slamboard

Everyone in Web Business and the Blogosphere have been sitting on pins and needles waiting for Google to run and update. Now that it has happened, there is a lot of emotional outpouring and ill-informed post game analysis going on. There is not really anything informative coming from the Google.

Truly important sites like Forbes.com and Washingtonpost.com suffered a drop in Page Rank.

Techcrunch.com is listed in an article on Forbes as one of the fallen. An early post on Techcrunch itself doesn’t seem to acknowledge any drop. The Techcrunch post used the word Jihad in its title and received many, many comments from people who were offended or pretended to be offended. I am offended by the Washington Redskins (or maybe I am just pretending).

If you are an outsider reading about all the Page Rank related anxiety and frustration, I will sum it up for you…It’s all about the money.

I have already published a short post about the increase in reblogging. I delete trackbacks everyday that come from ‘blogs’ that are nothing but a collection of excerpts from real bloggers who are creating real content. Given the automated nature of this method of creating a website that appears to have relevant content to the search engine spiders, I can assume that they occasionally feed off each other. I have noticed in the past few days that the reblogs that are set up to have a little attribution blurb are attributing it to the wrong author. A post that I wrote discussing LAP BAND surgery was incorrectly attributed to CarbWire. This attribution is in the form of unlinked text. The rebloggers get to exist in a gray area of ethics and legality because they link to the original source. They do not add to the discussion in the blogosphere, they simply feed of it to gain ranking for their URL so they can be monetized.

More and more people are getting web enabled devices every day. The iPhone gets the lion’s share of media attention, but they are not the only game in town. The huge amount of advertising and press coverage is going to create a demand that will surge when prices inevitably come down in the future. Wireless internet service is becoming more widespread and affordable as well.

The people that are falling behind in this march forward are businesses with a web presence that does not include any wap site design. Virgin Mobile is encouraging a grassroots development or wap content by providing a platform for creativity and rewarding contributors with credits. User generated mobile friendly content is going to get more people surfing on their phones. I am fascinated by the fact that some WAP servers can recognize what kind of device is requesting access and then they can send a version of the site that is optimized for that particular device.

Businesses without a mobile website design reward surfers who visit their URL on a mobile phone with a jumbled up mess that may or may not be functional.

GoLiveMobile.com is a mobile wap site hosting company. Homepage Forking is a cool term that refers to the process of directing mobile visitors to the mobile version of your website. For other terms and marketing ideas that you may not have heard of yet, go check out Go Live Mobile.

Have you ever mistyped a domain address into your browser and gone somewhere strange and new because somebody had the foresight to buy that domain ahead of the big guys and exploit it for some purpose, evil or otherwise?

Face-book.com has been owned by a company registered on the Isle of Man since before Facebook.com really caught on. It it what is called a link dump. Facebook.com has taken recourse. The WIPO has finally ruled in their favor. This is actually a great case to study because it shows the system working for an unquestionably valid complainant. Facebook paid the same amount that everyone pays to have this kind of thing dealt with, $1,500. That seems like just the right amount to prevent frivolous suits from bogging down the system. The process took a few months, the defendant made no effort to put forth their side.

Face-book.com appears to be gone. You can see what it looked like on the Wayback Machine.

I actually found a good site once when I mistyped Big-Boards.com. Bigboards.com sells whiteboards

Why do beautiful, educated single russian women sign up and create profiles on all of these Russian Bride sites? Here are a few understandable reasons:

• The desire to move to a place with a more vibrant economy with better job prospects
• The perception that Western men are more considerate husbands and more sophosticated individuals than any potential Russian prospects
• The desire to move to a place with more natural beauty/better climate/more exciting culture

I think that the women are mostly correct in their assumptions. I think their opinions related to the character and personal hygiene of broad groups of men may be a case to the grass being greener on the other side of the curtain. I hope that the realities of the situation, both good and bad, for Russian women who come to America on a Fiancee K-1 Visa filters back to women who are considering this life choice. Marrying someone from a different culture has its challenges. Considering the fact that a best selling book claims that men and women are on different planets, a little perspective is in order.

The men in America and Western Europe live in a culture where there is a 50% chance of a marriage, ANY MARRIAGE, failing. I certainly hope that most of them have a firm enough grasp on reality to know that looking for a wife in a region with a depressed economy is not a panacea. A marriage is a lifelong commitment and a life long negotiation.

Among some social circles, saying that you’re in sales will get you funny looks and cold shoulders. I always find this to be a huge hypocrisy. I contend that everyone is a salesman in some way, shape or form. I think that any technical or vocational training program should have an element of sales training included. The Sales Training Courses UK plumbers can get from Avand.co.uk is a great example of what I am talking about. This company has gotten involved in sales training after recognizing a need. Their original field of expertise is in training plumbers to do, well plumbing. When I sat here trying to empathize with a plumber, I realized that they often find themselves in a position that many salesmen would envy. I don’t mean the position where they are crouched under a sink with their butt-crack showing. I mean that they are standing inside the inner sanctum of a homeowner that has needs. I recently spoke to a man who mentioned that he gained his wife’s good graces with a tasteful upgrade in bathroom fixtures. A plumber who has good sales skills could plant the seed of that strategy in a client while fixing a toilet.

Endorsement deals can involve little more than signing a contract and raking in the money, or a celebrity can choose to have a hands on approach.

An Elizabeth Arden fragrance is being promoted using a website that allowed users to craft a special message for their friends using voice samples recorded by a pre-trainwreck Britney Spears. Britney’s people must have managed to get her a very good contract. I expected companies to drop her like she was hot when her personal life went south.

Many people know George Foreman more for his grill than for his boxing. Using celebrity that is based on past performance rather than current relevance allows a spokesperson to focus on the sell.

Diddy is someone who certainly considers himself still relevant to the music world, but he is a very diversified businessman. After years of active oversight of clothing and fragrance lines, he just announced that he is going put a lot of focus on a Vodka that he has agreed to represent.

My impression of Diddy is that he exaggerates his level of involvement and control out of sheer ego. This works out very well for him, until something negative happens. When news of sweatshops and dog fur trim come to light, the celebrity has to do a two step.

“I didn’t know/It won’t happen again”

I was living in Eastern Canada when terrorists attacked buildings and people in the United States on September 11th, 2001. Almost every airplane that was in the air over North America at that time had to land wherever they could ASAP. The USA closed its airspace, forcing planes that where had US destinations to land in Canada.

Many passenger jets landed in Atlantic Canada. I was just reading excerpts from a book that detailed the experience of a small town of 10,000 Newfoundlanders that played host to 6,000 passengers for several days. Newfoundlanders pride themselves on their hospitality.

Many people who had every reason to be very upset about being stranded in Gander as the result of that horrible incident left there with a lot of warm feeling for the residents. Many of them have returned in the intervening years.

Results of a large study of the dietary habits of identical twins suggest that many dietary preferences have a genetic component. As reported in Twin Research and Human Genetics, 41%-48% of an individual’s leaning towards one of the food groups was influenced by genetics.

I am the father of identical twins. I can attest to them having almost identical food preferences. One child does not drink liquid milk unless she is eating a chocolate cupcake, while the other kids will drink milk occasionally by itself. One child prefers to avoid the olives on pizza while the other eats them. Those are the only differences that I can recall.

Source: BBC

I just happened upon a really cool blog. The website Payscale.com features a blog called Salary Stories. I was trying to use the Google to find an apples and oranges comparison of earnings for medical transcription and legal transcription. I haven’t found what I was looking for in that regard, but PayScale.com does have quite a lot of data related to salaries.

I also found this really cool interview of Matt Harding on the Salary Stories blog: