SEO: Google's Next Big Move archive copy

By David Leonhardt

(Will your website be ready, or will you be playing catch-up six months too late?

November 2003 might go down in history as the month that Google shook a lot of smug webmasters and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists from the apple tree. But more than likely, it was just a precursor of the BIG shakeup to come.

Google touts highly its secret PageRank algorithm. Although PageRank is just one factor in choosing what sites appear on a specific search, it is the main way that Google determines the "importance" of a website.

In recent months, SEO specialists have become expert at manipulating PageRank, particularly through link exchanges.

There is nothing wrong with links. They make the Web a web rather than a series of isolated islands. However, PageRank relies on the naturally "democratic" nature of the web, whereby webmasters link to sites they feel are important for their visitors. Google rightly sees link exchanges designed to boost PageRank as stuffing the ballot box.

I was not surprised to see Google try to counter all the SEO efforts. In fact, I have been arguing the case with many non-believing SEO specialists over the past couple months. But I was surprised to see the clumsy way in which Google chose to do it.

Google targeted specific search terms, including many of the most competitive and commercial terms. Many websites lost top positions in five or six terms, but maintain their positions in several others. This had never happened before. Give credit to Barry Lloyd of SearchEngineGuide.com for cleverly uncovering the process.

For Google, this shakeup is just a temporary fix. It will have to make much bigger changes if it is serious about harnessing the "democratic" nature of the Web and neutralizing the artificial results of so many link exchanges.

Here are a few techniques Google might use (remember to think like a search engine):

1. Google might start valuing inbound links within paragraphs much higher than links that stand on their own. (For all we know, Google is already doing this.) Such links are much less likely to be the product of a link exchange, and therefore more likely to be genuine "democratic" votes.

2. Google might look at the concentration of inbound links across a website. If most inbound links point to the home page, that is another possible indicator of a link exchange, or at least that the site's content is not important enough to draw inbound links (and it is content that Google wants to deliver to its searchers).

3. Google might take a sample of inbound links to a domain, and check to see how many are reciprocated back to the linking domains. If a high percentage are reciprocated, Google might reduce the site's PageRank accordingly. Or it might set a cut-point, dropping from its index any website with too many of its inbound links reciprocated.

4. Google might start valuing outbound links more highly. Two pages with 100 inbound links are, in theory, valued equally, even if one has 20 outbound links and the other has none. But why should Google send its searchers down a dead-end street, when the information highway is paved just as smoothly on a major thoroughfare?

5. Google might weigh a website's outbound link concentration. A website with most outbound links concentrated on just a few pages is more likely to be a "link-exchanger" than a site with links spread out across its pages.

Google might use a combination of these techniques and ones not mentioned here. We cannot predict the exact algorithm, nor can we assume that it will remain constant. What we can do is to prepare our websites to look and act like a website would on a "democratic" Web as Google would see it.

For Google to hold its own against upstart search engines, it must deliver on its PageRank promise. Its results reflect the "democratic" nature of the Web. Its algorithm must prod webmasters to give links on their own merit. That won't be easy or even completely possible. And people will always find ways to turn Google's algorithm to their advantage. But the techniques above can send the Internet a long way back to where Google promises it will be.

source http://www.seo-writer.com/reprint/seo-google.html

Magic lighting effect in photoshop

Well what I want to show here is how to create a nice light and magic effect.

1 - Create a radial gradient, in this case from a purple to a really dark purple

2 - Here I added a really cool Icon of a magic hat from the Crystal Clear Collection by Everaldo

3 - Add some text, I used the source code of a site to get the text and apply the Distort >Wave filter

Create two stripes of text

4 - Rotate and place the text

5 - Add some light using glow : Use different values for each line of text, the secret here is the blending option COLOR DODGE..

Change the values of Spread, Size and Range

6 - Group the 2 lines of texts and with one apply a mask to make the stripes disappear at their ends.

7 - With the other group of text apply a gausian blur, after that delete some parts to show the non-blury text.

