Jackass 3D Teaser = Wicked Dank

Earlier today when I got home from work I poured myself a nice glass of my roommate's home brew and decided to "surf" the internet while I sipped the sweet and hoppy IPA. I never usually surf the web so I really didn't know what to do. All my friends surf the internet and find the funniest, craziest, most painful videos and photos. I never know how they find all that nutty stuff so I thought I'd give it a shot.  I usually have something to Google, some emails to check, the twitter-verse to browse and I usually find most of my stuff there (as far as stupid, funny, interesting, eye catching media my friends dig up) So needless to say, I didn't know where to start. First thought that came to mind, YouTube. When I clicked on the most popular button I was immediately drawn to the Jackass 3D teaser! These Jackass guys are just as they are called JACKASSES and I could not imagine what they will do with the 3D. Check it out and btw don't drink anything during the Jackass 3D Teaser because I took a sip during and it nearly came out my nose. Anyways watch it below or click the link . Enjoy its wicked dank!!

Wicked Dank CRF Conversion

I have been looking into turning my 2003 CRF 450 into a street legal supermoto machine. I am still up in the air about what kit I want to get or if I want to piece it together myself. The first kit that I found was from Motostrano. They actually have many kits buts since I am interested in road use the Street Legalizer was the kit that caught my eye. This kit includes everything that I would need to make my CRF street legal and more.

• Continental Supermoto Tires 120 Front, 150 Rear (SET)
• Warp 9 Supermoto Wheels, 17x3.50 front mated with a 17x4.25 rear
• Set of Supermoto Size Tubes
• Stainless Steel Wave Brake 320MM Front Rotor
• Anodized Brake Caliper Relocator
• Rear Steel Rotor
• 7075 T6 Aluminum Sprocket
• Acerbis Dimension Universal Headlight, DOT Approved
• Acerbis LED Universal Brake Tail Light, DOT Approved
• 4 Universal DOT Turn Signals, DOT Approved
• Universal Control switch with Signals, Headlight, Horn, On/Off
• Universal Wiring Harness
• Universal Front and rear brake light switches
• Universal Horn mechanism
• Pair of Acerbis universal off-road mirrors.
• Universal Reflective Strip Kit (RED)
• Universal Relay Flasher
• Acerbis Supermoto Fender (BLACK)

I also found this kit from Epic Motorsports that is just about the same kit as Motostrano but it is 100 bucks less. I do not care about the $100 difference when I am spending $1600 I just want to get the highest quality possible.

• Warp9 Supermoto wheel set (3.5x17 front, 4.25x17 rear)
• Continental Conti-Force SM DOT Tires (120/70-17 front, 150/60-17 rear)
• 320mm Front wave rotor
• Billet anodized front caliper adapter bracket
• Rear wave rotor
• 17" tube set
• Polisport MMX headlight
• Acerbis LED tail light
• Acerbis supermoto front fender
• Stainless steel front brake line
• Front and rear hydraulic brake switches
• 44-47T rear sprocket
• Stator with lighting coil
• Universal Voltage Regulator/wiring kit

 

Any one have any ideas or better packages that I could use to turn my 03 CRF 450 into a street shreddin machine!!!

Wicked Dank KX250F....Truly a Master Piece

Kawasaki just introduced its new and improved 2011 KX250F for the summer and Dirt Rider had a chance to get their hands on one. What are the new improvements you may be asking, well there are over 30 changes that they have made for the 2011 bike. The first and probably the biggest change that Kawasaki did on this bike was the introduction of the DFI (Digital Fuel Injection) technology.

From the naked eye it is hard to see what is different about this bike, but once you get on it there is no question that Kawasaki did their homework with this rocket. The DFI is said to provide a quicker response on the throttle resulting in increased acceleration and torque. I think this is great because one thing that the four strokes were lacking from the two strokes was low end acceleration. The four strokes have been known for a rip roaring top end with a manageable low end, but with the introduction of the DFI my guess is that the two stroke has nothing on a four stroke anymore. The DFI was not the only big change on the 2011 250F,  Separate Function Fork was introduced as well. 

