LCD vs Plasma

Flat-panel TVs provide a large viewing area with almost no intrusion into your HDTV viewing room… and they offer high-quality HDTV pictures. But which one should you choose: LCD or Plasma?

LCD

Liquid Crystal Display HDTVs can make for excellent HDTV viewing. Here are a few reasons why:

Excellent color: LCDs can display millions of colors and do so accurately (meaning the color coming off the screen is faithful to the color in your broadcast or recording).
PC-monitor-capable: You can use many LCD HDTVs as big (huge!) PC monitors.
No burn-in: HDTVs that rely on phosphors, such as CRTs and plasmas, can, under certain circumstances, experience burn-in, where ghost images are permanently burned into the screen. LCDs are immune from this phenomenon – so feel free to play video games, watch the CNBC stock ticker all day, and so on with no fear.
Inherently progressive: LCDs use millions of tiny transistors that can be individually controlled by the “brains” inside the display. So LCDs can easily handle progressive-scan sources.

You may want to consider a few other issues before you choose an LCD HDTV:

Expensive for their size: LCD HDTVs are great, but they’re not cheap. Of course, all flat-panel TVs are relatively pricey, but LCD HDTVs typically cost more, per inch, than do plasmas.
Poor reproduction of blacks: Black images are among the hardest for most TVs to reproduce. LCD TVs tend to produce grays, not blacks.
Limited viewing angle: LCDs typically have a poor viewing angle – the angle you can sit away from perpendicular and still see a clear image on-screen. Manufacturers have been working diligently to improve this characteristic (with some success). Check the specs before you buy – most LCD HDTVs have viewing angles listed in their specifications.
Slow pixel response time: The individual pixels within an LCD HDTV take a slight amount of time to change color and intensity. For really fast-moving video content, an LCD TV can end up with some artifacts (visible flaws) where the picture from a previous frame is still slightly visible on-screen as the new one is being drawn. Typically, this isn’t a huge and noticeable deal, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you may notice it.
Limited brightness: The LCD is a transmissive system – light is shined through the liquid crystals. Some of that light gets absorbed or reflected back away from the viewer. This means that LCD displays are not as bright as CRT, plasma, and even some projection TVs – this could be a factor in a brightly lit room.

PLASMA

Plasma TVs combine a thin, compact chassis with a truly large (even huge) screen size, and then add beautiful high-definition pictures to the mix.

A plasma screen contains literally millions of gas-filled cells (each one acting as a single image pixel) trapped between two pieces of glass. An electrical grid zaps these cells and causes the gases to ionize (and ionized gas is plasma – hence the name). The ionized gases, in turn, cause a layer of phosphor on the viewer’s side layer of glass to light up.

Despite their compact dimensions (in the “depth” direction at least – many plasmas are only about 4 inches deep), you can find plasma HDTVs in 42-, 50-, and even 60-plus-inch sizes. Imagine a 4- or 5-inch-deep HDTV that spans 5 feet diagonally, and you can see the instant appeal of plasma.

Other benefits of plasma displays include:

Excellent brightness: Plasma HDTVs don’t rely on a light bulb shining through or reflecting off of something (as an LCD or DLP system does). Plasma brightness is even better than CRT’s in some ways because the picture is evenly bright across the entire screen. In a CRT, on the other hand, you always have some slight (or not so slight) difference in brightness as the electron beam reaches different parts of the screen.
High resolution: The finest plasma TVs have such high resolutions (and such smooth images) that they look like nothing more than beautiful film images.
Progressive by nature: All the pixels on the screen light up simultaneously. You can have progressive HDTV sources (such as 720p) and non-HDTV sources (such as progressive-scan DVD players) displayed to full advantage on a plasma HDTV.
A wide viewing angle: Plasma displays have a good picture even when you’re sitting “off axis” (not perpendicular to the screen surface). This is a huge benefit for smaller rooms, where viewers may sit relatively far off to the sides of the screen, at wider angles.

