slamboard

SEO tends to focus extensively on Google for the most part. MSN and Yahoo each have a piece of the search engine pie and everyone else gets crumbs. I was very surprised to see how many small players are on this decidedly unlevel playing field. One particular search engine appeared up on my radar today. It is called StrategicBoard and it is based in Israel. It is focused on blogs and has a human editorial element that is designed to exclude spam. If any of you readers are attempting to operate Google-free for ethical and/or spiteful reasons, you should check it out.

I was tipped off to when it was relatively new and I jumped at it because it appeared to have some good potential as far as connecting with other bloggers and gaining readership. My experience with the site was disappointing and I would have forgotten about it if I wasn’t on the mailing list.

It may be that sustained effort or a more eye-catching avatar would have resulted in some real benefit from this website. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who disagrees with my opinion that this site isn’t of much help to individual bloggers.

I have an old school memory involving an elderly substitute teacher who was hopelessy out of his depth when it came to operating the film projector. I really felt sorry for him. The episode made him appear incompetent in front of the students, but I think that part of the problem was that the projector was poorly maintained and didn’t work right to begin with.

Presentationmart.com is a website that can help you get the right projector lamp bulbs and other supplies needed to maintain a dependable AV supply for you business. The standard equipment has changed a lot since I was involved in academics. Overhead projectors using transparencies are still used by some people but DLP and LCP projectors are becoming more commonplace all the time. This economical projector model costs about $550. Replacement lamps cost over $200, so you certainly want to be sure that you are ordering the right model. The price range of projectors is amazing, I am quite curious as to what kind of differences there are in quality, performance and features between a $559 projector and a $27,000 projector.

The new eBook reader that Amazon is introducing has not captured my imagination. That may be becasue I am not a consumer of books in any form. I rely on the public library and the SPCA used book sale and the generosity of colleagues for my meager demand for long form literature.

The consumers of the world who are also readers may embrace this device with some vigor. I am a bit intrigued by the idea that the digital information that comprises a book is going to be deliverable via a wide area cellular network. I’m not sure how soon that will be a reality, but the hardware is capable and a carrier is talking to Amazon.

In the United States and Canada, the Turkey is the center of attention at the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It is simply not Thanksgiving without this meat for many people. Not surprisingly, it is the food that accounts for the most questions on the FDA food safety hot line.

Here is a fact sheet about food safety and Turkey. The only thing that I have to add is BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY. If you are worried that you or someone else may have mishandled the job of safely cooking a turkey, don’t eat it. This includes leftovers.

Here is a fluff piece on FOX. At about the two minute mark, the product called Age Intervention Eyelash gets some very positive press. This is the product that was confiscated from a San Jose factory this past week.

The FDA is recommending that anyone who may still have Age Intervention Eyelash stop using it and discard any unused product. The FDA is also advising consumers to consult health care professionals if they have experienced any adverse events that they may be related to the use of Age Intervention Eyelash by Jan Marini Skin Research, Inc..

Source for this story: MSNBC

Sugar Land, Texas is a nice place to live, according to Forbes and CNN. It is the headquarters for Imperial Sugar. This company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2001. It has since managed to turn itself around partly through smart business decision, downsizing and effective implementation of new technologies. Having a Texas politician in the White House may have been beneficial as well.

Another large sugar company is Flo-Sun, Inc. Its owners, the Fanjul brothers, make huge donations to politicians both Red and Blue. Their reward, in the form of their share of protective tariffs and price floors, equals approximately $65 million annually.

NAFTA may mean that Mexico will be able to step up sugar exports. I can only assume that lobbyists for the US sugar industry have the ear of government and that they are looking for ways to prevent that from happening.

This post is an example of me starting out with an assumption and then not finding any really interesting facts to support it. I find it interesting that the Fanjul brothers belong to two groups of people that are pointed to as being special interest groups that buy politicians. They are owners of a huge agribusiness and they are also Cuban Americans. They get to have two interests served for the price of one. It’s no wonder they are so generous.

Pirelli made this short film. Is this an advertisement or entertainment?

I do not know how or where it is being distributed, aside from YouTube. Going to great lengths to entertain people with a film that is primarily about product placement might be a growing trend. Hollywood allowed product placement in feature films to become so ubiquitous that movie goers actually find it obvious and insulting. This ten minute action movie might be viewed by people who view it as a sort of gift from the tire company.

There has been and continues to be what can only be described as hysteria in the blogosphere lately. I have suffered some disappointments along with many other people, but I have tried to remain calm. I have tried to have some perspective.

Many of the things that people have been doing over the past few months in hopes of maintaining and/or improving their own page rank have backfired. I purposely avoided a few of these on this blog. I joined the Do Follow movement with my personal blog, but not with Slamboard. I took part in weekly memes with my personal blog but not with this blog. I joined blogrolls with my personal blog, but not with Slamboard.

The Google pagerank for Slamboard went up to a number that made me happy for several days and then dropped back down. I still had a net gain of 1. My personal blog dropped by 1.

I think that I am going to continue writing and managing my blog in much the same way that I always have and hoping that I move up the rankings through attrition.

One of the most contentious issues in American politics is military spending.

Around twenty years ago, General Electric was the first and possibly the biggest corporation to face fines and lawsuits stemming from a crackdown on fraud related to contracts with the Pentagon. Maybe it’s time for another crackdown. It could provide a needed boost of revenue for the military.

A little over ten years ago, GE was caught cheating the Military by not adequately testing aircraft components. A GE engineer approached the FBI after the concerns that he expressed within the company failed to result in changes that he felt were necessary. The approximately $7 million awarded in a subsequent lawsuit mostly went to the government, with some going to the whistle-blower and his lawyers as well.

If this is a pattern, it would seem that a payment is overdue. There were also some criminal convictions against GE in 1990 and 1992.

This year, they sold their plastics division to the Saudis.