Mission Impossible 2 (II) Soundtrack Music by Hans Zimmer

Today I've been in the mood for classical guitar music. The Mission Impossible II Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer has a very clear, fresh melody. Enjoy.

Ugliest Logos on the web: Chat forums

No hard feelings--I just think this logo does nothing for me. The colors don't work and the font is very difficult to read. Furthermore, the design has no relation to SEO or a forum. The one below comes from seochat.com. Great forum--poor design. Sorry guys.

I'm also not a fan of Digital Point's logo (forums.digitalpoint.com). It's just something with these forums--their webmasters simply refuse to put time into half-decent design.

Though, something can still be said of these forums. They have lots of traffic. However, I still think few thousand dollars in design could do something for them--boost reputation, let professionals take them more seriously.

Mathematics a Must-Have for Internet Marketers

Many marketers have reverted from studying traditional market research to studying a perceived mathematical formula in order to attract customers. Understanding PageRank[1], the algorithm Google patented in 2001[2], is the golden ticket in internet marketing.  In this article, we’ll discuss how the algorithm works and how it has changed marketing.

Google and Marketing?

Google holds 80 percent of the US search market share and 90 percent globally.[3] Millions of searches are made per day at Google.com, the most visited website on the internet. Google founders and Stanford dropouts, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, probably didn’t realize that their algorithm change the face of marketing. Marketers who can get their company’s websites listed on the first page of Google can often double, triple, or quadruple sales.

How Does it Work?

Although more than 200 factors contribute to Google’s algorithm, it was originally designed with two distinguishing components: (1) page ranking and (2) anchor text.[4]

Page Ranking
Google ranks a web page based on how many inbound links (also called backlinks) from other websites are linking to that page. Each link may be considered one vote, according to Google. Google then innovated further by placing a specific weight on each vote. Sites with more links receive higher rank. In turn, links from these higher ranking sites receive more weight.

To illustrate page ranking, analyze the number of links from two large websites, CNN.com and Walmart.com. Walmart.com has 3,380 backlinks and  CNN.com has 46,600 backlinks. A link from CNN.com would be worth more than a link from Walmart.com.

Anchor Text
Anchor text are the words actually being linked. If a link were placed in this article to Bing.com (Microsoft’s search engine), it might look like the following: Visit another search engine. In this case, http://www.bing.com is the link while “search engine” is the anchor text. Google assigns relevancy of the websites in its search results based on the anchor text of those websites’ backlinks. Should the above example be an actual link, a search for “search engine” should be more likely to return Bing.com in the results.

What Does this Mean to Marketers?

Marketers who understand page ranking and anchor text can build traffic to their companies’  websites by employing numerous methods of link building and using keyword-targeted anchor text.

Continual Research

However, the buck doesn’t stop with proper link building and anchor text. Because spam is always trying to get into Google’s search results,[5] Google engineers must constantly update the algorithm.[6] Thus, internet marketing always requires continuous research and testing.

---

[1] Wikipedia, “PageRank,”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

[2] Lawrence Page, “Method for node ranking in a linked database,” Google Patent,

http://www.google.com/patents?id=cJUIAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[3] Reuters, “CORRECTING and REPLACING: Bing US Market Share Stabilises but Yahoo! Continues Fall – StatCounter,”

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS151362+02-Nov-2009+BW20091102

[4] Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Stanford University,

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

[5] Zolt Gyöngyi and Hector Garcia-Molina, "Spam: It's Not Just for Inboxes Anymore," Computer, vol. 38, no. 10, pp. 28-34, Oct. 2005, doi:10.1109/MC.2005.352

[6] Matt Cutts, “Explaining algorithm updates and data refreshes,”

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/explaining-algorithm-updates-and-data-refreshes/

Cookie Monster and Domino Sugar

How would you create an ad for Domino Sugar? Natural sugar manufacturers like Domino have been facing a lot of competition from the substitute sugars such as "Sweet 'n Low" and "Splenda." Our goal was to position Domino Sugar as a all-natural quality sugar that was fit for a housewife who wanted to be fit and provide healthy cooking for her family.

Our first major idea was about using the right sugar for you. We wanted to show a traditional plate of cookies with a note "For Santa", with a Christmas tree in the background. The copy would have been, "Because this year, you're Santa." We wanted to tell the consumer that ultimately, it is she who will eat the products of her baking and thus, she should use quality ingredients.

