I’m sitting at a camp table with Megin Hatch, who’s talking about her passion for Ethiopia and her plans around it. She had it in her head for a while when she stumbled across Lobsters in the Rough, which came to her from a serendipitous tweet. These things all connected when maybe they shouldn’t have, but Megin is driven and on a mission, and we’re hearing about it.
Blogs aren’t just things to make business, though that’s what I talk about quite often. Blogs are many things. Saying ‘blog’ doesn’t equal a lot right out of the gate, except perhaps freedom: the freedom to make information flow.
There are currencies outside of money that are much more valuable. Attraction and awareness and serendipity (the wildest of these) are all things that can’t be purchased (though you can rent awareness).
Ah, the beauty and the power of that which we hold closely in our hands.
Your thoughts? Have you seen it? Do you have stories of things lining up in relationships and otherwise?
ShareThis
ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
- Go on a guided video tour of Thesis and see the amazing things you can do with this theme! Seriously, you’ll love it.
- Check out the Thesis demo site
- See more Thesis-based sites in the gallery showcase
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Blogs as Attraction Engines
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Coffee calorie calculator - Holy Kaw!
Now this is something that many of us can use: a calorie calculator for various coffee shops. I have to say, though, that I’ll cut a lot of other things before my Macchiato
More blogs for coffee lovers.
This applies to any topic.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Teaching in the Age of Social Media - CNET Asia Blogs: Sensible Netnonsense by Ignatius Javellana, Philippines
Teaching in the Age of Social Media
Jul 4, 2010 13:52I remember when I was still in university. Research materials were so hard to come by because, even if there were already tons of Web sites available, there weren't that many research materials readily available. We still had to log in lots of hours at the local library, look through trillions of books and microfilms, and rely on long hard work.
Now, because the Web is much more expansive and local blogs have proliferated tremendously, research is no more than a mouse click away. Local topics of any kind are now, more than ever, easier to find. And with the new school year just opened, I've experienced first-hand as a tutor of sorts how much easier it is today.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Mental calculator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2010)Mental calculators are people with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation, such as multiplying large numbers or factoring large numbers. Some rare mental calculators are autistic savants, with a narrow area of great skill and poor mental development in other directions, but many are people of normal mental development who have simply developed advanced calculating ability. A good many are also experienced scientists, linguists, writers, and so on.
Mental calculators were in great demand in research centers such as CERN before the advent of modern electronic calculators and computers. See, for instance, the 1983 book The Great Mental Calculators, whose introduction was written by Hans Eberstark.
The world's best mental calculators are invited every two years to compete for the Mental Calculation World Cup. On July 2nd, 2008, Alberto Coto Garcia of Spain succeeded Robert Fountain of Great Britain as world champion.
Michael O'Boyle, an American psychologist previously working in Australia and now at Texas Tech University, has recently used MRI scanning of blood flow during mental operation in mathematical prodigies to display startling results. These math prodigies achieve blood flow to parts of the brain responsible for mathematical operations at six to seven times the typical flow (see Cognitive Brain Research, October, 2005).
Contents
[hide][edit] Mental calculators from history
- Aitken, Alexander Craig, [1]
- Bidder, George Parker
- Shakuntala Devi
- Buxton, Jedediah,
- Colburn, Zerah
- Dase, Johann Zacharias
- Deshong, Peter M.
- Diamandi, Pericles
- Eberstark, Hans
- Chintapalli
- Euler, Leonhard
- Finkelstein, Salo
- Flansburg, Scott
- Fuller, Thomas
- Gauss, Carl Frederich
- Gamm, Rüdiger
- Griffith, Arthur F.
- Inaudi, Jacques
- Klein, Wim (a.k.a. Willem Klein) [2]
- Willis Dysart (a.k.a. Willie the Wizard)
- van Koningsveld, Jan
- Dubrulle, Emmanuël
- McCartney, Daniel
- von Neumann, John
- Ruckle, Gottfried
- Safford, Truman Henry
- Sharma, Lakkoju Sanjeevaraya
- Tammet, Daniel
- Sidis, William James
- Ramanujan, Srinivasa
- Coto, Alberto
[edit] Mental calculators in fiction
In Frank Herbert's novel Dune, specially trained mental calculators known as Mentats have replaced mechanical computers completely. Several important supporting characters in the novel, namely Piter De Vries and Thufir Hawat, are Mentats. Paul Atreides was originally trained as one without his knowledge.
In Roald Dahl's novel, "Matilda", the lead character is portrayed having exceptional mathematical skills as she computes her dad's profit without the need for paper computations.
Andrew Jackson "Slipstick" Libby is a calculating prodigy in Robert A. Heinlein's story Methuselah's Children.