Plasma’s not perfect, of course:

Susceptible to burn-in: Any system that uses a phosphor screen to display video can fall victim to phosphor burn-in.
Shorter lifespan: Another phenomenon of any phosphor-based display system is that eventually the phosphors “wear out” or lose their brightness. This is a subtle and slow process, but it inevitably happens.
Less-than-perfect color reproduction: Although plasma displays can produce a breathtaking array of colors, a lot of sets have the unfortunate tendency to make red colors look more orange than true red. If you’re a huge fan of slasher horror flicks, this may take away some of your fun!
Poor reproduction of black: Plasma TVs fall short in the realm of reproducing black images. Most plasmas do slightly better job than LCD TVs at black reproduction, but they fall short of CRTs and some projection systems

Now you see! But which one to choose? You make the choice.

Solution For Blogger Images Disappearing | Blogger Hosted Images Doesn't Appear/Show/display Regularly

Why my blogger, blogspot images doesn't show/disappearing sometimes? Have any solution for blogger image disappearing that appear blogger images regularly? In my case I am not only using blogger image in my posts although my all templates images hosted on blogger and in the recent days some times blogger images hosted doesn't show/disappearing and without my template images my blog look like spoil so what is the solution of blogger image disappearing, that blogger hosted images will show /appear always. we have done for our all template images of this blog now my images now show although blogger hosted images don't show/disappear but my images will appear always. So,

How To get solution for Blogger Hosted Images Disappearing or doesn't show/display or disappear some times.

Although the old images will display/appear but at this time there are some problem of blogger hosted images so sometimes the blogger images appear and some times disappear and we have seen that blogger has been changed the path of blogger hosted images and still it is in picasa, A google photos storage service. So if you upload any image to your blogger then you will get the new path of your images which is different from the old path of blogger so the new images will display/appear at the time at which the old images not display.
So, is there any solution for old images that will display/appear regularly? Yes you can changes the path your old blogger hosted images to the new hosted path without uploading again.

The old blogger image hosted path was look like,

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d23RhflOeI4/TStOCAF9SgI/AAAAAAAAAG4/9qVxZ-9dFVc/s1600/ordered+unordered+html+lists.jpg

now just you have to change 4.bp.blogspot.com or it can be 2.bp.blogspot.com or 1.bp.blogspot.com or any thing just you have to change it with lh5.googleusercontent.com so your new URL of your old images will,

http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_d23RhflOeI4/TStOCAF9SgI/AAAAAAAAAG4/9qVxZ-9dFVc/s1600/ordered+unordered+html+lists.jpg

You can copy the above both images path and paste it to your browser and check it is working or not. Now your new image path will always show while your old image path doesn't  work in any case.

You done!

AOL steps up news, online ad sales push with $315 million buy of Huffington Post news site

The acquisition announced Monday is AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's most aggressive play so far as he tries to reshape a fallen Internet icon and boost efforts in news and online advertising. It is the largest purchase the company has made under Armstrong, a former Google advertising executive hired by AOL to engineer a turnaround.

The Huffington Post ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites and draws 25 million U.S. visitors each month. It has built its popularity by compiling news from a wide selection of other media outlets, with links to articles and video on everything from politics to style to food. The site combines that type of aggregation with original work by its own small staff and blog posts from celebrity contributors who work for free in return for a platform to express their opinions. Bill Gates has written for Huffington Post, along with President Barack Obama, Robert Redford and several university presidents.

But just as important as gaining the site itself, the deal adds Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to AOL's management team. Once the deal closes later this year, Huffington will run AOL's growing array of content, which includes popular technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch, local news site Patch.com and online mapping service MapQuest.

Although some analysts say that AOL is paying a lot for the Huffington Post brand, Benchmark Co. analyst Clayton Moran believes the price isn't a huge hit for the company in the short term, especially since it helps put to rest any question that AOL is now an online media company. Bringing Huffington Post to AOL gives it access to quality content and will drive new users to its site, replacing those the company has lost over time, he said. And the price is essentially "the hiring fee to get Arianna," technology analyst Rob Enderle says. Although he described the purchase as an "out-of-left-field" decision, he thinks the move "could put AOL back on the map."

