NFL 30 to Watch: Anthony Smith, Safety, Pittsburgh Steelers
Filed under: Steelers , AFC North , Pittsburgh A regular look at 30 people who will affect the 2007 NFL season. Troy Polamalu is the first name that comes to most people's minds when talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers' secondary. The former first-round pick is arguably the best in the league at his position -- and has redefined what it means ... (Read on Source)
Disk Based Backups With Amanda On Debian Etch
HowtoForge: This document describes how to set up Amanda (The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver) on Debian Etch..." [Link repaired. -ed.]
Learn Design From The Masters?First Up: Mark Boulton
Today we published the first in our series of SitePoint Community Interviews with renowned designers, entitled Mark Boulton’s Freelance Design Secrets. In the interview, Andy Kowalik, one of our mentors on the SitePoint Forums talks to UK-based designer Mark Boulton about how he got started in design, how he made the leap from salaried ... (Read on Source)
Data Brawn Meets Interface Brains
The larger the business or government agency is, the bigger the volume of data it deals with. That translates into massive efforts to manage that data to meet ever-increasing compliance regulations for adequately maintaining electronic records. Any software company that can figure out how to manage this process better than its competition can become king of the vendor hill.
Despite Scrapes and Bruises, Evans Wears Yellow - New York Times
 The Age | Despite Scrapes and Bruises, Evans Wears Yellow New York Times - By EDWARD WYATT ARGELES-GAZOST, France - When Cadel Evans crashed halfway through Sunday?s first stage in the Pyrenees, cracking his helmet and ripping open his jersey, shorts and skin in several places, he thought his Tour de France was over. Evans grabs overall lead in Tour de France Dario's Diario: Silence Goes Yellow! |
The ICal Challenge
Woody Allen famously quipped that 80 percent of success is showing up. If your life is ruled by appointments, then you need a...
Summary Judgment Granted For Lack Of Evidentiary Support
BATON ROUGE, La. - A federal judge on Nov. 16 granted summary judgment for Bayer Corp. in a PPA case, stating that he reviewed the record and found that Bayer's argument that the plaintiff failed to provide case-specific expert testimony or expert reports supporting her claims had merit and that the motion was unopposed (Mildred Mitchell v. Bayer Corp., No. 07-CV-212, M.D. La.; See September 2007, Page 17). Full story on lexis.com
Chumby: Fun, Functional, Squishy
Never let it be said that I don't listen to readers. In April, after I favorably reviewed a wireless product that elegantly displayed baseball scores, Don wrote: "How could you recommend that, especially at the price of $200 for a unitasker? This isn't worth $20 for what it does. What a joke. Please check out Chumby for a slightly cheaper and much more functional alternative."
Judge Approves Common Fund Assessment Reallocation
NEW YORK - The ephedra multidistrict litigation judge on Oct. 17 granted a motion by the plaintiffs to change the common benefit fee for each gross settlement to allocate 1 percent to expenses and 5 percent to attorney fees (In Re: Ephedra Products Liability Litigation, 04 M.D. 1598 [JSR], S.D. N.Y.; See October 2007, Page 8). Full story on lexis.com
Legitimate Background Checks Reasons
There are really a lot of legitimate reasons why people should conduct background checks for any individual they deal with. As we see more violence and crime that happen around us, we should make it as one of our priorities to secure ourselves, our loved ones and even our properties. Fortunately, technology has advanced so well that doing background checks these days can be done quickly, effectively and very affordably.
In the past, doing background checks were more complicated and challenging. In most cases, people who needed access to this type of information are required to visit one government office to another just to obtain any significant information. Actually, that isn't as easy as some might think it is since that was almost always synonymous to long waiting lines and confusing red tape process that tend to change from time to time.
Some people weren't patient enough for things like that that they settled hiring the services of private detectives. However, not everyone could choose this option since their services can range from $200 to $550. For most people, that can really be very expensive and it wouldn't be wise to avail of that if what you only need is to verify a person's name, for example.
Internet sites that grant access to their background checks databases is the best place for you to go these days. With these online background checks resources, you can automatically perform background checks on people without spending a lot of time and money at all.
For more information about this article try to visit Free background check
Ezra Young Author at www.articlepros.com Also at <a href="http://www.detectiveunlimited.com">Free Background Check </a> and <a href="http://www.backgroundcheckrecordsearch.com">Background Check</a>
Zillow.com cuts staff by 25 percent
... service exploit. Debian Security Advisory 1655-1 - Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service, privilege escalation or a leak of ...
