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Let’s Hook Up!

If you are any one of these social networks, feel free to look me up and add me to your network or favorite me, whichever the case may be. If you see some here that you aren’t using yet, I’ve given a really quick synopsis of what they are and why you’d use them.


View blog authority

Technorati–probably the biggest blog directory and networking site.
My username there is ‘beefstooge’. I have a couple of active blogs listed there (including this one) and a couple of projects that are in the works. On Technorati, you “favorite” other blogs. They also have some great widgets you can use on your blog.


Digg!
Digg
I call this a social news filter. People nominate, or “Digg”, stories they like, and if other people like them they can Digg them as well, increasing the value of the story. Posts with high Digg counts are considered important and get displayed on the front page. Sort of a free market for the news. My name there is, you guessed it, ‘sadcox’. If you blog about something that is popular with Digg readers, be sure to submit it. This will result in a steady stream of traffic for some time to come.

Del.icio.us
I use del.icio.us as my primary bookmarking mechanism. Unlike bookmarking in your browswer, you can tag a bookmark into as many categories as you like. The other advantage is that you can reach them from anywhere, not just your computer. You are also able to tag stories for other people in your network. Read something you think I may like? Tag it as for:sadcox, and I’ll be sure to read it.

StumbleUpon Sadcox.StumbleUpon.com
Stumbleupon is just plain fun, but also a great way to drive traffic to your site. Using their browser toolbar, you can “stumble” onto great sites that other people have liked (you can choose to stumble only your friends’ favorites as well). For site owners, loads of traffic can result from a good stumble. My Stumbleupon address is sadcox.stumbleupon.com.

Twitter
My username there is ‘sadcox’. This one is great for quick-hit ideas or “tweeting” live events like debates, ball games, etc.

Blog Catalog–Blogger’s network and directory.
My username there is ‘sadcox’. Connect with other bloggers, build your network, and get widgets to display on your site.

MyBlogLog–Blogger’s network and directory
My username there is ‘sadcox’. Very similar to BlogCatalog. They were recently acquired by Yahoo!, so you can use your Yahoo! account to sign up.

There are countless other networking sites out there, but these are some of the bigger ones for bloggers and surfers. If there’s one I missed that you want to hook up on, let me know.

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SAFE Bill Makes Me Feel Vulnerable

I’ve read a lot of bellyaching today about the SAFE Act.  Mostly people are worried that free WiFi access will disappear from Starbucks, hotels, bars, bike shops, and airports.

But Ars Technica says:

the bill doesn’t require any active surveillance of user behavior, and it won’t affect your local coffee shop’s WiFi, despite what you may have read.

I think this bill is bad, but not just because I’m worried that free WiFi is going away.   I think it’s bad because it is, well, bad.  If strictly enforced, as some fear it will be, it is invasive.  If not strictly enforced, it is worthless.  Why?  Because it doesn’t actually fix anything.

Proponents of the bill say that it is an effort to curb child pornography.  What a noble cause.  The problem is, that this doesn’t actually address that problem.  It only increases the responsibility of providers to report this activity and increases the penalty on them for not reporting it.  I see this all too often at my job, where this type of thing is called a “countermeasure”.  Very telling.  It doesn’t move towards a solution to a problem, only a reaction to it.

No, this bill doesn’t mention coffee shops and restaurants.  But it doesn’t give them exemption either.  One of the sponsors says the intent of the bill is not to punish mom and pop shops offering WiFi. 

It is NOT the intent of the SAFE Act to target Wi-Fi providers but rather the entities that provide the internet to those conduits. 

Then I’m confused.  Why wasn’t it written clearly enough to express its intent?  And if passed into law, who will decide how should be applied?  My guess is the courts–yet another opportunity for judges to legislate from the bench.

By the way, only two members of the House voted against this Bill.  Guess who was one of them.

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Credit Card Regulation, Free Markets, and Paying Cash

The Coyote Chronicles challenges Free Marketers to defend deregulation of the credit card industry: 

You can make the argument that people who can’t pay their balances in full every month should not take out a credit card, but thats more than a little disingenuous since we would see a staggering drop in consumer spending if people only spent when they could pay cash. The restaurant and travel industries would suffer immediately. I doubt there would be a Black Friday at all. Don’t even get me started about the car business.