In Haruki Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a class of mental calculators known as Calcutecs perform cryptography in a sealed-off portion of their brains, the results of which they are unable to access from their normal waking consciousness.
In the Fox television show Malcolm in the Middle, Malcolm Wilkerson displays astounding feats of automatic mental calculation, which causes him to fear his family will see him as a "freak," and causes his brother to ask, "Is Malcolm a robot?"
In Darren Aronofsky's film, Pi, Maximillian Cohen is asked a few times by a young child with a calculator to do large multiplications and divisions in his head, to which he promptly answers.
In the movie Little Man Tate, Fred Tate in the audience blurts out the answer during a mental calculation contest.
In the sci-fi thriller Cube, one of the prisoners, Kazan, appears to be mentally disabled but is revealed later in the film to be an autistic savant, who is able to calculate prime factors in his head.
In the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction, the main character, Harold Crick, is able to perform rapid arithmetic at the request of his co-workers.
[edit] Champion Mental Calculators
Every two years the world's best mental calculators are invited to participate in The Mental Calculation World Cup, an international competition that attempts to find the world's best mental calculator, and also the best at specific types of mental calculation, such as multiplication or calendar reckoning. The top three final placings from each of the world cups that have been staged to date are shown below.
[edit] First Mental Calculation World Cup (Annaberg-Buchholz, 2004)
1 2 3 [edit] Second Mental Calculation World Cup (Gießen, 2006)
1 2 3 [edit] Third Mental Calculation World Cup (Leipzig, 2008)
1 2 3 [edit] Fourth Mental Calculation World Cup (Magdeburg, 2010)
1 2 3
The Mind Sports Olympiad has staged an annual world championships since 1997.
[edit] MSO mental calculation gold medal winners
1997 Karl Galle
1998 Robert Fountain
1999 2000 Robert Fountain
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 /
2009 The Mind Sports Organisation recognises three International Grandmasters of Mental Calculation: Robert Fountain (1999), George Lane (2001) and Gert Mittring (2005), and one International Master, Andy Robertshaw (2008).
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Mental Calculation World Cup site
- Prodigy Calculators by Viktor Pekelis
- Willem Klein
- Thought and machine processes
- Tricks and techniques
- 13throot.com - Alexis Lemaire website about mental calculation of 13th roots
- The "Great" Mental Calculators
- Lightning Calculators is a three-part essay that discusses these individuals, their methods, and the media coverage of them.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_calculator"Hidden categories: Articles lacking sources from June 2010 | All articles lacking sources
I was checking out my traffic stats and the words "mental calculation world cup" seemed to get to some pages of one of my sites. Just thought I'd check it out.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
How to select domain names for SEO, brand marketing, URL optimization and user engagement
How to select domain names for SEO, brand marketing, URL optimization and user engagement
A domain name plays a critical role in the overall branding of a company or individual. The domaining industry exists on the basis of buying and selling names that have brand value potential and can help users identify the content or the topic based on the URL name alone. However not many domainers have utilized SEO to the max and have historically been using the direct request navigation method or type-in traffic to monetize, usually through parked pages that only contain links of advertisers.
Domaining is the act of registering or buying a domain through a registrar or the secondary market, with the intention of getting type-in traffic traffic and converting it into revenue. Domains are of great importance because not only do they identify your brand, they also are valuable virtual real estate which do not require a search engine to be found, since most traffic is derived from users typing in the domain name in the browser URL bar. More names receive more direct request traffic than others depending on the search frequency value of the keyword used in the domain name.
Unfortunately, direct navigation suffers from a stigma among advertisers and marketers. JupiterResearch estimates the size of the direct navigation advertising market was approximately $600 million in 2006, or about nine percent of the paid search market. To maximize customer acquisition, marketers must target a range of sources, including type-in traffic and direct search. Are you tapping into 9% of the paid search market because of your domain name alone? While direct navigation traffic is free, there will be an associated premium cost associated with buying a premium domain name. It is a long term investment akin to a logo. I always recommend companies and entrepreneurs to invest in both a great logo and a great domain name that represents what they are all about.
Want more reasons to a great domain name? Websidestory StatMarket research 2006 research indicated the obvious: the best-converting group is made up people who know what they are looking for and know where they want to shop to get it. These users arrive at a site via direct navigation, by typing in the site's name or using a bookmark. These kinds of users converted almost twice as well as those using search engine links, with a 4.23% conversion rate. What does this mean? it means that for every 100 people visiting, more than 4 of them convert to buyers. More analytically these are the conversions rates:
- Direct Navigation and Bookmarks - 4.23%
- Search Engines, including pay per click (PPC) - 2.30%
- Banner Ads and Content related ads (Other) - 0.96%
Descriptive domain names benefit from brand recognition effects without being a famous brand. Their generic nature and high search volume make them immediate brands because they offer the distinct opportunity to convey what the site product or service is or what it does. Remember that with paid advertising, when you stop paying so does your exposure. Would you rather invest in the long term success of your company or a quick fix based on the power of your advertising budget? The best solution is to use a combination of both.
