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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.

January 29, 2013

Feeling Old: Child of the 90s

Being a youthful person (aka: I never grew up) you could say I was a child of the 90s, but in all honesty, this new ‘Child of the 90s’ video promotion, from the marketing team behind Internet Explorer, just makes me feel old…

I’m pretty sure that generation YoYo came earlier & what’s up with that Apple II?

When I was young we had:
- 300baud vs. 56k
- 5.25″ vs. 3.5″
- monochrome vs. color
- Garfield™ vs. puppies
- Donkey Kong vs. Tamagotchi
- Handi-Snacks vs. Lunchables
- hockey cards vs. pogs

So it’s pretty close to my generation, but still makes me feel old.

Does it make me feel any affinity for IE, as if I can relate to it’s embarrassing past after remembering fanny packs?

Not really. It makes me remember when Netscape decided to put expiry dates on their browser so I was forced to install IE only for fear of support calls asking how to update Netscape.

Still, not a positive moment for IE, just being the browser that ’caused the least issues’, wasn’t much of a title?

How has that changed? Well now IE is, in my circles, the browser that that ’causes the most issues’.

So they grew up, but not the way we’d like, and until they expire all the old copies of IE laying around or break off to a new product name with zero ties to old IE issues, I thin IE is stuck with the ‘difficult child’ image.

When I was a kid..

When I was a kid we had electron guns we’d sit in front of, and the only thing between us and the gun firing electrons was a glass plate.

People said it wasn’t good, told us to keep our distance..

Now with Samsung offering curved OLED screens they are urging us to get close, saying that the screens offer an immersive experience:

OLED technology means less emissions, heat, and power consumption than almost any full color display technology available today.

As someone with less than 55″ inches of screen space curved around him right this moment, I’d have to say that this first screen will make it’s purchasers VERY happy once it comes to market and stops being a poster child for what’s coming.

Displays need to step-up indeed, what with all the 3d options coming out, including the very exciting Oculus Rift that’s been generating some interesting reaction videos (WARNING: Strong Language/Reactions):

Candid Anthony didn’t seem very impressed until he tried it..

So while folks were saying the next step in displays will be to plug into our brains, it appears that we are finding another step closer without the brain jack.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 1:30 pm

Categories: Browsers,Internet Explorer,IT Industry,just for fun,Technology,YouTube
Tags: Netscape, nostalgia, Oculus rift, OLED, VR —

November 29, 2012

The Karaoke Web Standard

KWS Side bar image

Well Microsoft has finally managed to get a leg up on all the current desktop web browsers available today with it’s new Karaoke Web Standard.

To quote the KWS wiki entry:

This specification defines a new API, focused on semantic language processing for two-way communication with a remote host. Eschewing typical binary protocols, this new interface creates a system-to-system forced sonic recognition on the receiving party.

The KWS definition page goes on to discuss key points like pending API access to the libation ES codebase, and encourages modification from the base parameters noting that each user has unique aptitudes in variety of related skills.

Indeed while some users, such as myself, have a low threshold for personal embarrassment (regardless of how many times a week I write these posts), I could possess high vocal aptitude that would mitigate a fond user experience if I were to stick with preset templates.

The spec deals with concerns such as bitrate, throttling, error mitigation, audio auth rights, P2P connectivity, and semantic packet delivery, but fails to touch on less favourable issues like hackers that implement auto-tuning modules.

Included with the announcement were two YouTube videos, one that explains the need for the new standard:

And a second video that focuses on presenting the new KWS:

Oddly the videos came along with a link “thebrowseryoulovedtohate.com” that’s got an extra ‘d’ in every instance?

The theme is apparently along the lines of “Have you tried IE Lately?”, with the assumption that you’ll like what you see.

I’m personally assuming that next week someone on the IE marketing team will get a phat bonus for a spike in downloads that doesn’t correlate to actual user shift.

FireFox 64bit?

In related news, FireFox has given up on 64bit development for now, listing a number of issues that make it a very wise decision, regardless of the folks that were ‘enjoying’ the struggle of maintaining a 64bit browser with very little 64bit extension support.

While a 64bit FireFox could theoretically run faster, the added expense of development was taxing the coders and holding back the progress of the browser vs. it’s competition.

If you MUST have a 64bit FireFox there is a build of FF with 64bit support, it’s called ‘WaterFox‘ and you can get it from Sourceforge.