I’ll take a shot at this one.  First of all, Black Friday, car financing, and credit cards themselves are all fairly new concepts.  Somehow, civilization survived before they existed, and suspect it will survive long after they are gone.  The assertion that our economy is propped up by the insane amount of consumer credit that exists currently tells me that we are, as a country, living above our means.  The fact that the savings rate keeps declining while consumer debt continues to rise tells me that we are in denial of this fact.  Government regulation that enables this foolish behavior only delays the inevitable crash that must occur to correct the market and insures with each passing year that the crash will be harder.

What would happen to the economy if people stopped using credit cards and started paying cash?  One thing is for sure.  Every debt free individual would have greatly increased buying power because a higher percentage of his income would be available to purchase goods and services instead of paying interest on the Big Mac Value Meal he bought 4 months ago.

Hat tip to MCB.

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It’s All About The Process

Ken has a great post on a project his kids are working on.  They’ve researched 4th Amendment Supreme Court cases and are filming re-enactments (he hopes).  Technology has given them the opportunity to learn in a way that they couldn’t before, and even if they never get to finalizing filming and editing, he’s okay with that.  Unfortunately, others may not be as excited.

Because process doesn’t fill the seats and it surely doesn’t wow the eyes of the masses.

But it’s not about what they do with their understanding that creates the ‘wow’ factor; rather, it’s about how they reach that understanding that is the educational equivalent of CGI.

I had a ‘wow’ moment a few years ago that was very similar.  Unfortunately for me, I was 30 before I realized that the  process towards the goal is almost always more rewarding and educational than the goal itself.

Think about it.  Looking back, which did you enjoy more–graduation, or being in college?  Winning a championship in a sport, or the hard work you put into training so that you could win?  Getting the girl, or chasing her?

I’m on a tangent now.  Forget what I said, just read Ken’s entire post.

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First Annual Backlink Drive

This isn’t really an SEO oriented blog, but the topic does come up every now and then, usually relating to things like the importance of backlinks. Backlinks help in several ways–traffic, Technorait authority, Google PR–and are key to building a successful blog, or so I’ve read.

How do you get links? A couple of ways are pretty easy, but also pretty meaningless. Paying for links (I don’t and can’t afford it) can be risky, and submitting your site to a ton of directories that don’t get much traffic (I have) takes a lot of time.

My preferred way to get links is to write some good content that people who author blogs dig and want to talk about themselves. This is the best type of link in my opinion. It implies relevance to the other blog’s readers which produces traffic, it provides strength in measuring systems like Technorati, and most importantly, it strokes my ego. Seriously—the fact that someone liked (or hated) a specific post I wrote enough to comment on it is pretty cool.

The next best link is the one I’m asking for in this post–the Blogroll Link. I rank it second for one main reason–I’m not always sure what it means. It could mean that you like this blog in general, but not necessarily any one post specifically. It could mean that you are linking to get the attention of the blog you linked to in hopes of getting a link back. It could just mean that someone asked you for a link, and that’s the easiest way to give them one. That’s exactly what I’m doing here. I’m conducting my First Annual Backlink Drive by asking all of the folks who subscribe to the feed or visit on a regular basis to take a couple of seconds and add me to your blogroll.

There, that’s it…quick and painless. I figured this is a much better way to ask than emailing a bunch of folks individually. It saves time for everyone, and since you are probably reading this through a feed, you remain anonymous and don’t have to feel bad because you told me “no”.

By the way, the correct answer is “yes”.

Thanks! And feel free to spread this idea around amongst your own readers/subscribers. A backlink to the guy who gave you the idea would be much appreciated. 😉

I’m going to measure the success of this request by Tehcnorati. As of this posting, authority=49 and reacions=84. While I’m in the mood I’m going to go ahead and pen the draft for the Second Annual Backlink Drive, coming to this blog November 7, 2008.

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Ask Not What Google Can Do For You

I’d wager that most of this blog’s regular readers fall into two main categories. The first group is those who know me IRL and like to see me make an ass of myself. Lately that has been happening online with a keyboard much more frequently than late at night with a debit card. Probably not as funny, but they have the convenience of seeing it whenever they want. It’s a trade off.

