Blog Action Day has been around for some time and although, as of this writing, it doesn't appear to be eclipsing last year's numbers, it just got a boost on the Official Google Blog.
Blog Action Day 2009 is dedicated to Climate Change and has some notable participants and new media partners.
The Google post by Googler Anthony Ravitz showcases some extraordinary sustainable initiatives at the Googleplex including "9,212 photovoltaic solar panels that produce 1.6 MW of electricity — enough energy to power about 1,000 California homes". (Ugh .... Wow!)
For those that don't remember it, or weren't around 'the scene' when it made headlines, the post also makes reference to the company's use of .... ugh .... goats to mow the lawn .
Yes, you read that right .... :).
It's a safe guess that the early morning post from Google will drive a lot of blogs to get onboard the Blog Action Day bandwagon at the last minute (Blog Action Day 2009 is today).
This blog participated in some of the earliest Blog Action Days. The concept is good and is now being played out in different ways on a variety of platforms.
Blogging, Tweeting (or whatever) for a variety of charities, initiatives etc. certainly can't hurt. In fact, in many cases, it has solved problems and/or helped a lot.
One of the more interesting Twitter - based websites launched early this year is Muck Rack.
Well-known by the web's 'social' PR crowd but not so well-known (yet) by the masses, Muck Rack is to Twitter what Alltop is to blogs, or at least that's the direction they appear to be going.
Originally, Muck Rack was an aggregator of Tweets by Journalists. I often went there (after TechMeMe for my 'tech take'), to see what Journalists around the globe were saying, and writing about. The site does a pretty good job sorting through the so-called noise.
Muck Rack has matured. Not only have they added features such as 'Mass Follow' for particular News organizations (and lots more), but scrolling across the top, there's now 'racks' for Designers, Coders, Tech, Celebs (gotta have that one :), Humor, Beauty, Musicians, VCs, Sports, Science, Pets, Travel, Colleges, and yes, Beer.
Hey, Beer is the No. 1 consumed alcoholic beverage in America (and probably recession - proof). Makes sense to me?
MuckRack also tracks links. I found this reference to Louis Gray in No. 1 post position pretty interesting.
So if you're one of the many that have cut your Twitter list down because of spam or just too much noise, you may just find what you're looking for on Muck Rack.
You will find a lot of the people behind the blogs you probably read already.
..... not to mention a slew of beer breweries you probably had no idea existed.
The new website is a simple explanation of what a web browser is, and provides direct links not only to Google's Chrome, but also to Apple's Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, and yes, the latest version of Opera.
To see Google continue to embrace 'basics' is refreshing.
There are brand new web users every day and tens of thousands of people worldwide discovering coding, search marketing, the latest Internet landscape and more each week.
Factually, there's a lot that many of us probably take for granted. Factually, it's not just kids that are just getting with the 'net.
Emerging countries rolling out broadband, seniors right here in the US, rural communities just getting broadband, and many other groups are just testing the waters for the first time.
The easier it is for them to get information (and reliable information about Internet safety and security), the better.
Opera has been around for a lot of years but doesn't get much press here in the states. The browser is used extensively on cellphones and also PC's, particularly in Europe. While the market share is relatively low, the browser has, for the most part, always been good.
I gave it a fresh run today, writing this piece using it, and it's just fine on a PC with a few features not offered by other browsers ... (probably something that can be said about each one of them).
I'm not going to look for Google's motivation here. (It's obvious they'd love if all of us used Chrome as it continues to evolve). I just think it's great that a major Internet company is continuing to address newcomers.
To keep it fair, Microsoft's recent efforts with Microsoft Security Essentials, a 100% free virus scanner for PC's, was a good move as well. While it may infringe on the 'pay-for' antivirus market a bit, the 'basic' anti-virus program release, just before the public release of Windows 7 (October 22nd) was important and smart. Many newcomers, in this economy, simply can't afford a few extra bucks for still necessary add-ons.
Google's Browser Video is below. While all of these browsers will see new versions emerge, it's a great starter kit!
In what seemed like a well intentioned move on Monday, the US Federal Trade Commission issued guidelines for endorsements, clarifying an existing law, but for the first time, mentioning bloggers.
I, for one, have always wondered why the same disclosures that appear (and have appeared) on websites for years somehow escaped bloggers and blogging (but never felt it necessary to put any kind of disclosure here).
The ruling has caused nothing less than a firestorm with some embracing the new 'clarification', and others outright hating it.
Personally, I have no problem if I'm helping someone with a website, writing (sometimes along with their lawyers) extensive disclosure pages. Factually. they usually address typos more than anything else.
On the other hand, this truly seems like an attempt to apply old rules to a new world .... that simply won't work.
First, here in the US, many of us write blogs almost assuming that our audience is in the US. An FTC ruling will most likely only effect US bloggers (and Tweeters?). That alone could result in a legal mess.
The World Wide Web is just that ..... and it's getting bigger. The small audience for this blog comes from numerous countries (and even more since I added Google Translate above and before that, the Wibiya bar below).
At times, I have turned on Google's Adsense here as more of an experiment than anything else.
Anyone who knows that landscape knows that I am not in full control of those ads .... Google is.
So if I were to disclose something here (not that there's much to disclose?!), and Google matched my writing with Adsense Ads, am I responsible for those advertisers now?
At the very least, it'll be interesting to see what ads appear below this post.
For me, the FTC's time could be much better spent going after virus-laden malware blogs and websites that still proliferate the web. They are still the biggest problem for average Internet users.
"By the way .... if you buy this FREE product, we are taking control of your computer ... because we need the bandwidth ... and haven't decided what to do with it yet"
In an e-mail to the Disqus community today, Daniel Ha introduced a variety of features that have been added to the commenting platform over the past few weeks (and seem to have have been overlooked by many).
For those of you that haven't noticed ... Disqus went real-time some time ago. Comments appear instantaneously and can be imported by a variety of platforms, many now also in real-time.
About a week ago, Disqus added Yahoo! alongside Twitter, OpenID and Facebook (and their own log-in) for commenting on Disqus - enabled websites.
There are also new plug-ins available for WordPress and Movable Type as well as new comment importers.
Finally, the 'reaction list' is now HUGE and includes Friendfeed, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, Vimeo, Picasa, Flickr, Typepad, Movable Type and others.
I have enabled Yahoo! along with the recently released Narcissus theme in the comments below as an example (along with Facebook log-in which is now functional here).
You can view all of the recent changes to Disqus here or follow the Disqus blog here.
A few hours ago, Google announced that you can now sync your mobile and desktop Google search history.
Available for Android, iPhone and Palm Web OS, all users need to do is log-in to their Google account. From there it's a matter of enabling or disabling from the settings tab.
More information can be found at the Google Mobile blog here.
The countdown is on .... and this blog post is just a reminder for those of us n the Northeast.
Search Marketing Expo East (or SMX East), the search engine trade show from Danny Sullivan (and company's) Search Engine Land (and Sphinn) comes to New York City in less than two weeks.
The complete agenda has been posted here and you can still registerhere.
Face to face wins the race.
I seriously doubt there are too many people that would argue the fact that networking in person can be a lot more productive (and enjoyable) than sitting behind a computer screen on various social networks.
This is one of those opportunities for those of us in the Northeast that practice within and/or 'keep an eye on' the search engine landscape .... and more.
There have been a lot of changes in search this year. Most notably Yahoo! dropping their search efforts entirely (soon to be partnered with Microsoft's Bing for results). Google is always making changes.
The industry is very simply more dynamic than ever.
Bottom line? In my humble opinion ... If you're a web advertiser, SEO, ad agency, or Internet marketer of any kind, you should be there.
No, someone didn't goof and drop an extra 'L' in the logo, and no, the crew in Mountainview isn't teasing us (again :).
The second 'L' is actually a '1', and in this case .... so is the first.
It didn't take a lot of investigative work to figure this one out.
Mouse over the logo and it says "Google's 11th Birthday". (Tapping the logo brings a search of Google .. ugh ... on Google ... which doesn't reflect anything about a birthday).
Will it become a news story? Probably. Almost every 'special' Google logo over the past ten years has made the news.
So, to the whole crew at Google (around the world) .... and the few Googlers I've come to know (mostly electronically) over the past few years... Happy 11th Birthday Google!
Coincidentally, I did have a few photos to edit and send by e-mail so I replaced the old version to try out some of the new features.
The new Picasa (version 3.5) adds facial recognition, name tags, easier geotagging, and more seamless integration with Picasaweb.
To those of you that take a lot of photos with your cellphone, or just don't have the time to stop and set camera settings, I wandered across a feature you may want to try out.
The redeye correction automatically finds the eyes!
While this may not sound exciting to you if you're already using more elaborate commercial photo editing software, I found it pretty huge for a free product. Picasa's right up there now for me with Microsoft's Phototools and Paint.net.
Give it a try.
With gobs of photos now being uploaded from iPhones (and other camera phones) this one feature is an outright WIN.
