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Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

At Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization we know that knowledge is power. That's the reason we started this SEO blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the SEO news contained within this blog useful.

November 6, 2012

Dogpile on Apple Day!

Clearly someone neglected to remind me that November 6th is the international Dog Pile on Apple Day!?

Lets take a look at a popular technology subreddit..

Not r/applesucks, just r/technology:

Judge puts an end to Apple’s patent license lawsuit against Motorola (arstechnica.com)
DEAR APPLE: I’m Leaving You – Business Insider (businessinsider.com)
Apple suing Amazon over term “Appstore” claiming “app store” is an Apple trademark. Judge disagrees (arstechnica.com)
Apples loses a lawsuit against Google for Patent licencing in Wisconsin (wired.com)
Apple may ditch Intel chips in Macs (engadget.com)
Your iPhone Could Be Disabled During The Next Protest You Attend (consumeraffairs.com)

Those are just the current headlines!

Last week we had a great story about internal politics in Apple, and the firing of Scott Forstall, a 15 year vet managing the Apps team.

Some folks felt that the departure was due to a change of attitude at Apple, from Jobs to Cook, where people unwilling to apologize aren’t welcome.

Others look at how Scott handled himself inside the company, acting out much like Jobs did, but without Jobs around he was making enemies instead of friends. Indeed Bob Mansfield cancelled retirement plans with Apple and agreed to 2 more years upon news of Scott’s firing.

It can’t be all that bad really, since Apple sold over 3 million iPads last weekend alone?

Plus, now that Apple lost the legal challenge over money owed to Motorola over patent licences it can just give up all intention of paying.

In fact many observers agree it was Apple’s lack of interest in following the law that cost them the case.

To paraphrase a really good reply to the decision:

Why this was dismissed with prejudice:
Apple wanted the judge to set license fees, but said that they would not agree to the ruling of the judge unless she set it at less than $1 per device.

…

The judge essentially said, fine, since Apple won’t adhere to legal judgements, Apple’s case is pointless.
The last ditch attempt to say Apple might adhere to legal judgements hasn’t swayed me, I dismiss the case, and Apple can’t bring it to trial further.

Why even bother with a trial when the plaintiff has made it clear they do not respect the law or the potential decision?

If I knew this judge I’d be pleading her to let me take her out for a free meal as a thank you.

So folks, if you see an Apple laying in the gutter, taking a power nap, just know that it’s hard being green.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:07 pm

Categories: copyright,Internet Law,IT Industry,Misc,Operating Systems,Technology
Tags: Apple lawsuits, dogpile, reddit, Scott Forstall —

October 25, 2012

Time to look at your Google Calendars (Again)

October is a trade off between birthdays (New-years babies unite!), feasting, and parties, vs. bearing witness to the lament caused by waking up in the dark, low energy, and the changing seasons.

Google can’t change the position of the sun, but it could improve your mood by helping quickly add events to your calendar.

Example of a Google calendar with more calendars added to it.

I tried to get a screenshot of the weather feature but only so much fits in 550px

To get more events on your calendar, without importing or adding them one at a time you need to ‘subscribe’ to additional calendars.

The first step, after getting logged into a Google account is to click on the Other Calendars menu and choose the “Browse Interesting calendars” option:

The Other Calendars menu in Google Calendars.

On the next page you should see three tabs, “Holidays”, “Sports”, and “More”.

I’d say everyone should add their national holidays, even if you’ve done this before, take a moment to preview the official calendar for your country, as the official version is likely a lot better than what you’ve been subscribing to.

The sports tab is pointless, since we’re nerds, and there’s no WRC/Drifting events in the list. (I kid, I kid.. No, not really.)

Finally the ‘More’ tab is where the magic happens.

Under the ‘More’ tab you want to seek out: “Contacts’ birthdays and events”

Subscribing to this calendar and allowing it to show on your main calendar will help you track all those birthday parties that will help get you through this dreary fall season.

Keep in mind however that subscribing to a calendar does not modify your calendar, nor does it add notifications or alerts to your calendar.

If you want to be reminded a week ahead of your best friend’s birthday, you should go make that event manually.

If you just want to know on the day of his birthday that you forgot, then you can simply click on the birthday’s calendar item and then click on “copy to my calendar” to get that event on your personal calendar.

All my friends use FB not G+ so who cares?