Huffington Post grew quickly from startup to online colossus. Over time, it launched city-specific pages and developed a roster of sections such as food and books. The work of its 70-person paid staff is augmented by content from news outlets and 6,000 bloggers who write for free. Outsell Inc. analyst Ned May said the Huffington Post "has done a fantastic job of building content creation. And AOL can monetize it."

AOL sorely needs to. The company rose to fame in the '90s with its dial-up Internet service, managing to buy media company Time Warner Inc. in 2001 at the height of the dot-com boom. The corporate marriage never really worked, though, and AOL's main source of revenue began drying up as consumers flocked to speedier broadband Internet connections. After nearly a decade of attempts at integrating the two, Armstrong was brought in to prepare AOL to separate from Time Warner, and the companies split in Dec. 2009.

Although analysts say AOL's decision to buy Huffington Post is sound, Enderle warned that putting Arianna Huffington into a position of power could eventually threaten Armstrong's job security if AOL still struggles.

Gartner analyst Andrew Frank added that the deal is risky in the sense that media acquisitions are inherently risky these days. 

"There is a lot of effort ahead for online media to recapture the glory days when media was booming business," he said. "Deals like this offer hope. On the other hand you can't really dismiss the somewhat uneven record AOL has had with acquisitions."

Beyond Time Warner, another of AOL's well-known failed acquisitions was social network Bebo, which AOL bought in 2008 for $850 million and then unloaded two years later to Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount thought to be a fraction of what it paid.

Regardless, both parties clearly feel optimistic about this deal. In an interview Monday, Arianna Huffington said it seemed like the right move because she and Armstrong share the same vision for online content. She first spoke with Armstrong at the Quadrangle Conference in New York in November, where they were nearly finishing each others' sentences when talking about where they saw their companies going.

"I see this as a real acceleration of the goals that Tim has had for AOL and I have had for the Huffington Post," she said.

In a separate interview, Armstrong said the deal is a "tremendous opportunity" for AOL that brings an influential audience that is attractive to advertisers. The site's visitors and many of its contributors include business leaders, doctors and university presidents, he said.

"Last year was about the turnaround; this year is about the comeback," he said.

Armstrong has been trying to turn AOL into a go-to place for a wide variety of news since he was hired to revamp the company in April 2009 while it was still a part of Time Warner. The makeover is designed to give people a reason to visit AOL's websites more frequently to help boost ad sales. AOL had just a 5.3 per cent share of the U.S. display advertising revenue in 2010, down from 6.8 per cent in 2009, according to eMarketer. Facebook, meanwhile, accounted for 13.6 per cent of display revenue last year, up from 7.3 per cent in 2009.

Armstrong also has reduced payroll by thousands of employees through layoffs and buyouts to try to boost AOL's financial performance and stock price. It has been a slog so far. AOL lost more than $780 million last year, largely because of accounting charges, and the company's stock is now worth slightly less than after it was spun off from Time Warner Inc. 14 months ago.

Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and other investors. They will get $300 million of the purchase price in cash. The remaining $15 million will be paid in AOL stock.

On a conference call with analysts, AOL Chief Financial Officer Arthur Minson said the company expects Huffington Post will generate $50 million in revenue this year, with a profit margin of 30 per cent. By comparison, AOL drew $2.42 billion in revenue last year. About 53 per cent came from ads, and most of the rest from its dwindling base of dial-up Internet subscribers. Minson said the deal will save AOL $20 million a year by allowing it to eliminate operations that overlap with Huffington Post.

If it wins regulatory approval as expected, the transaction would likely close in late March or early April.

Shares of AOL, which is based in New York, fell 75 cents, or 3.4 per cent, to close Monday at $21.19.

AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore in New York and Technology Writers Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.

Online company AOL Inc. is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news.