Direct type-in traffic is the most used marketing tactic used by domainers to earn revenues but the value proposition to users is very low in today's more interactive and dynamic Internet. Static pages with paid links have zero search value and those websites are ranked very poorly by search engines.
The most effective use of a domain is to combine its direct request properties, and through SEO increase traffic through attaining ranking in the search engine results. Choosing the right domain name is one of the most important steps for a website owner:
How to choose the right domain name
Google, Bing and Yahoo all give weight to keywords found in the domain name. This fact thincreases the importance of selecting a good name at is keyword rich. Note that choosing an obscure name such as Google or Bing will bring you zero type-in traffic as well as cost you more to brand the name that users would take time to remember and associate with.
When choosing a domain name there are four main factors to take into consideration:
- Is it easy to brand?
- Does it stand for something that uses can associate with?
- How easy would it to get it ranked?
- Does it assist with link popularity?
Brand
In a crowded market, brand offers a point of differentiation and distinction. Do not use hyphens because the tendency is that users forget the using hyphens.
It is easier to build links to branded domain names. They are more credible and adds value to your content. Directory editors also link you as your domain name not just keyword links.
The downside of generic keyword branding is that it is more difficult to trademark and that it is harder to rank in the search results than an obscure name. if you use an obscure name, it is neccessary to build your brand organically and in all likelihood is an expensive value proposition since no-one would be searching for your obscure name unless they know about it.
Association and Search Frequency
Domains such as "movie.com", which contain the generic term "movie" have existing search frequency. The keyword query term "movie" has a global monthly search volume of 277,000,000 searches for the month of March 2010 on Google. The value of a domain is attached to four basic key performance indicators: the search volume of the exact phrase in the domain (size), the domain extension (.com is worth more in the secondary market), how lucrative that industry is (usually defined by cost-per-click terms) and potential. The greater the search volume of a specific keyword, the more type-in traffic that specific keyword-based domain receives. In regards to type-in traffic it is important to remember that .com enjoys higher direct traffic rates.
Ranking and Link Popularity
In search engine optimization, "off page" factors play a bigger role in search rankings than on-page factors. Your domain name becomes more popular when it gets linked to by other website. Link popularity refers to the number and quality of the incoming links that are pointing to your website. The basic idea is that websites linking to you consider your site important enough to deserve a link form their pages. Getting relevant links pertaining to your content and keywords earn credibility from Google, Bing and Yahoo and they reward you by increasing your rankings. If your keyword is included in the link that other websites link you as, then search engines assume that you are important for that specific keyword and rank you higher. In other words, if your domain was "movies.com" it would be easier to rank for the term "movies" because people would naturally link to you as "movies.com" which contains the exact match of the keyword the users are searching for.
Remember though. The domain name can win a battle, but not war in SEO. It helps to choose the right domain name from the start, even if you pay premium. It is your brand after all.
Related Articles: Making money in the domain name business: Secrets, advice and tips to domaining profit
This is why I like Wordpress.
Social Media Optimization (SMO) strategy tips: Marketing strategies to increase traffic to your content
Social Media Optimization (SMO) strategy tips: Marketing strategies to increase traffic to your content
It is no longer enough to have a site that is only optimized for the traditional search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. A search engine is defined as a software program that searches a database for specified keyword queries. Its objective is to output the results that contais or are related to the specified terms searched for. The search paradigm has shifted to other devices that are not bound by web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Mobile devices, apps, social media and other content-delivery frameworks have extended online marketing as we know it. The decentralization of content has extended beyond traditional newspapers and search engines and moved on to other forms such as social media sites.
According to online trends and analysis website HitWise, Facebook surpassed Google Search as the most visited site on the web in March 2010. Google Search accounted for 7.03 percent of US Internet visits last week, compared to 7.07 percent for Facebook. Facebook is a clear example of the shift of search discovery into other areas where users hang out and interact with information. As the twitter phenomenon has shown, real-time search has become a force to be reckoned with and Google as well as Microsoft have taken notice. It is integral that content creators optimize their profiles, images, blogs, videos and other content on social neworks so that they can be easily located by the community members who search using the social network site's proprietary search engine.