The Separate Function Fork is a technology that has never been used in motocross before. Using the right fork leg for the springing and preload adjustment and using the left fork leg (shown above) as the dampening adjustment allows for much more variation and control when setting your riding style.  Kawasaki also created more compression for the bike by shortening the cylinder and modifying the piston head. 

By doing this the engine creates much more pressure in a smaller amount of space resulting in more horses and less weight. I think it is safe to say that the 2011 Kawasaki KX250F is wicked dank. It has been put at the top of its class in terms of technology. There is no doubt in my mind that the 2011 KX250F is a revolutionary bike for the Kawasaki line and it will only get better from here. To find out more visit Dirt Rider for the complete article and details. Check out this beautiful machine if you get a chance it truly is a master piece. 

Pretty Dank Burger...Kobe!!

I went to Sweetwater's the other day here in Burlington Vermont for the first time and I have to say it was a great place. The atmosphere was great and the service was good too (even with our waitress only on her first week.) I had to write this post about this Wicked Dank burger I got at Sweetwater's. It is the Kobe Beef burger. Probably one of the most juicy and flavorful burgers I have ever had. Topped with cheddar cheese on a Portuguese muffin, this burger is worth it. 


Want to know more about what Kobe Beef is?


Watch this video!!

Here is a great video that I found for brewing barley wine and strong ales. I am going to be brewing a Double Dan's Dirty (some sort of strong beer, not sure yet) and this video is what gave me the motivation to do it.



Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should brew for the Double Dan's Dirty? Leave a comment. Let me know what you think.

Dan's Dirty Graduation Party!!

Had a grad party this weekend in Barre. It was a great time and I got to tap my first keg of Dan's Dirty IPA. The beer had good flavor but it was a little under carbonated. I know what I will have to do to the next keg to get the bubbles.

This is the keg of Dan's Dirty down at the bonfire. The chair was broken and ended up going in the fire along with the broken couch below. Check out a few pictures for the party.

Before

And After!!

This has to be the best picture of the night. hahaha (and no he was not driving it.)

Kegging Weekend!!

This weekend I will be kegging the first keg of Dan's Dirty Unfiltered Ale. I brewed an American IPA with an alcohol content of 6.2% and 80 IBU. While racking into the secondary I had a taste preview of the Dirty IPA and it was well balanced with crisp bitter after tones. Since this was my first time kegging I thought I would throw in a video that is helping through this process. I will keep you updated on how it goes! Feel free to post any comments, tips, pictures or videos that may help.

What is the deal with this Obama guy anyway?

There has been a lot of talk in the past two years about the new president of the United States, Barack Obama. Obama changed the way that candidates campaign in a different way. He used social media and vague words like “change” to appeal to the voters. During the 2008 presidential election I saw Barack Obama as an average honest man, but after watching The Obama Deception, By the people, and reading Barack Obama The Future of American Politics I was caught up in the image of the “Obama Brand” and not the issues and policies facing the candidates.

Barack Obama spent a great deal of time and money on his image as a presidential candidate. He built up an image for himself that distracted the voters from the issues and policies facing the nation. By February 2008, Obama had spent $52 million dollars on “media, strategy consultants, image-building, marketing research and telemarketing” (Street.) Obama did a great job finding his target demographic and appealing to them. He used social media and the internet to make a connection with young voters that might not have participated in the vote.


Barack Obama used social media to leverage his campaign toward the younger voters. Through Facebook alone, Obama was able to gain the support of 8,665,145 voters. He has 12 different Facebook pages for all the different ethnic groups of the US: Veterans for Obama, African Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, and Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders for Obama just to name a few. Instead of having just one general Obama support page (which he did) he made different support pages for each ethic group of the US. This gave people a personal connection with the Obama brand. They felt like Obama really understood them.

The 2008 election, more than any other election, felt more like entertainment than campaigning. Between all the Obama bashing from McCain and the dream of “hope and change” from Obama, it came down to which candidate presented themselves the best on and off TV. While McCain took the “put-down-my-opponent” route, Obama took the exact opposite “I dream of hope and change for a better tomorrow” route. It all became entertainment to a certain extent especially on TV. “The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining” (Postman 87.) People formed their views of Obama from what the media told them and not the issues facing the presidential seat.