The acquisition announced early Monday puts a high-profile exclamation mark on a series of acquisitions and strategic moves engineered by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in an effort to reshape a fallen Internet icon. AOL was once the king of dial-up online access known for its ubiquitous CD-ROMs and "You've got mail" greeting in its inboxes.

Perhaps just as important as picking up a news site that ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites, AOL will be adding Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to its management team as part of the deal.

After the acquisition closes later this year, Huffington will be put in charge of AOL's growing array of content, which includes popular technology sites Endgadget and TechCrunch, local news sites Patch.com and online mapping service Mapquest.

The price that AOL is paying is "really just the hiring fee to get Arianna," said technology analyst Rob Enderle. "This is one of those out-of-left-field moves that actually makes a lot of sense. This could put AOL back on the map."

Armstrong, a former Google Inc. executive, has been trying to turn AOL into a go-to place for a wide variety of news since he was hired to turn around the company in April 2009 while it was still a part of Time Warner Inc. The makeover is designed to give Web surfers a reason to visit AOL's websites more frequently to help boost online ad sales.

At the same time, Armstrong has laid off hundreds of employees in an effort to boost AOL's financial performance and stock price. It has been a slog so far. AOL lost $782.5 million last year, largely because of accounting charges, and the company's stock is now worth slightly less than after it was spun out of Time Warner 14 months ago

The deal "will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers," Armstrong said in a statement announcing the deal.

Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. The site attracts 25 million monthly visitors. AOL will pay $300 million of the purchase price in cash.

Putting Arianna Huffington into a position of power could eventually threaten Armstrong's job security if AOL still struggles, Enderle said.

"This is a gutsy move on (Armstrong's) part because Arianna could end up running AOL," Enderle said.

In a blog post about the deal, Arianna Huffington praised Armstrong's vision for AOL and said they were on the same page as they discussed their ambitions for online news. "We were practically finishing each other's sentences," Huffington wrote about their discussions. She wrote that the deal was signed at the Super Bowl in Dallas, which she and Armstrong attended.

If it wins expected regulatory approval without any hitches, the deal will likely close in late March or early April.

Armstrong has been an aggressive deal maker since his arrival, but this marks by far the biggest acquisition of his tenure. Various published reports quoting unidentified people have also said he has talked to private equity firms about the possibility of trying to buy Yahoo Inc., another struggling Internet pioneer that remains a household name. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, though, has shown little interest in working with AOL.

AOL had just a 5.3 per cent share of the U.S. display advertising revenue in 2010, down from 6.8 per cent in 2009, according to eMarketer. Facebook, meanwhile, accounted for 13.6 per cent of display revenue last year, up from 7.3 per cent in 2009.

Huffington Post grew quickly from startup to online colossus and ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites. Over time, it launched city-specific pages and developed a roster of sections such as food and books. The work of its 70-person paid staff is augmented by content from news outlets and 6,000 bloggers who write for free.

Google Farmer Update

Recently Google made an algorithm change which is being referred to be most as the Google Famer Update.

The name is developed from the fact that Google seems to have targeted content farm sites the hardest, but there is more to this update than just that, which is what I’ll be discussing in this post.

Content farm sites, are sites that collect a large number, of usually low grade articles, sometimes in the 100’s of 1000’s, and because these sites have collected so many backlinks they tend to rank rather well in Google, until recently.

These content farm sites are seen as low grade and offering little value to the search engine user, and clearly something that Google is not interested in. Some sites include ezinearticles, ehow, articlebase and hubpages. I’m not saying that all the content on these domains are low quality, but they have lost a lot of rankings for their pages from this update, but again not all rankings.

I personally don’t use these sites for traffic, but I do use them for backlinks to my money sites, so I’ve not seen a massive change from the effect this update has had on these kinds of sites. However these sites are not the only ones to get hit. I know a few marketers who’s sites seem to have taken a knock in the Google rankings.

