismissing it entirely. After all, SEO is all about testing, refining and implementing based on data - from what we've seen in the projects we've worked on, it's been a positive tactic and one that, when done well, have a valuable impact on getting more pages included and new pages included more quickly (as well as occasionally helping long tail content rank better).
Feel free to share your own thoughts around this - one question that nags at me is why this is suddenly a hot topic again... Was there an announcement or a trove of discussion on the issue that I missed during my week in New York?
Failed Vaccine Mystery Solved
Scientists have figured out why a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine used in 1966 to inoculate children against the infection instead caused severe respiratory disease and effectively stopped efforts to make a better one. The findings could restart work on effective killed-virus vaccines not only for RSV but other respiratory viruses, researchers say.
Did Larry King learn his lesson?
As much as I'd love to take credit , the postponement of the appearance of Jenny McCarthy and J.B. Handley on Larry King Live! originally scheduled for last night had nothing to do with me. Really. The cancellation was apparently announced shortly after my post appeared, leaving no time for it to have had an effect. Heck, for all I know the ... (Read on Source)
Oklahoma Supplement Distributor Files Bankruptcy After Breach Of Contract Decision
OKLAHOMA CITY - AMS Health Sciences, a distributor of natural supplements, recently filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, citing a November verdict and judgment against it related to its acquisition of Heartland Cup Inc. (In Re: AMS Health Sciences, No. 07-14678, N.D. Okla. Bkcy.). Full story on lexis.com
SearchBrains
Now that theres a new President in DC, some of the online resources are changing a bit as well. I dropped by the Federal Digital System of US Government Printing Office Web site ( http://fdsys.gpo.gov/ ) and read In conjunction with the change of administ ration on January 20, 2009, the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents [...]... (Read on Source)
Install GLPI (IT and asset Management Software) from Ubuntu Repositories
Ubuntu Geek: "You can use it to build up a database with an inventory for your company (computer, software, printers…). It has enhanced functions to make the daily life for the administrators easier, like a job tracking system with mail-notification and methods to build a database with basic information about your network-topology."
The Weekly RIA RoundUp for February 16
... release supports many Linux distributions including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. While the Moonlight release opens the door for Silverlight on Linux, there still is ...
David Ortiz out for 2nd day with sore shoulder - USA Today
 Washington Post | David Ortiz out for 2nd day with sore shoulder USA Today FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) - Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz was held out of spring training workouts for the second straight day with general soreness in his left shoulder. All Pedroia, all the time? Search Past 7 days Archives |
Malware Planted on MySpace Once Again
Astana says Armstrong will be in Tour de Framce - The Associated Press
 Times Online | Astana says Armstrong will be in Tour de Framce The Associated Press PALENCIA, Spain (AP) - Astana manager Johan Bruyneel is confident that Lance Armstrong's broken collarbone will not prevent him from taking part in either the Giro d'Italia or the Tour de France. Video: Lance Armstrong Injured Armstrong Is Injured, Putting Plans in Question |
Stealing MySpace by Julia Angwin - Book review
Stealing MySpace:
The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
By: Julia Angwin
Published: Mar 17, 2009
ISBN: 9781400066940
Format: Hardcover, 371pp
Publisher: Random House Inc.
"The story of MySpace is a story of the first Hollywood Internet company, a company that is a breed apart from its Silicon Valley Brethren", writes Wall Street Journal Senior Technology Editot Julia Angwin in her important and highly entertaining new book Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America. In this first indepth study of the internet powerhouse MySpace, the author takes the reader on a rollercoaster thrill ride through Hollywood, the corporate boardrooms of media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone, and into the the deepest reaches of internet business itself.
With writing more like a novel than a business book, Julia Angwin describes the meteoric rise of MySpace from humble beginnings to an internet sensation. Whether by design, or from programming mistakes that turned into into gold, the story of MySpace is a success story by any standard. At the same time as MySpace was on the way to becoming the most popular internet website, the clouds were already gathering on the web horizon. In a battle of egos as large as the world wide web itself, MySpace was in the corporate crosshairs as a takeover target. The author describes that high stakes boardroom swashbuckling in vivid detail.
Julia Angwin (photo left) recognizes that MySpace is a website like no other major location on the world wide web. Instead of sharing the technology and programming based roots of its competitors, MySpace evolved from the worlds of spyware, and the voyeurism of internet pornography. Not only does the book put the corporate egos and financial battles on display, but the author also delves into how the very culture of the internet was a root cause of the MySpace phenomenon. The MySpace story is not yet complete, as Julia Angwin points out. Competition is fierce, and online attention spans are notoriously short, often rendering today's success story into yesterday's news. The fate of future obscurity may still await MySpace.
For me, the power of the book is the brilliant writing and research that bring out the deeper stories in the MySpace saga. The book doesn't focus only on the MySpace company culture and its rise to prominence or the boardroom takeover battle. Julia Angwin also describes the very culture of the internet and of the MySpace users themselves, that led to the ascension of the company to prominence. That background information on the milieu, that gave MySpace its impetus, is crucial to understanding the explosion of MySpace onto the internet scene.
I highly recommend the ground breaking and absorbing Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin, to anyone seeking to understand the power of the internet and the importance of financial and creative control over key websites. Anyone interested in backroom business wheeling and dealing, involving some of the biggest names in media ownership, will discover how and why takeovers really happen.
Read the page turning Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin, and you will never look at internet business in the same way again. The book is an object lesson in how a site can rise to dominance, be acquired through intense bidding competition, and then find that very value in jeopardy. It's am internet business story not to be missed.
California's Top Firms Find Some Stability, but Continue to Brace Themselves
California's top 25 firms are feeling more stable, but a sense of fragility remains. The firms pulled through 2008 in a variety of ways. Some large firms that were overexposed to capital markets, like Latham & Watkins and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, were forced to lay off hundreds of staff. Others, however, chose salary reductions over big layoffs. Countercyclical practices, like bankruptcy and litigation, took a while to kick in, but firms say they've started to see upticks in those areas.
Cardiovascular Benefits Of Daily Exercise In School Children Are Evident Even After One Year
School children as young as 11 can benefit from a daily exercise program in reducing their levels of several known risk factors for cardiovascular disease. An ongoing study, which began four years ago in the German city of Leipzig, shows already that children assigned to daily exercise lessons reduced their overall prevalence of obesity, improved ... (Read on Source)
UK admits submarines leaked radioactive material
The Guardian : Radioactive waste has leaked from Britain's nuclear submarines nine times in the past 12 years, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted. Two of the leaks ? including one at Devonport near Plymouth two months ago ? had not been revealed until today. Confirmation of the leaks raises new questions about the MoD's safety record, (Read on Source)
The Bogus Torture Coverup
Jim MacMillan / AP Photo The Pentagon is denying the facts: Photographs of Abu Ghraib torture are even more sexually explicit than first reported, including rape and sodomy, writes The Daily Beast's Scott Horton, who has obtained specific and detailed corroboration of the photos. (Read on Source)
Name: SyroBro