This will add a movement feel to the text, like they are really being magicaly created.

8 - Create a new layer below the text and with a regular big brush like 100px add a spot of light in white.

The layer must be below the text, otherwise the glow will not affect the white spot

9 - Make some smoke again, I used the eraser, I could've used the liquify as well

10 - Create a cloud: to do that make use a marquee with feather set to a value bigger than 20 and apply the render>clouds holding the command key(mac), ctrl key(win).

The same as the previous post, and the most important thing apply the COLOR DODGE blending options on it

11 - Sparks: For the sparks create a brush, play with the shape dynamics, scatering, and other dynamics. After that, apply a Outer Glow and Inner Glow to create the magic effect.

End - The result is really simple but at the same time it looks beautiful.

The whole process took me about 35 minutes, one thing I think is really cool is to apply the color dodge blending option to folder, and put blured elements inside of it. Using it you can create some really amazing light effects.

source http://abduzeedo.com/magic-lighting-effect-photoshop

How to fast Indexing Search Engine to website / blog

1. Create a link on that page is indexing search engines to the direction of our new website. We emulate the profile (for example: “www.friendster.com / okam” is a good example to link to the blog or our website. Because this page usually has terindeks search engine. The higher the position of the pages in search engines (PageRank) means the more quickly we terindeks new webiste.
You can contact your friend is terindeks the blog search engines to install a link to you.
* If the profile / emulate in your blog / Multiply terindeks already, you can install a link in your profile is.
* Every fill your blog. Google Analytic is a plug-in idea will always monitor your activities.
2. Submit manually through the following URL (FREE):
* Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
* Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
* AltaVista: http://www.altavista.com/addurl/
* DMOZ / ODP: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
* Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/support/get_archive.html
* MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
3. Submit the URL pay:
* Lycos: http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html
4. Before downloading you submit the URL of your website, make sure that:
* Website or blog so you have (not under construction).
* There are no dead links in your website.
* Website or made to your search engine friendly.

After you submit your URL, wait with patience. If the website you will be lucky terindeks in less than 24 hours, if not prosper you must wait 3 months, possibly even your application is not accepted Search Engine. You can re-submit if within 3 months of your website not appear in search engines.

What should be done during the wait? Building the link. Can be suddenly your website because nongol not submit manually, but because of a link from another website.

Congratulations to try.

Free Chart and Graph Solutions

Charts and graphs help the user to visualise data in a more meaningfull way than rows of text statistics. They are extensively used in reporting applications, for displaying earnings, website traffic etc - here we take a look at some pre-made scripts and frameworks available to the web designer or web application developer …

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Open Flash Chart - Open Flash Chart, is open source. It is free to use and you get the source code to fiddle with

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amCharts - Pie and donut charts, line and area charts, column and bar charts, scatter and bubble charts and an interactive map tool are all free for download

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Php / Swf Charts - PHP/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful PHP tool to create attractive web charts and graphs from dynamic data. Use PHP scripts to generate or gather the data from databases, then pass it to this tool to generate Flash (swf) charts and graphs. Any other scripting language (ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.) can be used with XML/SWF Charts (the XML version of the same tool.)

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Fusion Charts Free - FusionCharts Free is a flash charting component that can be used to render data-driven & animated charts for your web applications and presentations

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Yahoo! UI Library: Charts - The YUI Charts Control visualizes tabular data on a web page in several possible formats including vertical columns, horizontal bars, lines, and pies. Notable features include support for the DataSource Utility, customizable series and axes, a customizable mouse-over datatip, combination charts, and skinning

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Flot - Flot is a pure Javascript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side. The focus is on simple usage (all settings are optional), attractive looks and interactive features like zooming

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SAC - Simple accessible charts, An easy, fast and accessible way to display simple Data and beautify them with CSS. Works fine in FF, IE 7/6, Opera 9 tested on WIN XP

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Similie - Timeplot is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for plotting time series and overlay time-based events over them (with the same data formats that Timeline supports)

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PlotKit - PlotKit is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for Javascript. It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support

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Libchart - Libchart is a free chart creation PHP library, that is easy to use

Click here for source

6 Creative Reasons for Applying Blur to Photos

Blurring, at it’s most fundamental level is the softening of an image. It is standard procedure to use a very slight blur on photos straight off your digital camera as often they are overly sharp. Sharpness, of course, isn’t a bad thing but it is more beneficially applied at the end of your retouching sessions than at the beginning.