The way that TV and media is feeding us “important” information makes me think of the book Feed by M.T. Anderson. The way that the feed pumps ideas and information into the user is exactly how Obama’s campaign worked. In the book Feed Violet says “Because of the feed, we’re raising a nation of idiots. Ignorant, self-centered idiots.” This is exactly what happened with Obama’s campaign. He built his image up so high that people became ignorant to the policies and issues. They were distracted by the everyday man that Obama built himself up to be.

The way that Obama’s image distracted from the issues raises some concern for the future. After reading Carr’s article Is Google Making Us Stupid it made me wonder the same thing about TV and media. Is TV and media making us stupid? The American people rely on mainstream media to provide the news, but it is seldom that people ever question the validity of the news. We take what we see as the truth and do not dig deeper to find the actual truth.

I saw Barack Obama as an average man throughout his campaign. He made me think that he grew up the same way that most Americans do, through good times and bad. Though is life did have some ups and downs, he still was not the average American he portrayed himself to be. Born in Hawaii and graduated with a B.A. from Columbia University before receiving a law degree from Harvard University (Street.) Only a fraction of the American people receive Ivy League education which certainly makes Barack Obama more than just an average man.

To sum it all up Obama took a radical approach to campaigning for the presidential seat. He spent tens of millions of dollars on “media, strategy consultants, image-building, marketing research and telemarketing” (Street.) All to build up a false façade that is known as the “Obama Brand.” He put so much time and money into how he looked and was portrayed by the American people that he distracted voters from the issues and policies that are important. Obama also took a different route with using social media and the internet to promote the campaign. I think this is why Obama did very well with the younger population is because he was engaging with them on the same level. He used the social media channels to leverage their customer base. He went to where the people were and made himself known. Obama took a revolutionary approach to politics and won the nation over with “The Obama Brand.”

Dan's Dirty Unfiltered Ale Label!!!

What do you think about it? Any Comments, Ideas, Suggestions?

Media Med Bud Light

My first thought for this media meditation was to do the Bud Light commercial with the house made out of beer. Then I stumbled upon this set of un-aired commercials and had to blog about these.

All of these videos stimulated the limbic part of the brain. They all start with a guy and a girl (or a combination of both). Then they bring in the beer after we have seen the guy and the girl. Then they all take off from there.

Technological Shift

Thanks to Youtube I am able to see these un-aired commercials that other wise would have never been seen. The shift from analog to digital allows me to access these commercials all over the world.

Emotional Transfer

These commercials make me laugh. All of them are very funny and they all stimulate the humor part of the brain. Most beer commercial are made just like this but Bud Light is in a league of their own with their ideas.

Humor

The biggest thing that all of these commercials had going for them was the fact that they are very funny. They use humor to hide the reality of beer and alcohol, it can be harmful if you drink too much.



Plain Folks

They used plain folks to try and appeal to the everyday man. Showing average men gives the sense that it is for average men.

Beautiful People

They use beautiful women in their commercials to appeal to the men. To try and show that if you drink Bud Light you will get pretty girls like them.

Media Med CCM315 The Miracle Speech

The other night I was at my friend’s house and he started talking about this little kid that recited Herb Brooks “Miracle” speech at a Red Sox game earlier this month. He said that it was “hilarious” and I “had to see it” so when I got home I watched it. It was HILARIOUS and YOU GOT TO SEE IT.








First thing about this is that it is a five year old boy who is dressed up in a suit and looks very adorable. The limbic part of my brain was saying “aw…look at the little boy dressed up in suit. He is so cute.” This kid doesn’t miss a beat or get tripped up in his words he does great. Then he yells SCREW ‘EM and that is where my reptilian brain said “OH NO.” I wasn’t expecting such an out burst from the little fellow. It was great which is why I am sharing it with you.



Technology Shift

I didn’t end up seeing Josh Sacco recite this on live television. Thanks to technology I was able to go onto YouTube and watch it instantly. This type of technology was not available 15 years ago. The technology was there but no one was using it. Now people up load videos to YouTube as the action happens, technology allows us to do that. People turn to technology for most of their needs today, especially video and news.