Google Universal Search on Steroids?
Another Google Glitch
I nuked a recent post about sites potentially getting filtered because it become somewhat irrelevant and speculative considering Matt Cutts stated the following in a Webmaster World thread today:
I don't consider those rankings indicative of anything coming in the future. Some data went into the index without all of our quality signals incorporated, and it should be mostly back to normal and continuing to get back to normal over the course of the day.
Google glitches often reveal engineer intent, and based on that, http://216.239.59.104/ is a !!! fascinating data center right now.
The Index That Never Was
That data set does look a bit incomplete, with...
- some sites not ranking for their own brands (or other phrases that were aggressively used in anchor text)
- lots of internal tag pages ranking from authority sites like Wordpress.com or Amazon
- a bunch of international sites ranking in the global search results (no noticeable local bias)
- authority sites like media sites and listing sites like Craigslist or Indeed.com ranking for core industry phrases with a simple internal page job listing
- sites with a lot of usage data (possibly through brand awareness and related searches driven by advertising and/or affiliate traffic?) getting a bit more of a ranking boost than they would not have seen based on the PageRank model.
Universal Search Gets Big
Probably even more important than that ranking reshuffle is the appearance of universal search...everywhere, with the volume at #11 (or maybe 12?)! Just take a look at this search for credit cards...if you are not an AdWords advertiser, are not in universal search verticals (like news and video), and are not wikipedia, then you don't have many organic search results that you can rank for on the first page.
Other search results I looked at had a similar bias toward universal search - with heavy promotion of Google shopping results, Google books, videos, etc.
Having seen the above search results, consider that as time passes and we learn to trust search more we generally tend to click on the top few results, and then look at these click distribution stats from the AOL data from a couple years ago:
Overall Percent of Clicks | Relative Click Volume |
|
|
1st page totals: 89.82%, 4,425,226 clicks | |
Will a #1 Google ranking still be worth a lot of money? Absolutely, but the gap between winners and losers will grow much larger. If you were planning on getting a bit of traffic by ranking #5 or #6 in the organic results, that listing may end up on page 2 of the search results...yielding virtually no traffic.
The Business of Search Result Page Changes
Why would Google consider making such a large shift?
- they keep making the web more interactive hoping to eventually replace (or at least heavily augment) offline media distribution via television and other outlets (their real competition is not so much Microsoft or Yahoo!, but other information dissemination devices)
- if they send traffic to editorial partners they help subsidize those businesses, and get the businesses addicted to Google traffic...thus yielding significant control over to Google
- if they chop up traffic streams they make spamming less profitable and kill the incentive to spam
- if they promote verticals where they host information (books, video, local/maps, Google shopping) they get a second chance to monetize searchers who did not click on AdWords ads
Searchers Get Trained, Publishers (Frogs) Slowly Get Boiled
Universal search is a relevancy strategy, but it is also a business and profit strategy. There will be a role back on the above search results, but in time the search results will start looking more and more like the above. The shift will happen slowly, such that the publishers don't realize they are being boiled. *
* While the frog analogy has been debunked, it is still a memorable analogy, which is easy to use to describe gradual change.
New Ad Units & AdWords Expansion
As Giovanna noted on PPC blog, Google Checkout is spreading, and AdWords is becoming richer and more interactive. Some of the other universal search products (particularly local search, book search, music search, and shopping search) will present Google with more revenue options.
Strategies to Prepare for Universal Search on Steroids
- If your site is fairly close to what it takes to be considered in some of Google's verticals - like Google news, then consider upping your game a bit and submitting an inclusion request.
- Try to make some video content. Not good for everyone, but most sites could use some, and the competitive bar with video is much lower than it is with text - though I wouldn't expect it to stay that way for more than a couple years.
- If you have some top rankings that are bouncing around consider focusing on promoting that content again - when stratification occurs you are going to be better off focusing on owning a few ideas rather than being average to slightly above average at many. Top ranked sites also benefit from self-reinforcing rankings. Read up on cumulative advantage if you have not yet done so.
- Usage data (and/or brand searches) may become a big part of future algorithms. Get ready for that by reading about BrowseRank then invest in advertising, branding, and user experience.
