In terms of community building, one of the ways to give back to the community is building the opportunity for bloggers who haven’t yet reached a particular level of readership the opportunity to tap into the readers who come to other blogs. One of the most time-proven ways to build buzz and communities is to launch a contest. This way, users will send their blogs and posts (depending on the type of contest), competing for a prize. This is a very common practice in blogs all around the world but… what about a website that’s a contest in itself? Enter Yearblook

Yearblook.com [where blogs write history] is a blog competition website aiming at finding the best blog posts of the day. At the end of the year, the 365 best posts (1 from each day) will be published in a book. Yes, a real book. You will be able to buy it at Amazon, so you can show your grandchildren when your blog post was chosen as the best of the world, at least for one day.

So, how do you enter this contest? It’s pretty simple to submit stories to Yearblook. You can paste the bookmark link below in your daily browser. When you want to submit a post to the contest, you click the bookmarklet in your browser. That’s it!

The Bookmarklet: Yearblook - Where blogs write history

Of course, you’d be wise to paste the bookmarklet onto your blog, so that people visiting your blog can submit the post themselves, if they feel the article is worth entering the contest.

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Posted by randfish

High quality directory link building may seem dreary and time-consuming, but it’s still one of the best methods to build credibility with the search engines (remember the importance of trust distance?). Today, while adding resources to our list of valuable directories, I stumbled across three webpages with valuable insight into the process of link building. Both are from universities, providing directives on how to evaluate a link - it doesn’t get much more relevant than this.

The three pages are:

• University of Southern Maine’s Checklist for Evaluating Web Resources
• UCLA College Library’s Thinking Critically About World Wide Web Resources
• Evaluating Web Resources from Cornell University

I’ve pulled some excerpts to help illustrate how those who might consider linking to your site make that judgement:

Is the information easy to get to? How many links does it take to get to something useful?
What is the quality of the graphical images? Do these images enhance the resource or distract from the content?
Does the site have its own search engine?
Is the site easily browsable or searchable?

Accessibility and usability are big issues - and it’s one of the key reasons link building goes hand in hand with great design. Build a site that looks like a professional, high quality resource and your informative articles will carry more weight and a greater ability to attract links.

How comprehensive is this site?

• What are the link selection criteria if any?
• Are the links relevant and appropriate for the site?
• Is the site inward-focused, pointing outward, or both?
• Is there an appropriate balance between inward-pointing links ("inlinks" i.e., within the same site)& outward-pointing links ("outlinks" i.e., to other sites)?
• Are the links comprehensive or do they just provide a sampler?
• What do the links offer that is not easily available in other sources?
• Are the links evaluated in any way?

Search engine have always said they’d judge sites by who they link to and who links to them. Humans who evaluate whether they’ll link to us are being instructed to do the same thing! Reputations online are garnered through linking in more ways than one, so be careful about what you link to and how you label it.

Determining the author or source of information for a Web site is important in deciding whether information has credibility. The author should show some evidence of being knowledgeable, reliable, and truthful.

• Is the author identifiable? Look for links that say "Who We Are," "About This Site, " or something similar.
• Is there contact information for the author? (e.g. e-mail address, mailing address or phone number)
• What is the author’s background? (e.g. experience, credentials, occupation, have they written other publications on the topic?)
• Does the author cite his or her sources?
• Is this site linked to often by other sites?
• Do links on this site lead to other reputable sites?
• Are there spelling errors or incorrect use of grammar?
• What domain does the site belong to? (e.g. edu, gov, com, etc.)?

The perception of authority is easily created and just as easily destroyed. No matter what kind of site you’re building, if you want the links to flow, provide some information about the site, about yourself and about the information you provide. Proper citation and effective backgrounds can mean the difference between link building success and failure.

Take a couple minutes right now and look over the site(s) you’re working on. Do you meet the criteria for picky link creators?