Whenever something like this happens, which is not uncommon by the way for Google, all us SEO marketers need to do, is give it some time for the dust to settle, start analysing what has happened to sites as a result and look for trends. I do this by looking at my own sites and all the pages and also by calling up friends in the industry and asking them what they’ve discovered. So that’s exactly what I did, and I’ve discovered a few interesting things I’ll now dive into.

Quality Keeps Big Google Happy

The most important thing to keep in mind when doing SEO, is that Google’s main goal is to keep their users happy and satisfied with the results they show. The last thing Google wants is for people to have poor user experiences and decide to try another seach engine instead. This would mean Google would make less revenue from all their pretty little ads getting clicked, hence why this recent Google Farmer update.

My point is, if you just start with quality, orginal content, on your sites, then you’re on the track from the beginning. Auto-blogging and the like, are bogus ways to build sites and are only going to get you slapped silly by Google sooner or later, so steer away from this sort of stuff.

The next question is, how else do we let Google know that our content is good quality?

It’s a good question, and I’m glad I asked it…the first thing is to make sure the content you use is orginal, and also in the context of the articles have some high quality outbound links to authority sites. When I say orginal I mean for your target pages, when I’m getting backlinks I use my Rapid Rewriter to spin the content and this works well and nothing has changed here, I just spend more time with my money pages adding images and video and take more time over the copy itself.

Until recently I had outbound authority links on the sidebar or footer of my pages, but I think it’s better to put them in the article itself, as that’s what Google will see as the most useful for a user. I know we don’t want people leaving our site, so don’t put these links at the top of the article, but instead place them lower down the page.

I always tell people and have for some time, to try your best to place a Youtube video in your article somewhere, as Google own Youtube, and one can safely assume they would be pleased to see you using them on your website. However on that point, and as a good friend of my Terry Kyle pointed out, it’s not a bad idea to mix it up a little and throw in some Metacafe videos in sometimes instead.

These videos are easy to embed in your webpages, all you have to do is copy the code they give you and paste it in.

Another thing to do is make sure your articles are atleast 500+ words long. In fact I usually go for 700+ words. Also if appropriate I link off to research papers, or quote them in my article also, as  I watched a video recently where Matt Cutts, head of Google anti-spam, said Google is looking for quality, and he mentioned research as something that is seen as quality. This won’t work all the time, but for a weight loss article, you could easily link to a government statistics page on obesity and heart disease or something.

I know a lot of you will be like me and produce reviews of products, so you may well be wondering how can I ensure Google sees my reviews as quality. One thing I’m doing is adding a few paragraphs in my reviews now that are about the niche that the particular product is in. For example if I’m reviewing a weight loss product, I’ll write about the product, then I will diverge slightly and discuss weight management in general and link to quality pages from these paragraphs, and then add in a video if I can that fits.

Social Proof

Twitter, Facebook and Digg are some of the more popular social sites on the web, and Google are always monitoring what goes on at these sites. Therefore it’s not a bad idea to encourage people to link to your content from these places.

I don’t do this on all my sites, but for this blog you’ll notice I’ve a retweet button next to each post, the last post I did got 225 tweets, which I’m sure Google noticed. I also have social bookmarking links under the post, but I intend to change this slightly now and add a large Digg icon under my Twitter one to make it easier for me to get Digg votes. Some people say these kind of links won’t help your rankings much, however even if they get you more exposure, you will gains natural links anyway.

Too Many Ads

Another thing to be aware of is the number of ads you have on your sites compared to the ratio. If you have far too many ads then Google will see the page as just one big commercial page with little value for the user, so keep this in mind when including advertising.

So in closing, remember Google is always on the hunt for quality content and they’re pretty darn good at working it out, so best to give it to them!

Developing SEO Clients

Recently it dawned on me that I get asked a lot from people to do their SEO for them. I mean non-internet marketers who want to get their business website to the top of Google.

In fact recently I received a random call from someone who had been given my number through a friend and wanted to know if I could help him.

Currently I don’t do this sort of consulting because I have too many other projects that I’m focussing on myself, but everytime I get approached it reminds me how much opportunity there is out there for this kind of marketing.