Windows 7 in-depth review and video: This time Microsoft gets it right
Microsoft may call the newest version of its operating system Windows 7, but you may want to think of it as Windows 6.5. In overall look and feel, it mimics Vista, although there are enough changes to make it far more than just a juiced-up service pack.
Anyone looking for massive changes or some kind of paradigm shift will be disappointed. But those who want a better-working Vista with the kinks ironed out and some nifty new features introduced will be very pleased.
Hard Work is Dead. Call It 'Work Ethic 2.0'
Datamation: "The industrial revolution didn't arise out of nowhere, and it didn't arise everywhere. It was made possible by the emergence of a set of personal values that came to be known as the "work ethic.""
Selflessness -- Core Of All Major World Religions -- Has Neuropsychological Connection
All spiritual experiences are based in the brain. That statement is truer than ever before, according to a University of Missouri neuropsychologist. A new study has data to support a neuropsychological model that proposes spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. The study is one of the first to use individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine this connection.
Blind Man Walking: With No Visual Awareness, Man Navigates Obstacle Course Flawlessly
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that people can successfully navigate an obstacle course even after brain damage has left them with no awareness of the ability to see and no activity in the visual cortex, a region of the brain's cortex that is primarily responsible for processing visual inputs.
Unclear on the concept
Speaking of people who can't understand basic science , here's Denyse O'Leary : A couple of years ago, after I had been following the controversy for several years, I found myself listening to a long lecture by a Darwinist, replete with bafflegab and pretty lame examples. Finally, sensing (correctly) that I was unconvinced, he proclaimed to me, " ... (Read on Source)
Obama Inauguration Drives Droves to Web
The viewership at the top three US cable network news websites surged fourteen-fold from 12:00-1:00 p.m. EST on Inauguration Day and accounted for 30% of online event viewing, as millions of viewers tuned in to watch Barack Obama take the presidential oath and deliver his address, according to data from comScore Video Metrix. (Read on Source)
'Superguns' of Elizabeth I's navy
Elizabeth I's navy from around the time of the Armada was evolving into a far more powerful force than previously realised.
American Airlines and Brazil's GOL Airlines sign Interline Ticket and Baggage Agreement
American Airlines and Brazil's GOL Airlines sign Interline Ticket and Baggage Agreement.
New desktop Macs to be announced March 24th?
Long-awaited refreshes to Apple's desktop computers may finally be announced later this month, rumors propose. Two Apple news sites, World of Apple and My Apple Guide, are both citing anonymous sources which claim that new Macs will launch during a special event on March 24th. It is specifically believed that Apple is updating the Mac Pro, Mac mini and iMac; the last is again expected to switch ...
Dex Research Solutions launches Dex Language Consulting to offer professional language consulting, t
... 2009-03-27 11:37:22 - Dex Research Solutions, the preeminent comprehensive web design solutions company has launched Dex Language Consulting; providers of translation, interpretation and language consulting ...
Hulk Hogan: 'I Totally Understand OJ' - KFOXtv.com
 Monsters and Critics.com | Hulk Hogan: 'I Totally Understand OJ' KFOXtv.com Currently in a divorce battle with his estranged wife, Linda Hogan, Hulk Hogan says he understands the plight of OJ Simpson, who was found liable in civil court for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. New WWE/TNA PPV Posters, Backlash on the Hulk Hogan Situation Hulk Hogan says he 'totally' gets O.J. Simpson's rage |
Stallman Explains Why Software Patents are Wrong
Boycott Novell: "software patents attack software developers...and restrict every computer user." (Videos from demonstrations last week at the European Patent Office.)
Remarkable Search Announces Agency Launch: New Business Specializes in Search Marketing, Optimizatio
... also offers a range of professional services and team based consulting, including: lead generation; Web design and site development; paid inclusion and shopping feed management; Web analytics; public relations; and ...
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Review: New Intel chips power skinny laptops (AP)
AP - Tiny, cheap laptops known as netbooks have been a big success. But not everyone likes their small screens and keyboards, and their processors aren't powerful enough for some common tasks, like playing high-quality Internet video.
Sony planned a UMD-less PSP from the beginning?
It’s no secret that the PSP’s UMD format was nothing less than an utter failure, hell even its creator Sony decided to ultimately give it the boot. But wait, was it declining UMD sales or an evil plot by Sony that caused UMD’s death. According to Naoya Matsui, a Sony exec, it was an evil [...]
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