An advantage of optimizing social media search is that it can help relevant link building and boost your main site's search engine ranking. The objective though is to embed content in areas where people gather to share information and initiate conversations about products, services and brands. By tapping into distribution channels other than Google and Bing, you diversify and expand upon the opportunities that the new dynamic Internet has to offer.
There are many tips and strategies for making sure that the content you create is optimized for distribution on the Internet as well as making it buzz-worthy and viral:
- Keyword List & Landing Pages: Create a keyword list of your main terms and add content relevant to those terms. Make sure the title headline is catchy and engages the reader. Attach a subtle call to action in your content and attach it to your value proposition.
- PDF & Document Files: Use your most important keywords in the title and headers of the document. Also make sure you insert relevant keywords and descriptions in the PDF meta data as well as the filename. Also post these files on Docstoc.
- Videos and Powerpoint Presentations: Make sure that you serve all videos on your site and attach a summary transcript of the content below the video. Use the main keywords in the page's title tag, meta data, video title, caption and filename. Also upload the video on Youtube an dother video-sharing sites and repeat all the tagging steps again. Do not forget to add a link back to the reference page where the main video is hosted on your site. Repeat these steps for Powerpoint and other presentations and post them on SlideShare and Docstoc.
- Images: Fill your image filenames, ALT tags, tags, captions and descriptions with your relevant keyword terms. Make sure you post your images in photo sites such as Flickr.
- Blogs and Press Releases: Use the relevant keywords in the title tag, headers, description and page copy content. Make sure you embed all media, including video and images, into the blogs and press release pages with keyword-rich filenames and content.
- Twitter and Facebook Status Updates: While these will not increase your ranking in search engines, there is a chance that your status updates can show up in Live Search and indexed twitter pages. If possible, use direct URLs with keywords and do not use URL shorteners.
- Create Keyword-Rich Profiles in Social Media Sites: Create social accounts with the target keywords selected and pay attention to the header and title of your profile. Facebook fan pages and Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles do very well getting indexed by Google.
- Use Sitemaps: Use Google XML sitemaps appropriately depending on application. Not only does Google offer regular site map integration, it also offers specialized site maps for news, video, search, geo as well as mobile.
- Build your Following: Your following in all social networks is a point of entry for both visitors and search engine spiders. For example, the more followers you have on Twitter, the quicker your page is indexed by search engines.
- Write Relevant Content which is worthy of ReTweeting and Sharing: The content created must be engaging enough that the reader would want to share it or re-tweet it to their own network of friends and followers. Content becomes viral when others want to spread it and they believe that by spreading, it will enhance their power in areas such as reputation, income, friendships or relationships. Viral messages are exponential in nature while word of mouth (WOM) have a tendency to fade out quickly.
- Pitch to the Social Influencers: Key blogger influencers such as Techcrunch and Mashable can also amplify your message. be sure that anything you submit to highly visible sites for press consideration are concise, personalized, related to their core audience and more importantly be a compelling story or product that they would want to cover. It also helps if it has not been covered extensively by other news sources and is exclusive.
Other related articles:
This has been coming for a while now, better to be a little bit ahead than behind.
Job / Career / Calling — Matt Mullenweg
0Job / Career / Calling
Filed under: Quote
Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis:
Most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling.
- If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.
- If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige.
- If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout, “Thank God it’s Friday!” You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.
I'm really starting to like the name Matt ;)
SEO for Images, Photographs and Pics: Google, Bing & Yahoo Image / Photo / Pic Search Engine Optimization
Google Images - Photo / Image / Picture Search Engine Optimization - SEO for Photos, Pictures / Pics
Search engines have difficulties reading a pic or photo, especially when the image file’s content is poorly described. A significant amount of relevant traffic is lost as a result of poor annotation. The most effective way to make images and photos visible to search engines is to optimize the way you describe and present each image file.
There are a 5 ways to increase your chances to be found via image search:
Make sure the image filename describes the content of the photo e.g. seo.jpg
Use hyphens to separate the words describing the image in the filename e.g. seo-tv-search-engine-optimization.jpg
Place all image files in a folder called “images”
Use both an “alt” tag attribute and a “title” tag attribute to describe the content.
Make sure that the “alt” tag attributes are 2 to 12 words long and relates to your page’s content in a natural, grammatical manner that would make sense to users. The “title” tag attributes can be longer and can read like a full sentence.
The filename, “alt” and “title” tag attributes all help search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, understand the contents of your images/photographs/pictures online.
Here is an example of the HTML source code of an optimized image of the "SEO.tv" logo photo and how it appears on a web page:
< img src="seo-tv-search-engine-optimization.jpg" border="0" alt="SEO.tv" title="SEO.tv search engine optimization company" width="275" height="275" >
Here is how the SEO optimized image appears on the webpage:
Great tip for photographers.