• Professional design, look and feel
• High usability and functionality
• Non-commercial content is available in a research-oriented form (if you’re not providing any non-commercial content, read this post)
• Information about the author(s), the material and the sources is clearly provided
• Contact information is obvious and accessible

If you’re firing on all cylinders, there’s a good chance you can close the trust distance gap with some very high quality links.

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I have been trying to figure out what characterizes some of the best programmers I know, or know about. It’s a frustrating endeavor of course, since most of these people are very different from each other, and have different experiences and ways to think and learn about stuff. Not to mention the fact that programmers tend to be highly individualistic.

But I think that I’m finally zeroing in on something that is general enough but also specific enough to categorize most of these people, and the general mind needed to be a really good programmer. In this blog post I’ll call that “meta-level thinking”, and I’ll explain more about what I mean as we go along.

When people try to become better programmers there are generally a few different kinds of advices you can get. The ones that seem prevalent right now is (among others):

• Learn - and understand - Lisp
• More generally, learn a new language that is sufficiently different from your current knowledge
• Work with domain specific languages
• Understand metaprogramming
• Read up on the available data structures (Knuth anyone)?
• Implement a compiler and runtime system for a language

Of course, these are only a few examples, and the categories are a bit fuzzy. These items are based on most of my experiences so they tend to be a bit language heavy. But I believe that what you practice by choosing any of these routes is an ability to abstract your thinking. In short, I believe that being able to abstract and understand what goes on in a programming language is one way to become more proficient in that language, but not only that - by changing your thinking to see this part of your environment you generally end up programming differently in all languages.

This is why Lisp has a tendency to change the way people write Java code. Lisp teaches you metaprogramming and DSL’s but they don’t really do it in a way that need words. DSLs and metaprogramming are just part of Lisp. It’s so much a part of the structure that you don’t see it. But when you turn to Java you’ll need to start working with these abstractions on a different level. Ruby programmers embrace metaprogramming and this changes the way these Ruby programmers think about things.

I’m really happy to see metaprogramming and DSLs getting more and more focus, because I really believe that understanding them is a really good way to make programmers better. Of course, you can get the same effect by writing a copmiler and runtime system - as Steve Yegge proposes. But I disagree that you really need that experience. There are other ways you can get the same way of looking at the world.

I call this meta-level thinking. I think it’s mostly a learned ability, but also that there is an aptitude component. Some of the best programmers I’ve met just have a mind that fits very well. It’s interesting to note that this kind of meta-level thinking is not an ability that is only applicable to programming. In fact, that’s probably just a matter of genetic luck that the same ability works very well for programming as for many other things. I think that there is a connection between certain abilities and a capacity for meta-level thinking too. Like music - it’s interesting to see how many programmers that have artistic leanings, and specifically towards music. It would be interesting to see some statistics about this.

In conclusion, this is my somewhat fuzzy view about what is one of the most important abilities that contributes to create brilliant programmers. If you have any interesting ideas about other ways you can reliably practice this ability, please improve on my list.

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Posted by Danny Dover

Yesterday, I was arguing with my friend about the existence of one sight or sound that is universally funny. He argued that since different cultures find humor in different things, there couldn’t possibly be one example of something that is funny to everyone. Unconvinced, I started searching for the holy grail of funny. Immediately, I went on YouTube and starting browsing my favorite videos. Eventually, I came to the famous video of a monkey picking his butt, smelling it, and falling out of a tree. No matter how many times I watch the video I still find it funny. There is something instinctively funny about seeing how dumb a monkey is compared to the brilliance of  humans.

This video stayed in my mind as I walked to work today. As I sat down at my desk and started doing my usual rounds of social news sites, I realized how redundant the online content is on all of my social media sources. Each day I click to see a picture of someone doing something either really stupid or really clever. I get a brief second of joy and go on to find the next well marketed image or blog top ten list. The content doesn’t help me in anyway but the affect it has on me is hypnotizing.