Since I already had FireFox installed I grabbed the portable copy of WaterFox and it runs great, picking up most, if not all, of my FireFox profile/settings.

Personally? I’m using Chrome, and I am writing plugins for Chrome because I feel it’s going to win the browser war thanks to Android, Apple, and many other systems that use the WebKit engine by default.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:50 am

Categories: Apple Safari,Browsers,Coding,Google Chrome,Internet Explorer,IT Industry,just for fun,Misc,Mozilla Firefox,Mozilla Firefox,Operating Systems,seo articles,Technology,YouTube
Tags: FireFox 64Bit, IE Sucks, Karaoke Web Standard, WaterFox —

November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

There seems to be a lot of spam vs. turkey this year, but we still have plenty to be thankful for!

In fact just today I was reading about how Google is thanking Maps contributors with ‘Badges‘!

If you login to Google and head on over to the Map Maker section of Google Maps you can get started on either reviewing changes that need to be approved/disapproved, or make your own.

The badges are apparently awarded as follows (stolen from IBF):

So Thanks Google, for being Thankful! This is going to work very well for trust factors on your G+ profile, which as we pointed out many times now, should also be the author link for your site content.

In Other News..

DuckDuckGo was trying to prove they could deliver better search results without learning anything about the user.

It would have been neat if it were possible, but I wouldn’t send a stranger out to buy me new shoes, and I don’t want a web search that doesn’t know me either.

At this point DuckDuckGo have been reduced to complaining about Google not selling them cool domain names like “duck.com”, and how many extra clicks it takes to change the search engine in Chrome vs. Firefox.

While I agree that making use of duck.com as a 301 to google.com is a bit ‘cruel’, my guess is that nobody offered Google a fair price for the domain, and it’s not bad business to improve the value by holding onto the name until a valid offer comes along.

If DuckDuckGo wants to disclose how much they offered Google, I may change my opinion, but for now this is just ‘big business’ vs. anything ‘anti-competitive’, and if this is the absolute worst mud that DDG can sling at Google then they have little to complain about.

Google Music Translate

While I have been eager to see someone like Wierd Al tackle the song Gangnam Style with some English lyrics, I am not sure I’m eager to see this ‘project’ come to life:

Heck this was meant to be a joke, but Google is so spooky with it’s tech that this is totally plausible?

Indeed some news sites this morning are actually getting flamed for discussing this as if it were a real service offered by Google.

Well ‘played‘ sirs..

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:53 pm

November 20, 2012

Should Microsoft ask for a refund?

Steve Balmer really gets worked up at press events..

I don’t know about Steve Ballmer, but if I paid Oprah to advertise my new tablet, I’d demand my money back after she used an iPad to say that the Surface is a better/preferred device.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the tweet of the week:

Oprah Tweets about the Surface using her iPad

Oh no she didn’t. Woman don’t tell me you pushed that out via iPad..?

So that really happened, and it’s stirred up some funny arguments about expectations of paid promotions.

If you as a website promoter paid someone to promote your site and they accidentally/incidentally promoted the competition instead, how would you handle it?

Wait, lets see if we can deploy some fancy web tech to help gather your answers!

[yop_poll id="2"]

The next question is how will someone in charge of damage control will explain away Oprah’s iPad based praise of how superior the Surface is?

This is a bit like watching a bus crash in slow motion, except the bus is full of people you really don’t like.

A smiley face eating popcorn and drinking.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:49 pm

Categories: IT Industry,just for fun,Misc,Technology
Tags: #FavoriteThings, iPad, Microsoft Surface, Oprah, twitter —

November 15, 2012

Google Ingress – Niantic’s Project

My post about creating traffic detours on the internet had a blurb about the Niantic Project where I was speculating that it was indeed a Google Field Trip promotion where you play the game by visiting landmarks to view clues.

I wasn’t too far off with my speculation, today is day 1 of the closed beta for Ingress, a ‘Niantic Project’.

The video gives us a pretty good idea that this will a modified version of Google’s Field Trip app with extra options to interact with both the landmark clues but also potentially other players of the game.

Essentially it looks like the goal is to get enough people from all over the world working together to solve/hack enough of the important clues to solve the mystery.

Clues appear to be well placed so that you get an idea that something is going on with a landmark, but until you find the right interaction with the landmark the information is locked.

From the screen shots we can see there’s a level meter tracking your progress as a player, an energy meter that likely limits your ‘moves’ in the game, and a GUI that was developed specifically for this game.

Right now you can’t join in and play, but you can sign up for the closed beta on the Ingress Homepage.

My guess is that you’ll have to be patient in waiting for a reply to the beta signup. Not only will there be a lot of interest, I’m betting that the team wants to approve people in an even distribution globally.

Picture what would happen if they let people sign up at random. Due to the per-capita density of nerds/landmarks, Canada would solve all it’s clues too soon and try linking it’s gates before any of the other countries are ready to link up.

Back over on Nianticproject.com we have an exotic interactive screen that requires a password with the clue “CLASSIFIED _ _ _ _ _ _ matter” implying that the password is 6 letters long, which fits none of my guesses!

Even getting past that clue leads to more clues, so the game is clearly not going to be solved or won by one person.

Brandon Bager is apparently trying to make me look like a bad guesser. He’s confirmed that at 9:33am the invite script was on the letter “B” for invites.

Perhaps I should go back and add another email address that doesn’t start with an “A”?

Patience!

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:54 am

Categories: Google,Google+,IT Industry,just for fun,Misc,Search Engine News,Technology
Tags: Exotic Matter, Google Field Trip, Google Ingress, Niantic Project —

October 18, 2012

Google Rickroll’d the Internet

So Google has time for more than attacking your websites with black and white animals. They recently did a virtual ‘street-view’ tour of a Google data center in Lenoir, North Carolina, and managed to include some ‘easter eggs’ in the process.

Here’s the ‘video tour’ with nice audio explaining the various sections of the Street View tour:

Not missing a beat, Google’s G+ account noticed the recursive nature of the servers taking a picture of the servers that would then host the pictures of the servers taking pictures of the servers..

Google+ post from Google about Google Street view inside a Google Data Center that hosts Street View data.

Folks with a keen eye will notice some ‘odd’ images in the tour, including the world’s largest ever single Rick Roll attempt:

A Google employee casually shares the same video on two screens. Apparently he's never going to give us up or let us down, never going to run around and desert us..

Someone hiding in a costume that looks like an android:

A Google employee dressed as an android inside a Google Data Center.

Love the white boards! All offices need whiteboards!

And even an image of their on-site security team:

A Google employee dressed as a stormtrooper and a mini R2 unit stand guard inside a Google Data Center.

Some good humor from Google, and a really neat tour of something that is typically a very private operation.

One last ‘observation’, I also like the advice of freshly washed/sliced veggies, like celery/carrots as an item to have beside your keyboard throughout the day. As the sign says, those veggies are a good source of fiber which is really important if you give a .. darn.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:39 am

Categories: Cyber-Security,Google,Google+,IT Industry,just for fun,Misc,Search Engine News,social media,Technology
Tags: Google Datacenter, Google HQ, google street view, rickroll —

October 4, 2012

Google Chronos?

When I was a kid all I really wanted from my wrist watch was to tell the time, date, temperature, speed of movement, elevation, relative humidity, and it had to be a fully working calculator while still fitting on my wrist and not costing more than I could afford.

Yeah I was a humble child.

But I wasn’t alone in my desire to have the kitchen sink on my wrist!

Clearly there were others who wanted more than just time from the device they carry everywhere.

In 2001 news of the Bluetooth functions in IBM’s Linux Watch was making headlines in the tech circles I frequented.

It was a beast but it ran Linux and X11 on your wrist plus it had Bluetooth communications so it could turn your lights off and on, start the coffee maker, even control your TV/Stereo!

This was back when Bluetooth wasn’t in every single phone, so the obvious connection between the watch and the phone wasn’t there at the time, and this was more of a standalone device vs. and accessory.

Today’s phones however, are very well equiped, and it’s actually unusual to see a phone without bluetooth support; So now the interaction between the watch and a paired phone is driving a new market.

When you think of ‘getting out your phone’ compared to ‘glancing at a watch’ the value of having your timepiece reflecting the status of your nearby phone suddenly ‘clicks’.

If Android is a lean/mean version of Linux developed for mobile devices, why aren’t we seeing it used in a watch?

IBM had this working 12 years ago!?

Enter the Google Watch

Google to the rescue! Well, almost, since it’s just a fresh patent vs. an actual product announcement…

If you visit the USPTO link above you’ll see a long list of patented products that are falling into the same classification, some of which are nearly as old as me! Yikes!

Indeed Google’s input is more along the lines of a sister(?) product to the Google Glass project which uses the same display techniques and has a lot of the same goals as this patent.

Speaking of displays, looking at the above image, you’d supposedly release the transparent top display marked as ’30′ (pushing on the latch marked 20?), which would then still keep working as the base display (item 16?) shows other information.

In one of the USPTO images the watch is shown doing some overlay images to apparently assist with price matching/product purchases. If it can break all the sticker prices down by actual price per unit values so they can be compared easily, that alone would make it a must have item for me.

Other Options?

You do NOT have to wait for Google to find the time to build and test this watch.

If you want an Android based watch right now, it’s not cheap, but they are already for sale from other companies.

Here’s the “I’m WATCH” (seriously, that’s the name!) from “i’m SpA” (?!):

It’s attractive, and functional, but it’s not very ‘Google’ and I do believe they found a man with the biggest fingers on the planet to demonstrate it:

The headphone jack seems nuts for a bluetooth device, but it’s very fresh and clearly still a work in progress.

The watch is a device that has to be reliable, functional, and stylish, so it really could take someone like Google to ‘nail it’.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:15 pm

Categories: Google,IT Industry,just for fun,Misc,Operating Systems,Search Engine News,Technology
Tags: android watch, bluetooth watch, computer watch, Google watch, linux watch —

October 3, 2012

Reeling in the Years: 30th Anniversary of the Compact Disc.

The compact disc is 30 years old today. If that doesn’t make you feel old, then youhere is something more relevant to your age: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Bieber

Compact Disc Player circa 1982

The year was 1982 when the first compact disc revolutionized the music industry and industry profits for ever. While Billy Joel’s 52nd Street was the first compact disc to be officially released in Japan, technically the first actual compact disc that was created and tested was a pressing of Richard Strauss’s ‘Eine Alpensinfonie’. The honor of the first batch of compact discs manufactured goes to ABBA’s ‘the Visitors’.

Although they seem antiquated now and are regarded as throwbacks to prehistory by the younger generation, at the time CDs were a galactic leap forward in technology. Audiophiles from around the world rejoiced and marveled at the clarity the compact discs offered.

No longer were listeners affronted with hiss, cracks and pops associated with vinyl records. Initially the astronomical price tag kept compact discs and compact disc players were too prohibitive and resulted in a slow adoption rate by consumers. There is still an ongoing argument amongst the vinyl-generation that compact discs don’t have the same "warmth" as an analog record offered.

Abba-The_Visitors_(1981)-CD

With all technologies, the CD was come and gone to be replaced by newer digital technologies. Those growing up today regard CDs with the same nostalgia as the previous generation regards vinyl records; with a quaint sense of nostalgia. In much the same way, digital music has also revolutionized the music industry.

Much to the chagrin of major record labels, the barrage of pirating and licensing issues has redefined the role of big record companies and given rise to a huge influx of indie (independent) recording artists that owe their fame to the like of YouTube and peer-to-peer file sharing networks and self promotion that seeks to redesign the whole industry.

For the first time in the history of the music industry, we have hit a technological plateau. The battle being waged over piracy, royalties and industry profits is creating a fundamental paradigm shift that will resonate for decades to come and will set the stage for all future generations of music lovers.

The Top 10 Albums of 1982:

JUDAS PRIEST – "Screaming for Vengence"
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – "Nebraska"
JOHN COUGAR – "American Fool"
LED ZEPPELING – "CODA"
RUSH – "Signals"
VAN HALEN – "Diver Down"
IRON MAIDEN – "The Number of the Beast"
TOM PETTY & the HEATBREAKERS – "Long After Dark"
ROBERT PLANT – "Pictures at Eleven"
KISS – "Creatures of the Night"

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 12:30 pm

Categories: just for fun,YouTube
Tags: CDs, compact disc, music industry, piracy —

September 13, 2012

Mmmmmm Bacon..

Did that get your attention? Some crispy fresh smoky bacon?

It’s a pity then that the story isn’t about hot pork but instead about degrees of bacon.

Degrees of Kevin Bacon to be exact.

Google has given us yet another nerdy Easter Egg, not unlike the StarCraft inspired ZergRush or StarFox inspired BarrelRoll, Easter Eggs. (Shame on PCWorld for their typo this morning!).

If you add ‘bacon number’ to an actor’s name in a Google Search, Google will tell you the degrees of separation between the actor and Kevin Bacon.

Heck it even works with actresses!

Try a Google search for: “Oliva Wilde bacon number”

..you should get a Bacon Number of “2″!

This is because Oliva worked with Ryan Reynolds in ‘The Change-Up’..

Ryan Reynolds is working with Kevin Bacon on the action/comedy film ‘R.I.P.D.’ that’s coming out in early 2013.

Thus Oliva Wild’s ‘degree of separation’ with Kevin Bacon would be a 2.

All Oliva needs to do now is add her Bacon number to her profile page like so:

Since you’d need to be pretty famous to have a Bacon Number I expect that it will be *the* thing to have, if you’re a movie star.

Fat Hacker – Cosmo the God & UGNazi

This is not my best segway(seguay?) between stories, but I was simply blown away by the tale of a chubby 15 year old hacker in California who is in jail for widespread hacking and mischief.

This inventive teen, with poor supervision, has managed to hack a wide cross-section of some of the worlds biggest companies including:

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, PayPal, AOL, Netflix, Network Solutions, and Microsoft

`Cosmo`, as he is called online, likes to point out that none of these hacks were particularly tricky, and is calling on companies to fix their easily exploitable systems, while he sits in a juvenile detention center after admitting to many of his `hacks`.

The story I read on Wired.com was so well written I’m not even going to try and do any excerpts, I’m just going to drop the link and insist you give it a read.

Cosmo, the Hacker ‘God’ Who Fell to Earth

Nicely done Mat Honan, from a victim to a sympathizer, all in one interview. This is great investigative journalism, and we need more like it.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 1:01 pm

Categories: Coding,Google,internet security,just for fun,Misc,Search Engine News,seo articles,SEO Tips,social media,Technology
Tags: Bacon Number, Cosmos the God, Degrees of Bacon, UGNazi —

September 12, 2012

The New iPhones are here! (but do they have 4G?)

After much speculation, the new Apple release details of the new iPhone 5 today and stated that the new iPhone will begin shipping September 21^st.

Gizmodo compiled a great list of features, but here is a quick rundown of the new iPhone features:<

18% Thinner and 20% Lighter: Coming in at 7.6 millimeters (0.29 inches) and weighing a scant 112 grams (3.95 ounces), the new form factor stands to be the world’s thinnest Smartphone.
Large Panoramic Screen: Supports more resolutions and uses less power. Apple claims that the new 16:9 4-inch panoramic screen has 44 percent more saturation than the iPhone, which makes the display full RGB. The display features the touchscreen sensor built-in.

Upgraded CPU: Apple claims that their new A6 processor is 2x faster in CPU and graphics and will load web pages 2.1 times faster than the iPhone4S.
LTE: Long Term Evolution capabilities will make this versions connectivity much faster than its predecessor.
Battery: Huge improvements have been made here. The new iPhone features 8 hours talk-time on 3G, 8 hours LTE browsing, 10 hours Wi-Fi browsing, 30 hours video playback, 225 hours on standby.

Updated Camera: 5 elemental lens, 8 megapixel sensor (3264 x 2448 pixel), backside illumination, hybrid infrared filter and f/2.4 aperture. The updated camera also comes with a new panorama capture mode and improved video face detection (now at 1080p FullHD).
Improved Front FaceTime Camera
Upgraded Audio: added 3 microphones (front, back & bottom), speakers now have 5 transducers from 3 for clearer, fuller sound, and improved ear buds – now cleverly dubbed “EarPods”.
Wideband Audio: This new iPhone 5 technology uses something called wideband audio, that if supported by the carrier, the phone will use more of the spectrum of available bandwidth to send much better, high-fidelity version of your voice over the network.

New Dock Connector: Apple calls its new connector interface “Lightning.” It’s all digital and features 8 pin connectors. It is an adaptive interface that will send different signal types based upon your connection needs. The best part? It is REVERSABLE!
Comes in black or white models
Prices:All the new iPhone5s come with a standard 2 year contract with Apple.
- 16GB: $199
- 32GB: $299
- 64GB: $399
- iPhone 4S? now only $99

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 3:05 pm

Categories: just for fun,Technology
Tags: Apple, iphone, iphone 4s, iphone 5 —

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