Epistemological Shift

This video is something that you need to watch as a video. Reading a script of what Josh said would be as powerful as the video itself. A lot of the meaning and value comes from visually seeing the little boy deliver his speech and not just the speech itself.



Value Messages

The biggest value message that I saw from this video was that the Yankees spend way too much money on their baseball team. Everyone has always talked about the rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees, and even further, the amount of money spent on the Yankees is outrageous. We are tired of hearing about how the Yankees spend a ton of money on their players.

Ownership

Since this was at Fenway Park I feel as though the Red Sox had the ownership for Josh. The Red Sox were the ones that let Josh get out there and recite the speech. Not anyone can go on to the field at Fenway, BEFORE A GAME, and give a little speech. This boy had permission from the Red Sox in order to do this.

Humor

Josh Sacco is amazing. He is five years old and he recited the speech without any papers to follow along with and without and screw ups. This made the video even more funny because he was so good at it. He practiced this before he delivered it which is why it was so powerful.





The Real Herb Brooks

Plain Folks

Josh is just a regular kid before he gave this speech. He was just another kid on the play ground and not a child celebrity. This gave his address even more authenticity because he was not an actor. After the speech Josh may have stepped into a celebrity category not only from his address but his appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.



Warm Fuzzies

Since Josh is a five year old boy it really give you a warm fuzzy feeling the first time you see him. He is in his suit, with a tie, and the first time you see and hear him start talking you cannot help but say “aww…what a cutie.” This factor makes the speech much more powerful, especially when he says “Screw ‘em!” because you are not expecting such an outburst from a small child.

Josh Sacco's Pre-Game Warm up


The Original Speech from the movie Miracle

Media Med. CCM315 Death of a Prez

I saw this movie on Netflix and I had to check it out. The first thing that I thought was that this would be a great media meditation for CCM315. The movie was about the assassination of George W. Bush while he was in office. The music that first started out made you feel like something bad was going to happen. The movie is called Death of a President so I already knew that it was not going to be a happy movie. I didn’t have any idea that the movie was a mockumentary so when I first started watching it it seemed really real. I had to keep reminding my self that it was a movie. They used real photos and videos of the president himself. It was a very convincing movie.




Political Shift

The first thing that popped into my head when I saw the cover for this movie was “how could they make this film?” George W. Bush is still alive and hasn’t been out of office for very long. This movie was made while he was still in office which is why I find it very controversial. Ten or Twenty years ago this would not have been allowed to be released. Since there has been a big change it the way politics are run and looked at, it wasn’t as big of an issue as it would have been then.

Economic Shift

In a world that has shifted from hyper commercialism and corporate consolidation I felt as though this movie would not have been shown. With all of the movie and television conglomerations controlling what is seen by the US people I am surprised that this movie was even released. It is very controversial especially because the movie was made while George W. Bush was still in office. I am surprised that it wasn’t considered a terrorist threat.




Production Techniques

The way that the movie was put together was like a documentary. If I didn’t know that Bush was not assassinated then I would have thought so after watching the movie. They had real footage of the former president in the movie which made it seem so real. The production techniques and overall appearance of the movie was done so well that I thought I was watching an A&E special on the George W. Bush assassination.



Individual Meaning

For me I saw this film as very controversial. I am still not sure how I feel about the movie but I know that other people would have strong view points. I can see some people taking this movie as a threat not only to the president but for the nation as well. There has been other movie about the assassination of presidents but it was never actually the president, it was always an actor playing the president. On the other hand I could see people thinking that it is a great movie for two reasons: 1) they do not like Bush and 2) because it was such a unique movie in the way that it was produced it is truly one of a kind.



The Big Lie

The events in this movie are not real and the whole premise of the movie is false. The viewer must have the understanding that this is a movie and not actual events. That said it is easy to get caught up in the movie and to think that it is actually real. The only time that they say that the movie is not real is a little blurb right before the movie starts. The whole movie is a big lie and people must understand it is for entertainment and not real.



Symbols

The movie took place around George W. Bush, one of the biggest symbols in the decade. There has been so much talk and controversy about Bush that everyone has their own opinion about him and at least can recognize him. He was the president of the US for two terms in a row and has had a lot of impact on the nation, which has made him a very recognizable symbol in the US.