Well, at least in New Zealand, G+ user interest is actually passing Twitter/Linked In for new users, and making up ground quickly on Facebook.

Illustration of the user growth in major social media for the NZ area.

Roy Morgan’s analysis of Social Media trends in NZ is a bit hard to look at (even upsidedown) but his data is very telling of the growth that G+ is getting from the adoption of Android phones and other Google products.

I’d love to say that G+ is just more social/edgy/trendy than FB but that’s never what it’s been for/about.

If you’ve read any of my rants about comparing the two social networks you’ll know I look at it like replacing a banana (FB) with an orange (G+).

On one hand, a banana can be fun, especially if you’re care-free about discarding the peel, but an Orange has some serious potentials that a Banana lacks, especially in clean presentation.

Ultimately as SEOs we would advise paying respects to both networks as each has it’s perks, though G+ hasn’t made news this week for app developers selling 1 million user profiles for $5 US.

TL;DR: Man buys 1 million user data records (mainly First/Last Name, Gender, Age, Email, Phone #,etc.. data) for $5 and FB thanks him by telling him not to talk about it.

So really, enjoy your access to private data while it lasts, build those calendars while it’s easy, because if we have app developers selling a million user data records for $5, you can be sure people won’t want to share valid info with insecure sites. In fact due to this, it’s better to put in intentionally incorrect info and only trust services with solid security reputations.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:47 am

Categories: Analytics,Cyber-Security,Google+,Internet Law,internet security,Privacy,social media,Technology
Tags: Google Calendar —

October 15, 2012

The Snooper’s Charter & Innocence of Muslims Censorship

It seems every time we turn around there is another new article about government bodies attempting to impose Internet censorship, threats to our online anonymity or online privacy concerns. Today’s headlines are no different.

The Snooper’s Charter

Opponents of the "Snooper’s Charter" received a minor victory. The proposed UK Draft Communications Bill published on June 14th by the Joint Parliamentary Committee received approximately 19,000 emails during its consultation period.

Of the 19,000 emails, not one single email was in favor of the proposed bill. There was not a single one that even agreed with the premise of the bill. Several civil liberty advocacy groups in the UK encouraged people to email their protests in opposition to the bill.

British Parliment

Opponents state that the Bill would grant powers to the Home Secretary, or other cabinet minister to order the gathering and retaining of any "communications data" by "telecommunications operators."

The bill goes on to state that the data would be held for 12 months and that access to this data will be safeguarded and only accessible by a "designated senior officer."

Of paramount concern to opponent is the fact that the wording of bill has been left seemingly intentionally vague. The broad definitions of the terms "communications data" and &telecommunications operators" could cover anything from traditional mail to any activity on the internet.

The implications of this ability to collect and retain all of your online activities means that this data can and will be held and examined for scrutiny and usage.

The Innocence of Muslims – Aftermath

In response to the recent YouTube video, "The Innocence of Muslims" and the resulting public fervor and the ensuing violence that occurred, officials in Saudi Arabia propose global Internet regulations and censorship. Saudi officials state that there is a "crying need for international collaboration to address ‘freedom of expression’ which clearly disregards public order."

During the violence, Google did restrict access to the 14 minute clip from YouTube, but resisted pressure from the White House and others to remove it.The Saudi government has gone on to tell the World Telecommunications Policy Forum (a UN body) that the incident was an "obvious example" of the need for greater international cooperation to restrict online content.

"Any reasonable person would know that this film would foment violence and, indeed, many innocent persons have died and been injured with this film as a root cause," the Saudi submission said.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 10:44 am

Categories: Internet Law,Privacy
Tags: censorship, Draft Communications Bill, Joint Parliamentary Committee, snooper's charter, the Innocence of Muslims —

October 9, 2012

EMD Insanity and Coining Phrases

It’s clearly time for Beanstalk to officially list ourselves as a sitedefibrillation solution provider.

Why? Because apparently the secret to SERP dominance with an EMD is to coin your own phrase!

Do a search for ‘coinflation’ + ‘gold’ or really, almost any other keyword to see what Google considers an ‘improved’ result following the EMD update.

If you didn’t get something like the results above, please let us know!

Okay so that seems slightly silly, but how the heck did they pull that off? There’s clearly PPC/AdWords competition for the phrase, and EMD should either be a penalty or moot, shouldn’t it?