After a multitude of ideas, Sesame Street's famous Cookie Monster came to our minds. The Cookie Monster will eat any cookie right? Wrong. Cookie Monster will gladly go for a piece of pizza rather than some cookies made with substitute sugars.

Copy:

Substitute sugars are the real monsters. Even the most famous cookie lovers only go for cookies made from all-natural, real sugar.

Visit dominosugar.com for Cookie Monster’s favorite cookie recipe

What do you think?

Contact Forms 7 - Making value text disappear when clicked (onfocus)

 UPDATE (Jan. 8, 2010) - I managed to use the added script below in a new website (I work for SEO.com). Take a look at metrocarpetcleaners.com (the form is in the right sidebar).


I'm really not a PHP developer in any fashion. However, I've managed to make some adjustments to the Contact Forms 7 plugin for Wordpress.

Contact Forms 7

My hat goes off to Takayuki Miyoshi, the creator of Contact Forms 7. The plugin is very intuitive and fairly user-friendly in comparison with other form plugins. However, I found that I couldn't make input value attributes appear and disappear when a form input was clicked on. Below are some of the adjustments I made:

1. In the plugin folder under admin/admin.php I added a new option to the administration of the text input generator (line 466). Script additions are in blue:
   
   'acceptableFileTypes' => __( "Acceptable file types", 'wpcf7' ),
   
   'needReallySimpleCaptcha' => __( "Note: To use CAPTCHA, you need Really Simple CAPTCHA plugin installed.", 'wpcf7' ),
   
   'onFocusOnBlur' => __( "Make input values disappear when clicked?", 'wpcf7' )
   
   ) );
   
   
2. Then, modify the admin javascript file under admin/wpcf7-admin.js
   (line 417)
   jQuery.each([ 'isRequiredField', 'allowsMultipleSelections', 'insertFirstBlankOption', 'makeCheckboxesExclusive',
   
   'isAcceptanceDefaultOn', 'isAcceptanceInvert',
   
   'akismetAuthor', 'akismetAuthorEmail', 'akismetAuthorUrl',
   
   'imageSizeSmall', 'imageSizeMedium', 'imageSizeLarge', 'onFocusOnBlur' ], function(i, n) {
   
   tgInputs[n] = jQuery('');
   
   (line 469)
   table1.append(tgTr(
   
   jQuery(' ' + _wpcf7L10n.isRequiredField + '').prepend(tgInputs.isRequiredField),
   
   jQuery(' ' + _wpcf7L10n.onFocusOnBlur + '').prepend(tgInputs.onFocusOnBlur)
   
   ));
   
   (line 1159)
   if (tgInputs.tagClasses.val())
   
   jQuery.each(tgInputs.tagClasses.val().split(' '), function(i, n) {
   
   options.push('class:' + n);
   
   });
   
   if (tgInputs.onFocusOnBlur.is(':checked'))
   
   options.push('onfocus');
   
   
3. Then edit the text module file under modules/text.php:
   First determine if the new option is selected:
   
   } elseif ( preg_match( '%^([0-9]*)[/x]([0-9]*)$%', $option, $matches ) ) {
   $size_att = (int) $matches[1];
   $maxlength_att = (int) $matches[2];
   } elseif ( preg_match( '%^onfocus$%', $option, $matches ) ) {
   $onfocus_att = 1;
   }
   }
   
4. Add the javascript to the input if the selection was made (still on modules/text.php):
   
   if ($onfocus_att == 1) {
   $atts .= "onfocus=\"if(this.value=='" . esc_attr( $value ) . "'){value='';document.getElementById('" . trim( $id_att ) . "').style.color='#000000'}\" onblur=\"if(this.value==''){value='" . esc_attr( $value ) . "';document.getElementById('" . trim( $id_att ) . "').style.color='#999999'}\"";
   }
   $html = ...
   
5. Your Done!

Here's an image of the new checkbox:

Let me know if you have any questions. I'm going to put up a demo soon.

Dave's Formatter

While I was working with LawFirmSites, a coworker and friend created an HTML code formatter. It's been a few years and I still use it frequently.

Sometimes I forget how to find it. Here's the link:

Dave's Formatter

Synchronized Christmas Lights - Carol of the Bells

Mr. Holdman puts up an impressive light show every year. I recorded this version a few years ago. I was really impressed with the extravagant lighting. All the lights are synchronized perfectly with Carol of the Bells which was played over a short-wave radio signal. It's become a family tradition to see what Mr. Holdman will do next.

Synchronized Christmas Lights