Transcendigital blog

Michael Arrington said he has confirmed reports that Google employees call Google Friend Connect, “Friendsense.”

Friend Connect is Google’s social widget that site owners can add to their site to help bridge other Google account users together. Google launched it early this year and then made it widely available to anyone to add to their web sites. Arrington suspects that Google will soon monetize Friend Connect “as a shoehorn to insert advertising onto third party websites.” I would not argue with that.

Original Article Link:searchengineland.com/google-to-monetize-friend-connect-15953

It has been an active weekend for Google. Google has added additional search
options to Google Image Search. Google has also introduced a “What’s Hot” area
to Google Reader Blog. Finally, Google is testing showing search history
within Google search suggestions.

Google has added additional search options by style. So in addition to
searching for faces or photo content types of images, or news content, you can
also search for line drawings, and clip art.

Google Operating System reports that some users are seeing Google web history
results in Google search suggestions. So when you type a search phrase at
Google.com, up comes search suggestions. Typically, those search suggestions
are presented based on how popular the queries are but now Google is showing
some people search results based on their search history. To me, this is a
great addition to Google search suggestions.

Article Link:searchengineland.com/google-adds-style-options-to-image-search-search-history-found-in-search-suggestions-google-reader-blog-adds-whats-hot-15935

Attackers are exploiting the just-patched vulnerability in Internet Explorer
(IE) by hiding malicious ActiveX controls in Microsoft Word documents, a
security company said today.

“Inside the document is an ActiveX control, and in that control is a line that
makes it call out to the site that’s hosting the malware,” said David Marcus,
director of security research and communications for McAfee Inc.’s Avert Labs.
“This is a pretty insidious way to attack people, because it’s invisible to
the eye, the communication with the site.”

Embedding malicious ActiveX controls in Word documents isn’t new — Marcus
said he had seen it “a time or two” — but using an ActiveX control to ping a
hacker’s server for attack code is “definitely an innovation,” he added.
“They’re stepping it up.”

The rogue documents can be delivered as attachments to spam e-mail or offered
up by hacked sites.

Article Link:computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9123898&intsrc=hm_list

Only days after Google Inc. dropped the beta tag from its Chrome browser, the
company issued an update that fixes more than 30 bugs.

Earlier this week, Google delivered Chrome 1.0.154.39, a developer-only build
that has not been sent to all users through the browser’s update mechanism.
Chrome users, however, can reset the browser to receive all updates, including
the developer editions, with the Channel Chooser utility.

The 1.0.154.39 build applies 31 bug fixes, none of them related to security.

In a post to the company’s blog, Mark Larson, Chrome’s program manager,
highlighted a fix designed to make Chrome more compatible with Windows Live
Hotmail, Microsoft Corp.’s Web-based e-mail service.

Article Link:computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9123861&intsrc=hm_list

When you click the top More button at Google Maps, you can now select a “Videos” option that will show location-related YouTube videos on the map (not sure if non-YouTube videos are supported too, I just spotted YouTube ones among the several ones I checked)*. Other, older More options are photos from Panoramio as well as Wikipedia entries.

Oringinal Post found here:blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-12-16-n18.html

Many people have been asking me about search optimization lately. Seems folks are having a hard time remembering the basics and are trying to look for ranking shortcuts again.

So, here’s a quick six point refresher:

1. Build web sites that have good, useful information or content
2. Make your pages light and fast to load
3. Use keywords in your title tags and text headers
4. Use meta tags: sparingly perhaps, but intelligently as well
5. Make sure your usability is designed as much for your human visitors as for the search engine spiders hitting your site, (i.e. don’t make things difficult to discern for either of them – like having text buried in images–spiders still can’t read that guys!)
6. Make sure you optimize your site for both navigation and linking structure.

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.

2. Never give up.

3. When you are ready to quit, you’re closer than you think.

4. Accept the worst possible outcome.

5. Focus on what you want to have happen.

6. Take things a day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward.

8. Be quick to decide.

9.  Measure everything of significance.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing.

12. Never let anybody push you around.

13. Never expect life to be fair.

14. Solve your own problems.

15. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

16. There’s always a reason to smile.

The online user-generated encyclopaedia Wikipedia is considering a radical
change to how it is run.

It is proposing a review of the rules, that would see revisions being approved
before they were added to the site.

The proposal comes after edits of the pages of Senators Robert Byrd and Edward
Kennedy gave the false impression both had died.

The editing change has proved controversial and sparked a row among the site’s
editors.

Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, is proposing a system of flagged revisions,
which would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be
approved by one of the site’s editors, before the changes were published.

This would mean a radical shift from the site’s philosophy that ostensibly
allows anyone to make changes to almost any entry.

In a blog entry, Mr Wales said the “nonsense” of the false reports would have
been “100% prevented by Flagged Revision” and said he wanted the changes to be
implemented as soon as possible.

Original Article Found here:news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7851400.stm

TweetNews is a new search engine that uses hot Twitter topics to bring more relevance and freshness to news search. It’s a pet project developed by Vik Singh, a member of Yahoo’s BOSS team.

As Vik describes it on his personal blog, fresh news often doesn’t have enough links to rank well in a traditional algorithm. But TweetNews replaces links with Twitter conversations as a signal; news stories that are being talked about the most on Twitter will rise to the top of a TweetNews search.

t’s an interesting mashup because it plays to the real strength of Twitter — its ability to report and spread news before traditional news sources, and its ability to serve as a barometer for what’s “hot” or important at any given moment. A great example happened just today, where one of the earliest and most remarkable photos of the US Airways crash in New York City was first published via Twitter.

Original Article Here:searchengineland.com/tweetnews-yahoo-programmer-melds-news-search-twitter-16178

Bruce Clay recently rolled out two new SEO tools. One tool is named the Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool and the other is a toolbar named SEMToolBar.

I used the Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool to run a test on the keyword “seo.” It shows me query counts for Google, Yahoo, and Live. It also shows the average click-through rate and cost-per-click price and which categories the keyword is in. In addition, it shows demographic data when you mouse over the keyword phrase.

I am not sure where they get the data from; I may have missed that in the blog post.

The other tool is a toolbar that reconfigures the search results pages of Google, Yahoo and Live Search. It shows keyword statistics at the top, and the results are numbered and annotated with PageRank score, backlinks total, site count, last cached date, last date spidered, cached text links, and more. Plus, when you visit a specific web site, much of this data is displayed in the toolbar.

Original Article and Post can be found here:searchengineland.com/bruce-clay-releases-two-new-tools-16030