What a lot of internet marketers don’t realize, is that after you’ve been learning how to rank pages in Google for a while, even a few months, you know a lot more than most offline business owners ever will. If you’ve been doing this stuff for over 12 months then you would be considered a guru by many offline business owners.

When you’re battling against other affiliate marketers in a popular niche, you can be up against some tough competition, and this makes you get good at SEO and learn more about backlinking in order to compete. This is a great thing for your SEO skill level, because when you shift this and apply it to offline businesses it can seem like a walk in the park.

Another person approached me for some offline business SEO advice recently, and when I asked what the keywords they were trying to rank for in Google were, I was amazed at how easy these would be to get to the top 3 in Google. This sort of competition looked like a breeze to me, compared to some of the hard core affiliate marketing niches I battle away in.

My point for this post is that if you have the time and are looking for other ways to create a revenue stream for yourself, then doing SEO for offline businesses is not a bad idea. The competition can be much lower, especially if i’ts more of a specialized niche. There are a huge number of buinsesses that are desperate for more customers and would jump at the chance to pay someone to get them to the top of Google.

I was on holiday recently in New Zealand with my wife and son, and we were staying in a little bed and breakfast in small town in the South Island.

After talking with the owner of the B&B he wanted to know if I could help him get their business website for the B&B to the top of Google. Once you know a few things about SEO you’ll be amazed at the amount of money you can make by contracting yourself out as an SEO consultant to small businesses.

You could start small and just take on one or two businesses that would be easy to get to the top of Google and work out how much time it took you to achieve that and then build from there.

Understanding SEO

There are a lot of things to know when if comes to understanding SEO, and I can’t go over everything in a single post.

However what I will be discussing in this post, are the reasons why you might experience a drop in rankings in Google and what you can do about it. If you want some more detailed instructions on SEO, I recently did a post on this here: Increase Google Rankings.

I receive a substantial amount of email from my subscribers, and unfortunately I can’t reply to all of them, apologies if you fall into that category, however one question I get asked a lot is, why sometimes Google rankings drop suddenly?

People email me extremely worried that they have done something wrong and that the big scary Google monster has caught them and is now penalizing their affiliate marketing sites with a drop in rankings.

Of course Google can and do penalize sites all the time, but from my experience it’s not for common things that marketers like you and I would be doing.

The email questions I get go something like this: “Matt I have just built some links yesterday doing XYZ and now today my site is nowhere in Google, help!!! What have I done…please help me!!”

You might think I’m exagerating with that example, but believe me I’m not.

Anyway it’s never a nice feeling when you check your Google rankings, only to see your site has experienced some form of a drop. So now let me explain to you what I have come to realize about drops in Google rankings and the reasons for them.

Understanding SEO

If you have a new site, with no trust with Google yet, then not only can it take some time to show up in the first 10 pages of Google, but it can also go through what’s known as a “Google Dance”

A Google Dance, is simply where your site can bounce around in Google. I’ve had sites go from page 1 to nowhere and back again in the space of a few days. When I first experienced this, many years ago now, I was amazed, it felt like an emotional roler coaster ride!

However before I discuss the reason why this happens, the good news is that most (not all) Google Dances don’t last that long, usually a few days to a few weeks.

As I mentioned above the age of your domain plays a huge role. The older your domain, the more Google trust it and the more stable it will be.

When it comes to building backlinks to your sites, I’m with the popular opinion that the links you build to your sites won’t cause any form of penalty in most cases (I’ll explain more on this soon).

For example if you get backlinks from a site that was selling Viagra, just because the link to your site is coming from a site that some people would consider dodgy, it isn’t going to hurt you.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if this kind of link did hurt your sites rankings, the internet would become a free for all, and everyone would point these kind of links to their competitors in order to get them out of the way. In fact it would create a whole industry of “dodgy links sales” who’s service would be to get your competition out of your way. This would be anarchy and it just doesn’t work like this.