The other group is made up of other people who are part of the blogosphere and, like the first group, like to see me make an ass of myself. I see a pattern developing here. Based on what I’ve seen and read on their sites, a large majority of these people are in it solely for the fame and glory of blogging. They can actually write, and they aren’t as concerned with the piles of nickels and pennies that can be piled up slowly by spending countless hours working on their layout, optimizing for search engines, reading message boards about search engines, and on and on.

So for those people who aren’t keeping up with the technical end so much, I’ll give you the quick and dirty version of what’s been happening with Google over the last few months. Whether you actually care or not, this is going to affect you eventually.

* A site’s Google’s PageRank (site relevancy) is influenced by links from other sites
* Naturally, this created a market for links, and people bought links from other sites to boost the PageRank of their site
* Google didn’t like this and is now penalizing link sellers who did not report paid links.
* Some people will stop selling links. Some people will sell links and not get caught. Other people who have never sold links will be wrongly penalized.
* All of these people could become angry.

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again–creating good, original content is your best strategy in the long run. You can game the system for a little while, but remember that the search engine belongs to them–they make the rules of the game.

For those who don’t like Google’s latest tactics, your choices are pretty simple. You can play Google’s game by their rules, you can play Google’s game by your own rules, or you can support a different search engine whose rules you like better. My official stance is that of Switzerland. Although unofficially….

My guess is that we are about to see several new web ranking systems that do not belong to Google. They’ve basically rendered PageRank useless. Don’t be shocked if some big players in the game jump ship from Google and start using their influence with their users to thwart Google’s current dominance.

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New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

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Some Interesting Tips and Tricks

One of the sites I check out pretty regularly, Daily Blog Tips, has a post writing contest going on right now. The topic is “Tips and Tricks”. Of course, there were several “how to get more traffic” and technical posts listed there, but I liked the ones that were a little “off” the best–tips and tricks on things that you may not even realize you need to read tips and tricks on.

Here are the five that I liked the most:
How to Keep Your Marriage, Despite Your Heavy Metal Addiction
Surviving Your Short Stay in Jail
How to Talk Like a Pirate
Find Out a Name You’ve Forgotten
Taking Photos at Concerts

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Two More Things I Love About This Country

Randy Couture1. We still produce men as tough as Randy Couture, the UFC Heavyweight Champion

Couture, 44, who defeated contender Gabriel Gonzaga by technical knockout in the third round, broke an ulna bone in his left forearm during the third round, said his assistant Valerie Haney.

“It happened on [Gonzaga’s] high leg kick at Randy’s head,” Haney said. “Randy blocked the kick with his left arm.”

Gabriel Gonzaga2. We don’t have to pay for health care for people who choose to smoke cigarettes, eat gravy as a side dish for every meal, or willingly put themselves in danger of being kicked in the head by cavemen like Gonzaga, who by the way was suffering from a shattered nose for the majority of the fight.

The Brazilians are still breeding some pretty tough dudes themselves.

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Anchor Text Matters!

Sending out the 411 to the other bloggers who read this–yes, the anchor text you use when linking to other bloggers matters, technically.

Michael Silence says:

In my more than five years of following blogs and my three years of blogging, it’s always been clear linking to the source is proper attribution.

It’s also concise.

This item, from the No Silence Here blog of Michael Silence on knoxnews.com, raises… — 14 words.

Link — one word.

What do you think?

For search engines, especially Google, relevant anchor text in a link passes page rank stregth to the original site/article. If the anchor text is irrelevant to the originating site/story, the strength of the referring page’s rank is not passed or is lower. In Michael’s case, the anchor text “Link” doesn’t help the NYT article as much as “New York Times” does. “Link” could be spammmy, “New York Times” probably isn’t.

Here’s a pretty good article on anchor text and links (see how I did that) and how Google views them.

Having said all that, it’s pretty odd that the guy would actually complain about it. Me, I’ll take any link I can get and hope that the context of the link is relevant. Worst case scenario–I get more readers. Best case–I get more readers and a Google boost.

There is quite a bit of discussion going on right now about Google’s statement that they don’t want to pass page rank between sites if the links are paid for. The thing is, how do you know if a link is organic or bought if the anchor text that creates the link is relevant to both the original source and the referring site?

Want to get confused even further? Try to decipher how Google really works by reading Matt Cutt’s blog.