There are many other (more creative) uses for blur though. Here are some examples.

To Imply Depth

Depth of field looks best when done in the camera, but when compositing photographs, you can imply distance and depth by blurring further away objects.

To Make Type More Readable

Setting type over a busy image can make the type hard to read. Blurring the image behind the type can make it more readable and make for a nice effect. Look at this example from PSDTuts.

To Imply Speed

Even if the object in a photo is in perfect focus, applying a direction (or “motion”) blur can imply speed.

For An Appealing Background Image

Photoshop offers some interesting blur effects with their “Shape Blur” filter. Look how the martini splashes turn into squares here, which could make for a very nice background image.

For A Surreal Feeling

Selective blurring like the “Surface Blur” filter in Photoshop can apply really nice effects to some photos. See below how this effect makes the football players seems surreal with some areas blurry and some sharply in focus.

For An Illustrative or Cartoony Feel

Another selective blurring filter in Photoshop is the Smart Blur filter. This is good for removing fine detail in areas of similar color while keeping edges sharp. This can make for a very nice illustrative effect on photos or even cartoon-like in it’s extreme.

Click here for source

Create Temperature Converter with VB

With winter around and daily temperature change has become a concern for many people especially those who travel a lot. They are constantly checking out temperature readings everyday However, different parts of the world often use different temperature scales, some of them use Fahrenheit and some use Celsius, so the readings can be confusing. Therefore, it is nice if we have a program that can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa. And I have done just that using Visual Basic 6. The code is like this:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
Dim cel, Fah As Single
cel = Val(txtC.Text)
Fah = Val(txtF.Text)

If txtC.Text <> “” And txtF = “” Then
Fah = ((9 / 5) * cel + 32)
txtF.Text = Round(Fah, 1)
Else
cel = (5 / 9) * (Fah - 32)
txtC.Text = Round(cel, 1)
End If

End Sub

Private Sub Command2_Click()
txtC.Text = “”
txtF.Text = “”

End Sub

click here for source

Creating A Simple Web Browser

Basically everyone have to navigate the Internet using commercially produced web browsers such the Internet Explorer produced by Microsoft or those open source browsers designed by the experts such FireFox , Opera and the latest Chrome created by Google. However, isn’t it cool that if we can create our very own web browser that we can customize to our own taste ? Yes, you can do that in VB2008, and pretty easy too. In this chapter, I will show you how to create a simple web browser and get it running at in a few minutes. In the next chapter, I will show you how to add more features and functions to your existing web browser to make a more sophisticated one.

First of all, start a new project in VB2008 and name it with any name you like. Here I am just using the name webbrowser. Change the name of Form1 to webbrowser and the text property to My First Web Browser and set its size property to 640,480. Next, you need to add an engine so that your web browser can connect to the Internet, and this very engine is the WebBrowser control, located on the Toolbox on the left side, set the size property to 600,400. Next, drag a text box and place it at the bottom of the WebBrowser control, this will be the address bar where the user can enter the URL. Lastly, place a command button beside the text box and label it as Go. The design interface is shown below:

Figure 19.1: The Design Interface

The code for the web browser is surprisingly simple, it is only a single line code! Double click on the Go button and key in the following code:

Public Class Form1

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

myWebBrowser.Navigate(TextBox1.Text)

End Sub

End Class

Now run the the program , type in any URL and click the Go button. You will be able to browse any web page you want.

Figure 19.2: The Runtime Interface

click here for source