However Google does still occassionally penalize sites for their backlink activity, and it’s obvious to them that you have paid for backlinks. The best example for this was when Google Japan got penalized by Google.com for paying bloggers to write blogs posts about a new widget of theirs.

Matt Cutts, who is the head of Google’s anti-spam department, quoted this in regard to the matter: “Google.co.jp PageRank is now ~5 instead of ~9. I expect that to remain for a while.”

So you can see that Google doesn’t like people buying links at all, but this example was a very big issue, as it was Google breaking it’s own rules, so they really had to act on this one, in order to uphold their reputation.

I have never experienced this myself and I highly doubt small time internet marketers like me and you will ever have to worry about this.

There are however things that you should not do to your own site that Google doesn’t like, such as over stuffing keywords into your articles, or disguishing links in your sites as the same color as your background etc…these are Black Hat On Page SEO examples, and these are things that may get your site dropped by Google.

One other important thing to understanding SEO and backlinking, is the concept of Link Velocity. This is simply the speed at which you build your backlinks. It actually doesn’t matter if you build a million links a week, what does matter is if you don’t build a million the next week and instead build 10.

This looks very inconsistant and Google may give your site a drop in rankings if they see this kind of activity happening. I have built many sites and been much more aggressive in the beginning with my link building, mainly because I am not that patient, and then after the initial first month I have dropped off on the link building. The result was that nothing changed, no drop at all!

The reason I tell you this is that from my experience the velocity of link building that you would have to change needs to be quite substantial, and is probably more noticeable on a new domain. Think about a high page rank site that all of a sudden had some breaking news about a famous person or politician. The site would experience a pretty large surge of backlinks in a short space of time, and I doubt Google would penalize this.

So to summarize this post, backlinks will very rarely hurt your site and when considering how fast you build links, just try and be as conistant as you can, but don’t worry too much if you can’t keep up the initial blast you give your site, just make sure you have some low level of maintainence link building going on to ensure you secure your spot.

Lastly the Google dance happens to everyone, it’s quite a normal part of understanding seo so don’t hit the panic button if it happens to you. Just carry on building links and it will settle down, and perhaps practice some Tango moves with good old Google!

Summary of A TV Guide to Life

Some say that entire generations of Americans are being raised by the television…like that’s a bad thing. Not so, says author Jeff Alexander, long-time television writer, advocate of education by television, and recapper for the popular website Television Without Pity. Here, he offers the ultimate in life lessons as seen on TV. Topics include:

• Saved by the Bell: School on TV

• Somebody Save Me: Super Powers and Magic Spells

• Tell Me Why I Love You Like I Do: Relationships on TV

• Making A Living: The Workplace

• And more

With a smart, snarky style, Alexander guides readers through important lessons gleaned from years of TV reviewing (now in convenient book form!), freeing up a whole new generation to learn other things, like how to cure cancer or solve world hunger…or anything more useful than watching TV 

New Blog on Gender and Pop Culture

A friend whom I’ve known since college has launched a new blog with her husband, in which they offer their perspectives on gender and popular culture. They’ve only been at the blog,The Two Body Solution, for a short time, but they’re both English professors and have been writing about this sort of thing in other venues for a while. So far, the blog has covered topics such as The Bachelorette, Sarah Palin, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Urban Dictionary, the running of the bulls, obesity, and the “he-cession.”

They explain:

This is a blog about gender and American popular culture, written by two English professors. We both see the world through the lens of cultural studies, which means that we think that things like advertising, television, mainstream films, popular music and the internet are worthy of serious academic study and commentary. Our goal here is to focus on the way gender is constructed in the mass media. . . .

Our two body “solution” is to offer two distinct yet coordinated narrative voices, sometimes individually, sometimes collectively. Professor Moss (a woman) may comment on masculinity and Professor Bean (a man) may comment on femininity. Our point is not to provide a woman’s opinion on femininity and a man’s on masculinity (or at least not always to do so) but rather to open up gender for discussion on any terms we think are appropriate. We may post together, and usually we will comment on each other’s posts, but we also want to create a space in which each of us is free to stake out her own territory. We see this as a joint venture, but one that still allows for individual commentary.