The sad truth is dumbing down content is fundamental to most successful marketing campaigns. What super bowl commercials do people remember? Not the ones with a serious message. Instead, people remember the one with the baby talking about how he wasted his money buying a creepy clown. As a viewer, I get no value from this other than a brief second of happiness and if the advertiser is lucky, I remember the name of a company.

Business people and expert marketers call this practice catering to the lowest common denominator. They argue that by writing for the least educated people they maximize their audience. This might be true for old media but it surely doesn’t apply to the internet. The people who read blogs and know what social media is are not the lowest common denominator. In fact, internet users make up some of the most knowledgeable and successful people ever to have existed.

This brings me back to the monkey video. If most internet users are not stupid, why are so many successful websites dedicated to distributing dumb content? Should I be striving to ignore the monkey videos and spend all my time online reading informational texts? Absolutely not. One of the most powerful uses of the internet is to help people relax. There is a very important reason people mindlessly surf the net at work. They need to relax their brain before going back to the stress of solving complex problems for their respective companies. Taking mental breaks keeps people happy and productive.

This is especially true for SEOs and SEMs. One of the reasons our industry is so enjoyable and successful is that our actual work is intertwined with the mind numb-ers. Top ten lists of weird looking cats are accessible along with up to the second industry news. We get the benefits of both worlds. We work to solve complex problems while being surrounded by things to dumb us down and keep us happy. In our case, it is not ignorance but rather stupidity that is bliss.

Now for your moment of zen.

A dovernym is any word that looks like how it is spelled. So far, the only one I have been able to come up with is ‘bed’.

Pretty cool, huh?

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Once you reach an age of around 12-15, learning a new language becomes increasingly harder. Various techniques have been employed to help make the process easier, including audio and video tapes and structured evening classes, but usually the most effective method is simply to go and live in the relevant country for a few months and force yourself to learn.But that’s not always a choice because people either can’t devote 2-4 months to live abroad, or they just simply consider it too extreme for their taste. But don’t fret, there’s still hope for those of us who can’t travel to Egypt and still want to learn Arabic there.

It is mainly agreed by language experts that words and small phrases are the building blocks of language. They let users communicate in foreign languages at a basic level, and from then, start building vocabulary and improving pronunciation.  There are many computer-based language-learning tools, each one with their approach to learning, their strengths and weaknesses.

One of the most tried and tested methods of learning a language without having to live abroad is immersing you in at the deep end - real conversation - without messing around with grammar rules and construction first. This may seem counter-intuitive, but this is how we learn our first language. After all, we start using verbs, nouns and adjectives years before we understand their classification.

One of the Language Learning Software suites to adopt this approach is Transparent Language, a New Hampshire company which has trained more than one million people by using their home computer. Their products are being used in over 12000 educational institutions, including major universities and government facilities such as the Defense Language institute and Foreign Service Institute. Do you need to do business in Latin America? No problem, Transparent’s Spanish Language Software will provide you a quick, effective way to master Spanish (or any other language, for that matter) in a very simple, intuitive way.

The Transparent Language software program offers a complete line of award-winning language learning software tools, including video immersion environments, flashcard tools, translation dictionaries and reference sets, and audio courses.

It uses the tried and tested method of dumping you in at the deep end - real conversation - without messing around with grammar rules and construction first. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s how we learn our first language, so it makes sense. After all, we start using verbs, nouns and adjectives years before we understand their classification.

At a basic level, what you get in this package is a selection of videos built around the theme of two people who are creating a travel guide to, say, France. The videos show them travelling around the country, talking to each other and to other people. The transcript of their conversations is shown underneath the video window and there’s a translation below this. You can skip back and forth, repeat sections of the passage, and concentrate on the meanings of individual words and phrases and so on. This way, people can Learn to speak French without even noticing it.

If you are interested in learning to speak modern day languages, either for personal or business reasons, then the Transparent Language tools will help you greatly. They will teach you a new language by using your own natural language-learning skills. How cool is that?

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