Well apparently not! In fact EMD can still clearly be an asset if the ‘quality’ scores are all above par!

This means that if you have an organic campaign, with ongoing back links/references from trusted sources, and you aren’t hitting other penalties, you really should be feeling no loss at all from the EMD update.

Indeed, if your competition was using non-organic approaches to EMDs they should have taken a trust hit, and you may see an improvement in position due to their failings!

So while I can show you some examples of the EMD apparently failing to work, we can assure you it’s working, and overall seems like a positive step for Google.

10″ Google Nexus from Samsung?

Last night CNET announced some ‘highly’ probable info that Samsung is manufacturing a new 10.1″ Nexus tablet for Google.

The article is more of a stub of hear-say but had some rather ‘exact’ details including the resolution of the display:

The 2,560×1,600 display will have a PPI (pixels per inch) of about 299, said Shim. That tops the 264 PPI on the 9.7-inch 2,048×1,536 Retina iPad.

Clearly this will be the ‘high end’ model for the Nexus line (currently manufactured by Asus), especially when you consider that Google will be releasing a 7″ Nexus subsidized down to a $99 price this December!

In fact since we’re pondering things to come more than talking facts, I’d have to assume this will be a dual or quad core device with GPU acceleration of some sort to assist with up-scaling video content and 3d games to that eye-popping resolution.

So if this high-end Nexus tablet is anything less than $399 I’d be really shocked and very worried for Apple.

Okay, perhaps more worried for Apple, would be more accurate given it’s current public affairs issues..

In case you’re wondering ‘who cares?’; Tim Pool goes to the streets and broadcasts unedited footage of protests/events.

I’d like to think Apple is patenting this to prevent companies from doing this, but in actual fact this is very creepy stuff from the overly litigious makers of the most expensive walled gardens on the planet.

It seems almost like Apple is testing how well their brand/product can weather bad public image at this point?

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:53 am

Categories: backlinks,Google,Google,Internet Law,IT Industry,link building,Net Neutrality,Privacy,Rankings,Search Engine News,seo articles,SEO Tips,Technology
Tags: EMD Update, Google Nexus, phone disabling patent, Samsung —

October 1, 2012

Dying Online, Facebook and the Digital Afterlife

From time immemorial, countless people have looked at the stars and contemplated their existence and life’s greatest questions; What happens to us after we die? What will our legacy be? What will become of my Facebook account?

In an ever increasing digital world, this is a question that has been posed more than a few times between around the water cooler here at Beanstalk. With an ever increasing amount of users employing cloud based digital assets, and engaging in social media, many people are concerned not only for the protection of these valuable assets and intellectual property, but in preserving memories for friends and family for posterity.

A paper published law professor Jason Mazzone from the University of Illinois calls for federal government to interevene and to regulate what happens to digital accounts after an account holder’s demise.

Along with an ever increasing amount of people, Mazzone argues that social platforms and other online services have policies that do not adequately protect an individual’s intellectual property or privacy after their death.

"Virtually no law regulates what happens to a person’s online existence after his or her death," he said. "This is true even though individuals have privacy and copyright interests in materials they post to social networking sites."

In an absence of any legal regulations, social sites are unlikely to adopt any policies of their own accord that will do little to protect a users account or intellectual property. Presently there are very few regulations in place, and most sites are left developing policies on-the-fl, with little regard for the user’s data.

"It’s becoming increasingly common for people to have digital assets, and some of them do actually have value," he said. "Not only are such sites repositories of intellectual property, they also are important to family members and friends. Historians of the future will likely depend upon digital archives to reconstruct the past, which creates a real problem, particularly in an age when we don’t leave diaries, and, increasingly, people don’t write books."

Facebook’s policy is to "memorialize" the deceased’s account. All content that has been uploaded (status updates, photos & videos) are removed. The user’s wall remains intact so that individuals can express their condolences to the departed. However, the user data is not deleted by Facebook. Currently, the data is archived with the speculation that it will be held for posterity by Facebook until a such time where it can be re-purposed for historical records.

There is no system in place to state your wishes for your account after your demise (similar to a living will) and no regulations in place to appoint an executor of your estate. As the population of Facebook users begin to age, Mazzone is at the forefront of a growing movement to instill federally mandated regulations to protect the billions of Facebook and social networking users worldwide.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 12:43 pm

Categories: copyright,Facebook,Google+,Internet Law,LinkedIn,Privacy,social media,Twitter,YouTube
Tags: digital assets, intellectual property —

September 27, 2012

Google is 14 Years Old and Under Arrest

Well I guess ’14′ is not a very important number, since Google’s own birthday doodle is an animated GIF:

Does that really say PooP?

.. unless you count this ’14′ year old girl with ’14′ million views?

That’s evil Google, even if you didn’t actually make that the top search result for ’14 years old’, it’s very evil.

Stop! Jail Time!

Speaking of unintentional evils, Google’s chief executive in Brazil, Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, was arrested and then released after a Brazilian court found him guilty of violating South American pre-vote election laws.

Fabio’s crime? He denied a request to have politically sensitive videos removed from YouTube.

The same judge also ordered a .5 million dollar per day ‘penalty’ for Google to pay if it continues to host the videos!

Since the videos are not in English and most of the news sources are English, finding these ‘horrible’ videos isn’t very easy.

Here’s one explaining a connection between the candidate for Mayor, Alcides Bernal, and a money laundry scheme with a co-operative taxi service.

My Portuguese is pretty non-existent, but even without Google Translate, it’s pretty clear that the candidate for Mayor isn’t being promoted favorably in this video.

Google is facing similar political pressures over the recent anti-Muslim videos, including fines, however they are all currently being left online by YouTube/Google as it’s very clear that no rules of the service have been violated and removing the videos would merely make people want to share them even more.

Bearded Sikh Woman Teaches Reddit A Lesson

In fact these political types could learn a great lesson from a young Sikh woman who recently was ridiculed for not tending to her facial hair/beard over on Reddit’s r/funny boards.

Ugly remarks like: “Transgender Sikh Dwarf” didn’t phase Balpreet!

Rather than get upset, Balpreet Kaur, took the attention as an opportunity to register with Reddit as a new user and explain herself in a calm respectful manner.

This resulted in a huge cultural awareness among the thread readers, and she is currently being hailed as an outstanding example of how to handle criticism.

Here’s the full story (with twitter reactions) over on CBC News.

You go girl!

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:36 pm

Categories: Google,Internet Law,Misc,Net Neutrality,Privacy,Search Engine News,Twitter,YouTube
Tags: Alcides Bernal, Balpreet Kaur, reddit —

September 20, 2012

Dublin the Airports: iOS 6 Maps is Rotten

Apple’s extra Airport..

Was anyone expecting Apple to replace Google’s Maps application with something superior? Apparently, the iPhone user base and Apple actually expected this to happen.

If you look at the most extremely biased sites reviewing the new ‘Apple’ Maps app for iOS 6 you will see guarded optimism and lots of ‘reasoning’ clash with angry rants from amazed and disappointed users.

One thing I don’t see is anyone calling it the ‘Maps app that Apple bought from TomTom’ the best I’ve seen is a mention that they relied heavily on TomTom and OpenStreetMap for data alone.

Instead I see a very consistent collection of sympathetic remarks like: ‘this is beta, it can only get better’, ‘for a first attempt this is outstanding’, ‘people will question anyone who takes their own path..’

But Apple isn’t taking their own path, they are merely attempting (badly) to replace something that wasn’t really broken.

Sure, Google wasn’t toiling endlessly to include all the updates it was adding to the Android version of Google Maps.

I’m guessing Apple really expected Google to beta test ideas on the Android and then polish them up and finalize them on the iPhone?

So sure, Google put Android development first, and there were things that Google Maps did better on the Android, but that still doesn’t mean it ‘had to go’.

Apple could have offered both solutions in a ‘use what you like’ approach to pleasing it’s user base, but this is a company making headlines for outrageous profits and the working conditions of it’s manufacturing partners.

Removing the choice to pick another company’s solution would clearly explain why Apple didn’t take a settlement from Samsung and wanted to ban their phones. Apple want’s profits, and if Apple wants really happy customers they could lower prices and focus on better apps vs. removing the best ones for inferior versions.

And in other News

Google has blessed a new meta tag!

meta name=”news_keywords”

content=”Apple Maps, iOS 6, Google Maps, Android, TomTom, Google news meta tag”

Do you publish content that you would call ‘news’?
Would you like Google to better understand the topic of your posts?
Would you like the freedom to ignore keyword use in a topic for style reasons?

Then brothers and sisters, this new meta-tag is what you’ve been waiting for!

The format is very simple, and it belongs near the top of your page content, usually in the <head> … </head> section.

Here’s an example:

<meta name=”news_keywords” content=”10 keywords, separated, by commas, just like, meta keywords, etc..”>

That’s some ‘easy breezy’ SEO optimization, and it’s great if you are indeed publishing ‘news’; Not just ranting about Apple.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:51 am

Categories: copyright,Google,Google,Internet Law,Operating Systems,Rankings,Search Engine News,seo articles,SEO Tips,Technology
Tags: android, Apple Maps, Google Maps, iOS 6, meta tag, news_keywords, TomTom —

September 19, 2012

September 17, 2012

“the Innocence of Muslims” vs Free Speech

A recent movie published on YouTube, called "the Innocence of Muslims" has sparked outrage and public outcry in several areas of the Middle East and was responsible for the attacking of American embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, the killing of four officials and ongoing anti-US protests in Egypt and Libya.

Because the video does not violate YouTube policies, Google has rejected the notion of removing the video that mocks Islam and depicts the prophet Mohammed as a fraud and philanderer. They have however, decided to temporarily restrict access in these countries.

Similar to the controversy surrounding the Danish political cartoon that depicted the prophet Mohammed in 1995, and the violence that resulted, it should be well established that the Muslim’s regard any depiction of Mohammed blasphemy.

Google said in a statement last Wednesday, "However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries."

This video – which is widely available on the Web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube, Google said in a statement. "However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries."

In a new age where social media can have a direct impact on world events, many similar social companies are facing the same struggle between balancing free speech with legal or ethical concerns.

Given Google’s past track record of protecting free speech, some digital free expression groups have criticized YouTube for censoring the video. Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated, "It is extremely unusual for YouTube to block a video in any country without it being a violation of their terms of service or in response to a valid legal complaint."

Much like net debates over net neutrality, censorship, privacy and piracy, this is the latest in an ongoing series of growing pains that the adolescent Internet community must pass through.

With an ever increasingly intermingled global community we must face and pass through these tribulations before a truly equitable solution can be found that will strike a balance between free speech and showing respect for other political or belief systems.

On a more personal note: I have included the video since removed for public consumption. Not because I like or agree with it (at all), but to show others of the garbage that was created that sparked the controversy. Personally, I couldn’t make it past 2 minutes as it was just too painful to watch.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 12:34 pm

Categories: Internet Law
Tags: censorship, free speech, the Innocence of Muslims, the innocene —

September 10, 2012

Executive Order for Cyber Security

The Obama administration has been circulating a draft for an executive order focused on protecting the country from cyber-attacks. Following a proposed cybersecurity bill from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) that was blocked last month by Senate Republicans, the new draft proposes to codify standards and suggest best practices for critical infrastructure. The draft proposal has been sent out to relevant federal agencies.

obama cyber-security

After the first senate bill died, the White House counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan recommended that an executive order be issued to ensure power, water and transportation networks are secure.

“An executive order is one of a number of measures we’re considering as we look to implement the president’s direction to do absolutely everything we can to better protect our nation against today’s cyber threats,” said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. “We are not going to comment on ongoing internal deliberations.”

The proposed order would use the following system:

• Would setup an inter-agency council led by the Department of Homeland Defense
• Members would include the DOD, Commerce Department and possible other representatives from the Department of Energy, Treasury Department, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
• DHS would manage the program.
• Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would help to craft the framework of the program and work with private sector companies to develop cyber-security best practices and guidelines.
• DHS would receive guidance from NIST and work with ‘sector coordinating councils’ to determine which industry sectors are considered as critical infrastructure as well as determining what standards the industry participants are to follow.
• It would be left up to the companies to decide what actions they would take to meet the standards.

One of the main issues still under discussion involves the kinds of incentives the government will offer critical infrastructure operators to entice them into the program as the executive branch is limited in the types of incentives that it can offer companies, and much of this power resides within Congress.

Some opponents of the proposed order are not in favor of a join program led by the DHS and point to their previous track record in leading national security efforts.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 12:01 pm

Categories: Cyber-Security,Internet Law
Tags: cyber security, department of defense, obama —

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