Testimonials

There were testimonials throughout the movie of all the secret service men working with the president. They were giving their observations of what happened when Bush was shot and how they reacted. This made the movie seem even more real because there were people talking about it. They are actors don’t forget, but they did such a great job that I lost my sense of reality and movie. They did a great job of making it real.

MKT 420 Book Review Post 5

Tracking and Managing SEO

Once you have optimized your site the work is not over. The internet is a fast moving and fast changing place. Keeping track of your site will make sure that you make the appropriate changes to your site. The first thing that you would want to do is get some sort of analytics tracking software. There are many different kinds of there but one of the most popular is Google Analytics, and it is free.

Installing analytics to your site will provide you with information about who is coming to your site, where they are coming from, how long they stayed on the site, what types of keywords they searched for, and so on. There are six metrics that are good to stay aware of when starting out with analytics.



Visitors – Very simply this will tell you how many visitors have been to your site since you installed the analytics.



Pageviews and Landing Pages – Pageviews is how many times a page has been viewed. The more times people view a page the more popular it gets (Miller). This will give you good insight on how pages are performing. If a page has a low page view you might want to look at it and see what might be keeping people away. Landing pages is determined by which page the visitor came to when they came to the site. This will give you insight at how people are getting to your site and where they came from to get there.

Visit Length – How long a person stays on the site is a key factor as well. The goal is to have people spend a lot of time on your site but it is easier said than done. What was the person’s length of the visit, what pages did they view? (Miller) If a person doesn't stay long and only viewed one page, then maybe you should take a look at that page and see if there is some confusion.



Referral Sites – Referral sites are sites that are referring traffic to your site (Miller). This could be another site with a link to your site on it. Referral sites are good to know because you want to see where your traffic is coming from and in particular why they are coming to your site.

Keywords – Check and see which keywords people are using to find your site. From there you can determine if you want to add anymore keywords, or put some emphasis on others. (Miller)



Inbound Link – It is good to know who is linking to your site and how they are linking. Which pages are they linking to and how people are getting there. This will give you a good idea of what other people think is important about your site. (Miller)



This is a good place to start tracking the activity on your site and a good place to start maintaining your site. There are many factors that can change your SEO new competitors, customers evolve, customer base shrinks, competitors get better, search engines change, these are all good factors of why you should maintain your site (Miller). It is a good idea to make a SEO plan for your site. Check your analytics a couple times a week, stay up to date with search engine updates and changes, and try to set goals that you want to achieve with your site. Use the analytics not to just track your site’s activity but to improve it. With the steps that have been outlined throughout these posts will give you a good place to start building your SEO.

MKT 420 Book Review Post 4

Other Types of Optimization

Local Search – Local search allows someone to search for stores, restaurants, any business that is in their geographical area. By adding a piece of location data to the search (movie theater Boston) will help the search engines find all the movie theaters in your area. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all have their own local search sites. It works just like a regular search but you have to add your location data into the search. A map will come up showing exactly where each place is in your location and a link to their website where you can find more information. Optimizing your site for local search is much like SEO but with location data. Provide as much information as you can in your keywords, content on the site, and in the META tags (Miller). Be specific down to the actual address of the business. Any Nicknames that the business has should be included as well. The more information on location that you have the better local search you will get.

Mobile Devices – With the rise of smartphones more people are getting internet access where ever they are. It is very important that mobile devices are able to view your webpage especially when combined with local search. “Mobile search = local search” (Miller). People use their smartphone to see what is in there area and if your site is not apart of that search you could potentially lose customers. Searching on a smartphone is very similar to searching with a computer. To optimize your site for mobile devices you must first make a mobile friendly site. Then once you have the mobile site the steps are identical for your traditional site: keyword placement, content, local information, don’t forget about your META tags, and create a site map of the mobile site to submit to search engines.

Social Media – If your company is engaging with social networking then it is a must to have that linked to your site. Provide a “follow me” button for your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Provide all the information about your social media presence on your site. This will create better SEO because the search engines will index your social media profiles in your company’s name. The more information there is out there the better because it will provide more information for the spiders to look for. (Miller)

These three channels, local search, mobile devices, and social media, are channels that often get overlooked when considering SEO. It is important that you optimize your site as much as possible to receive the best possible organic search.

MKT 420 Book Review Post 3

What do search engines look for?


If a person wants to optimize their website they must understand what the search engines look for. You wouldn’t want to hide colored potatoes for an Easter egg hunt because the kids are looking for eggs and not potatoes. Search engines work the same way. There are a certain set of components that all of the search engines look for: keywords, HTML tags, and links to your site.

Keywords – Search engines do not read sentences and paragraphs they can only pick out certain words that they see as keywords to index the site. Having the right keywords placed on your page can ensure that the site will be indexed correctly. Likewise if you have the wrong keywords on your site it can index your site the wrong way. (Miller)

HTML Tags – Search engines will search through the metadata data in the code of the site for the title of your site and keywords as well. Making sure that you have the right keywords in your Meta tags will help the search engine figure out what content to associate with your site. The TITLE tag is also very important because not only do you want to provide the title of the website but you also want to add a few important keywords. This will help the search engine index the site correctly and find it more quickly. (Miller)

Links to your site – Links for your website are very important to search engines. If your site has a lot of links to it from other websites then this tells the search engine that it is important. The more external sites that link to your site have the more important that the search engine thinks your site is. Of course you want your links to be on sites with similar content as yours and that will help increase indexing more than random websites. (Miller)

These are not the only things that the search engines look for but they are the most important ones and a good place to start optimizing your site.


Ten Factors to Improve search Results

1) Know your customer. This may seem obvious but it is something that is often overlooked. Provide value for the people visiting your site and find out what they are searching and how they are getting to your site. (Miller) What you might think that visitors are searching for keywords A and B, but really visitors are searching for keywords C and D. Know who is coming to your site and appeal to what they want.

2) Improve Content. Once you figure out what your customers are looking for you can change the content on your site to appeal to them. By doing this it will create better indexing for the search engine. Creating new content is a good idea as well because it will provide more for the spiders to find. Then if you create more content about one particular subject the spiders might index you very high for that subject (the more content you have on a particular subject indicates that you know a lot about that subject, to the search engines at least) (Miller).

3) Create Clear Organization – Organizing the HTML for your site can create a much better search as well. The most important information in your HTML should be put first (Miller). You want the spiders to find the best information first so your site gets indexed correctly. Since HTML is text, it is one of the most important places to have the right content. Use headings and subheadings to organize the code this will tell the spiders that it is important and that it should be indexed. Shorten the URL’s in the code (Miller). You don’t want the spiders wasting time searching through a large URL; you want the spiders finding the relevant content.

4) Fine Tune Keywords – Finding out what keywords people are using to find your site is crucial (Miller). Just because you think that a keyword is relevant doesn’t mean that your visitors think so. Set up some analytics and track how people are getting to your site. Find out the major keywords people are using to find your site.

5) Most Important Comes First – Take the fine tuned keywords and put them first on your site. Provide the most important and relevant information at the beginning so the spiders can find the most important information first (Miller).

6) Update META Tags – Since META tags are in the code they are not seen when the visitor comes to the site. That said, tag as many good keywords that you can in your META tags (Miller). By tagging your META tags thoroughly it will make it much easier for the spiders to find your site.

7) Request Inbound Links – Search engines think that your site is really important if many other sites are linking to yours (Miller). It creates more avenues for the spiders to find your site and also for visitors too.

8) Submit your Site – Submitting your site to the search engines will provide faster indexing. By submitting your site you are making sure that they index your whole site. Waiting for the search engines to index your site on their own does not ensure that every webpage gets indexed (Miller).

9) Create a Site Map – Submitting a site map to the search engines is a great way for search engines to find all of your sites URL’s (Miller). It is a map of all the links and web pages that are organized on your site (in hierarchical order). It lets the search engines know exactly what is on your site and where it can be found. If you make changes to your site make sure you change it in your sitemap and resubmit it to the search engines.

Site Map Below

10) Use Text Over Images – If there is any media (pictures, video, ect) on your site the spiders will not find anything in them (Miller). Making sure that your media is tagged correctly with text will ensure that it will not go unnoticed (to the spiders at least).

No Text Picture                                                              Text Tagged Picture

Make sure that whoever is making these changes to the site is a qualified individual. This could be some technical staff in your company, the maker of the website, design staff, marketing staff or ideally all of the above (Miller). By using all of these departments while optimizing your site will make sure that:

A. your site runs well technically

B. the design of the site stays consistent

C. the proper keywords, location data, and content will be relevant to current marketing.



By having everyone work together on the site update will make certain that every department will be satisfied with the update.

MKT 420 Book Review Post 2

How info is stored on the web

The way that Miller starts out in the book is explaining how information is stored on the web, which is important to understand in order to achieve great SEO. Miller uses a great analogy comparing the web to a bunch of filing cabinets. “You can walk from file cabinet to file cabinet (surf from website to website), rifle through the file folders in any particular file drawer (browse through the pages on any site), and scan the papers within any individual folder (read the contents of any individual web page)” (Miller). After all the searching through the filing cabinets you probably didn’t find what you were looking for. This is because the filing cabinets (websites) and the content inside (web pages) are created and organized by humans. The problem with this is that humans: A. are not perfect, B. rarely think perfectly logically, and C. do not think alike (Miller). There is an estimated 150 million websites with close to 1 trillion individual web pages says Miller. Each website was created by a different human which means that each website has its own unique organization. Since there are over 150 million websites with their own organization, this means that the internet is nothing more than an unorganized filing cabinet.

How search engines work

The best thing about search engines are that they are not powered by human hands like filing cabinets are. Search engines use special software that send out spiders through every page on the internet and stores the findings on a massive computer. The spiders either save the whole webpage or only certain words or phrases, depending on what search you use (because different search engines work differently) (Miller). Then when a person does a search the search engine will pull up the most relevant information from its own database. Each search engine is different because they all have their own database in which they search from. This is why if you search the same keyword in different search engines you may get different results.



How search engines index the web

When a term or keyword is searched through a search engine, for the users stand point, it is very simple.

1) Type in search term

2) Press search button

3) View results



From the search engines side of the search it is much more complicated. The process would look something like this:

1. When the user clicks the Search button, his query is transmitted over the Internet to the site’s web server.

2. The search site’s web server sends the query to the company’s array of index servers. These computers hold a searchable index to the site’s database of web pages.

3. The query is matched to listings in the site’s search index—that is, the index servers determine which actual web pages contain words that match the query.

4. The search site now passes the query to its document servers, which store all the assembled web listings (documents) in the database.

5. The document servers assemble the results page for the query by pasting together snippets of the appropriate stored documents.

6. The document servers send the assembled results page back to the main web server.

7. The search site’s web server sends the results page across the Internet to the user’s web browser, where he views those results. (Miller)



The amazing part is that this whole process, no matter what side you are on (user, or search engine), takes under half of a second to complete! (Miller) The reason why the search engine can produce the results so quickly is because it only accesses it’s own index to find the relevant information. It would take much longer if the search engine had to search the entire internet every time someone did a search.

The spider software for the search engine does periodic searches through its own database to see if there are any website updates, as well as, searches the links on each site to find new content to index. This process is typically done every few weeks (Miller). Google has it’s own spider software called GoogleBot and it searches some sites more often than others. News sites might be searched hourly by the GoogleBot whereas a reference site might be searched every few weeks. (Miller)

Once the spiders have compiled all of their gathered information in the index then the search engine can determine search rank of the sites. Search Rank is what every website owner wants to be on top of. The better the search rank that your site has the higher it will appear on the results page of the search engine (Miller). Even though the process in which the search engines figure out your search rank is very confidential (for competitive reasons), according to Miller each one functions the same way. Each search engine uses its own algorithm to rank each webpage in its index. Since each search engine uses a different algorithm and a different database, your site can be ranked high on one and low on another. Google is perhaps the most secure with their search rank but from what is out there it is known that Google uses three components to determine ranking:

• Text analysis. Google looks not only for matching words on a web page, but also for how those words are used. That means examining font size, usage, proximity, and more than a hundred other factors to help determine relevance. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring pages on the same website to ensure that the selected page is the best match.

• Links and link text. Google then looks at the links (and the text for those links) on the web page, making sure that they link to pages that are relevant to the searcher’s query.

• PageRank. Finally, Google relies on its own proprietary PageRank technology to give an objective measurement of web page importance and popularity. PageRank determines a page’s importance by counting the number of other pages that link to that page. The more pages that link to a page, the higher that page’s PageRank—and the higher it will appear in the search results. The PageRank is a numerical ranking from 0 to 10, expressed as PR0, PR1, PR2, and so forth—the higher, the better.

(Miller)

“It’s important to note that Google’s determination of a page’s rank is completely automated. There is no human subjectivity involved, and no person or company can pay to increase the ranking of its listings. It’s all about the math.” (Miller) Unlike Adwords and CPC, companies cannot buy their page rank. I think this is good because it still gives other sites that rely on organic traffic a chance to have a high page rank.

Even though the search engines are really smart in indexing websites and pages, there are still things that the search engines have trouble finding.

Dynamic Pages – “A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically, based on certain criteria.” Often the URL of the site will change which makes it hard for the spiders to index the site.

Images and Media – Pictures, Videos, Podcasts, Music, Flash, these are all things that the search engine spiders have trouble indexing. The reason that the spiders have trouble indexing this type of media is because it isn’t text. The spiders look for text when searching, so all of your pictures, videos, podcasts, ect can get lost in the search. (Miller)

MKT420 Book Review Blog Post #1 Introduction

I read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization by Michael Miller. The reason that I choose this book was because I am interested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and I wanted to learn more about all aspects of SEO. The most interesting thing about SEO for me is that fact that it is all free (unless you hire someone to do it for you). Organizing and optimizing the content on your site can make a huge difference in your search results. When done correctly it will drive more relevant traffic to the site resulting in more visitors or conversions (if you are an ecommerce site). This book was a great choice because it gave me a solid overview of everything about SEO. Before I start diving into what is in the book I want to provide a definition of Search Engine Optimization for those who are unfamiliar with it. According to SearchEngineWatch.com SEO is defined as,


“The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.”

I think this definition says it very well by calling it a “process.” There is a process that has to take place before your site is optimized and there is a process that needs to take place to keep it optimized. Before you jump into optimizing a site you must first understand how search engines and SEO works. Then from there you can optimize your site for search engines and finally you must maintain your site through analytics and management. Miller breaks the book into these parts which is how I will address them through the blog posts: how search engines and SEO works, how to optimize your site, and how to maintain your site.

Shearon Harris Emergency Shutdown, Say What?!!

1. The 5-7 essential "facts" re: your Project Censored 2010 story, based on your reading of the PC2010 text;

The Shearon Harris nuclear power plant contains the largest nuclear waste storage pools in the country.


The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has estimated that there is a 1:100 chance of a pool fire happening under the best scenarios.


The 2002 the NRC put the plant on notice for nine unresolved safety issues detected during a fire prevention inspection.


Between January and July of 2002 the plant manager was forced to manually shut down the reactors
four times.


In spring of 2003 there were four emergency shutdowns that included three over a four day period.


Between 1999 and 2003 there were twelve major problems resulting in shutdowns of the plant.


The NRC says that the national average for commercial reactors is one shutdown per eighteen months.





2. The specific results of your LEXIS NEXIS search for articles about your story - is this, in fact, a truly "censored" story? Provide us with as many links as you can to news coverage of this story in the global press;



After doing the Lexis Nexis search I found that the story about the emergency shutdowns of the Shearon Harris plant was truly censored. None of the articles that I read address any of the shutdowns or the fact that they failed to resolve nine safety issues in 2002. There was talk about how 30% of the surrounding population lived in a critical meltdown zone but nothing about any emergency shutdowns.

The only source that I could find on the internet that addressed the issues of the emergency shutdowns was the Project Censored website. Wikipedia cited some information that was from the Project Censored website. And the Organic Consumers Association posted up the article directly on their site.
The only source that uncensored this story was the Project Censored group.

Fact sheet about the Shearon Harris Power Plant

Safety Information for the plant



Community Members voice their opinon on the plant