You will find that each of us has a distinct way of positing a problem, analyzing a text, etc., but you will also notice the ways in which we see our shared, and often perplexing, culture similarly.

We talk a lot about gender in the LGBT community, but we certainly don’t have an exclusive on such matters. I think, in fact, that our understanding of gender can only benefit by including all perspectives, LGBT and not. Profs. Bean and Moss are also among the strongest LGBT allies I’ve ever met, in any case. If you’re interested in issues of gender and culture, check them out.

Apple Files Patent Suit Against Samsung Over Galaxy Line of Phones and Tablets

In the latest intellectual property suit to hit the smartphone industry, Apple is suing Samsung, alleging the Galaxy line of phones and tablets infringe on a number of the company’s patents and trademarks.

The suit, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Northern California, alleges patent and trademark infringement, as well as unfair competition. Apple is seeking injunctions, actual damages and punitive damages, as well as a finding that the alleged infringement was willful.

“It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging,” an Apple representative told Mobilized. “This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

Samsung said it would fight Apple’s legal action in the courts. “Samsung’s development of core technologies and strengthening our intellectual property portfolio are keys to our continued success,” the company said in a statement. “Samsung will respond actively to this legal action taken against us through appropriate legal measures to protect our intellectual property.”

The smartphone industry is filled with patent actions, including an ongoing battle between Apple and Nokia, suits between Microsoft and Motorola, as well as a suit by Oracle against Google, to name but a few. This one is particularly interesting because Samsung is a prominent supplier for a number of Apple products.

Apple’s lengthy court filing, seen by Mobilized, is filled with what Apple claims are examples of the copy-catting, ranging from core technology to screen icons to hardware shape. In particular, Apple cites patents issued in 2009 and 2010 that cover the physical design of the iPhone along with various trademarks for its app icons.

In addition to the patent and trademark claims, Apple also alleges infringement of the “trade dress” of the iPhone and iPad, a legal term meaning they sure look a whole lot alike. Apple charges that everything from the icons on the Galaxy screen to the way the phone is packaged infringe on Apple’s designs.

“Samsung’s Galaxy Tab computer tablet also slavishly copies a combination of several elements of the Apple Product Configuration Trade Dress,” Apple says in its suit, noting that Samsung’s tablet, like Apple’s, uses a similar rectangular design with rounded corners, similar black border and array of icons.

Even as Apple is filing its latest claims, the company suffered a setback in earlier cases it has pending against HTC and Nokia with the U.S. International Trade Commission. According to Bloomberg, ITC staff has recommended siding against Apple in those cases, which also involve phone patents.

Apple’s suit against Samsung not only contains lots of harsh words, but also has lots of pretty pictures, including some that show side-by-side shots of Samsung’s products stacked up against Apple’s patent diagrams and against Apple’s products themselves. In one head-to-head comparison, Apple shows the iPhone 3GS next to the original Galaxy i9000 model sold in South Korea last year.

Revealed: Hidden Benefits of DPA Compliance

There is a common misconception that complying with the UK Data Protection Act (DPA) is a chore, and that data controller’s only deal with this issue to avoid data breaches, fines, and brand / reputation damage. While these are all good reasons to become DPA compliant, there are hidden benefits that many people are unaware of, such as:

• Saving money – Storing excessive amounts of data that you will never use can be expensive and a headache to manage. DPA compliance will bring down your data storage costs and reduce manual processes which, in turn, will deliver efficiency savings.
• Increase repeat business – DPA compliance improves the integrity of your data, including your customer data. You will improve your marketing capabilities through better segmentation, improved targeting and higher ROI.

These are just two of the benefits that DPA compliance can bring to your organisation. For a more in depth understanding of the 8 principles of the DPA;
powers of the Information Commissioner; individuals’ legal rights; the new DPA enforcement regime and options available for ensuring compliance, plus more benefits that DPA compliance will bring – attend our 1-day DPA Foundation Course: