I compiled another quick list of links this week, but you might want to read them fast, because as Kid Mercury noted almost a week ago, On April 11, The Internet Gets Destroyed (No longer available)
OK, it might not be demolished, but it may just be broken in many places after Microsoft issues a new patch that treats some HTML tags involving embedded objects differently, instead of paying licensing fees for the technology.
Search Engines
Google Buys Search Algorithm Invented by Israeli Student Ori Alon (or Allon), an Israeli student, who has been studying in at the University of New South Wales in Australia, appears to now be working in Google’s Mountain View offices. After a press release in September of last year, it appears that Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google were all seeking this software, which finds links to related resources, based upon text found on a page from a query on a specific subject.
Google To Open A Second Research Center In Israel This report is based upon a list of job openings for an office in Tel Aviv, for the following positions:
- Engineering Center Director
- Vertical Head Multi-Sector
- Vertical Relationship Manager, Multi-Sector
- Vertical Account Manager, Multi-Sector
- Maximizer Coordinator (Google Copywriter)
- Sales Coordinator
The first Google office in Israel is located in the northern city of Haifa
A Privacy Analysis of the Six Proposals for San Francisco Municipal Broadband By now, Google has been awarded the contract to work with Earthlink in providing wireless access in San Francisco. But this analysis of the folks vying to provide the service is worth reading.
The Spyware – Click-Fraud Connection — and Yahoo’s Role Revisited Ben Edelman has had a hand in some of the most interesting research involving search engines and spyware over the past few years, on topics such as censorship in China, Saudi Arabia, France, and Germany, and more recently on spyware issues. If you pay for ads on a search engine, this is an article that you should check out.
Interviews
A Frank Interview with Gary Flake Some nice discussion here. Gary Flake answered a good number of questions about how MSN works, and what he likes and dislikes about the search service. I’d like to see part two.
Web Directories – Interview with Greg Hartnett Some thoughtful questions and answers with the owner of the Best of the Web directory.
Lowdown with Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld In the only chance, I’ve had to talk with him, I got to spend about three minutes with Brett Tabke discussing PDAs in the lobby of the New York Hilton a couple of years back. He has a lot more to say in this interview with Lee Odden.
Analytics and conversions
The $10,000.00 experiment with PPC Part 1 Shoemoney entertains and educates with this post. I’m looking forward to part two.
Conversion: Make Your Links Work Harder Dan Thies focuses on something simple that might have a large impact, on this post. I hope he keeps following this approach.
Radio Advertising And The Internet – What Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh Won’t Tell You But Blaine Parker Will There are good ways and bad ways to tie together radio and internet advertising. We get to see both with this post.
The tail wags the dog… Some reporting tools make suggestions on how to improve your pages. As Howard Kaplan notes here, reporting is easy, but the analysis is hard. You shouldn’t let your reporting tools also provide your analysis for you.
SocialNets & The Power of The URL Robert Young looks at the growth of consumer control over URLs, and what it means to businesses, as well as the role of AdSense in powering this consumer-created media.
Burpee Leverages Customer WOM via RSS A nice case study of the use of RSS and customer reviews by a 130-year-old company.
Assorted links
Wikipedia and Link Spammers – A “How-to” Guide (dead link) Peter T Davis provides a tongue-in-cheek look at how to get links to your pages from Wikipedia.
Visual Retrieval Experiment If you have 15 – 20 minutes and would like to participate in Mauro Cherubini’s experiment on Visual Information Retrieval for his thesis work, I’m sure that he would be appreciative. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m planning on doing so in the morning.
Internet Archive Sued for Copyright Infringement Is the Internet Archive legal, or is it copyright infringement? I’m having a difficult time understanding the legal argument being made by the plaintiff’s lawyer in this case. I wonder if the complaint that was filed will make it any clearer.
Beginner’s guide to podcasts and podcasting (plus: how to create a basic podcast of your own) An excellent step-by-step guide, which covers many of the small technical details on how to make a podcast.
On Volunteering Inspirational post that gives ten very good reasons to volunteer to help others.
Elasticity for Entrepreneurs On the importance of expertise, inelastic goods, and niches. Thought-provoking.