Cryptome reports that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has remote administrative access to several of the most popular Windows PC firewalls, and that it has also taken control of a number of supposedly “secure ” email services within the past few months.

 The article contends that personal computer firewall software products from MacAfee, Symantec, Zone Alarm all help Microsoft’s NSA-controlled remote admin access via ports 1024 – 1030 without using a security flag.

The Inquirer has this equally interesting food for thought:

“Certain privacy [and/or] full session SSL email hosting services have been purchased [or] changed operational control by NSA and affiliates within the past few months, through private intermediary entities.”

src: NSA 0wns popular ‘firewalls’ and ’secure’ e-mail services

I’m not a fan of spying on American citizens without a warrant, I’ve previously assaulted  AT&T with phrases like “the network you can trust is a fraud” and “the network you can’t afford to trust.”  The fact of the matter is, it isn’t simply a problem that is pervasive among a handful of corporations.  It’s how government and corporations are in bed together, how consumers and citizens do not have people protecting their rights and how NSA justice believes that balancing the harms, this is the only way to roll.

ArsTechnica had the lowdown on some of the odd packet routing issues that resulted on Sunday, here’s  an excerpt:

On Sunday, YouTube became unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. No “sorry we’re down” or cutesy kitten-with-screwdriver page, nothing.  What happened was that packets sent to YouTube were flowing to Pakistan. Which was curious, because the Pakistan government had just instituted a ban on the popular video sharing site. What apparently happened is that Pakistan Telecom routed the address block that YouTube’s servers are into a “black hole” as a simple measure to filter access to the service. However, this routing information escaped from Pakistan Telecom to its ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world.

Insecure Routing redirects Youtube to Pakistan

From the OpenID website:

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.

If you’re not quite sure why this matters, consider the future of online usage.  There’s a school of thought that would argue that everything will be connected and social networking will continue to grow, evolve and bring in millions of additional users.  In addition to social networking, blogging and other community and interactive websites will flood the internet like never before.  With this in mind, by soliciting the assistance of the major players in Silicon Valley, OpenID has all but solidified it’s status as the standard for online authentication.  Additionally, by agreeing on a standard for OpenID, there is potential for large companies to work on a reputation and/or profiling system for web users at-large.  To learn more about OpenID and the latest  news related to the maturity of the OpenID community, check out the following: “Evolving the OpenID foundation board“

There was a time when Yahoo! melting into Microsoft seemed laughable. After all, they were two different companies with two different cultures and two different visions. Now with everyone chasing Google, many are proclaiming that this deal makes a lot of sense. Google currently has such a huge lead in search that it dwarfs Microsoft and Yahoo! put together. But is there any reason to think that Microsoft and Yahoo! can accomplish together what they weren’t able to accomplish on their own?

One interesting aspect to this deal, however, are the reasons underlying Microsofts offer. Does Microsoft really feel that this offer to purchase Yahoo! will really “synergize” the company and lead to some great new products and/or services? Does it geniunely feel that a Microsoft/Yahoo! combo can give Google a run for its money? Or, is Microsoft, which is lagging severely behind Google, completely out of ideas. Is buying Yahoo! a hail-mary attempt by Microsoft to catch up with a company that it can’t compete with otherwise? Microsoft has a history of trying to catch up to where the competition IS, instead of focusing on where an particular industry is headed for in the future. I would hope that a Microsoft-Yahoo! deal, should it go through, would result in innovative and original ideas that range beyond simple re-branding.

Digg’s latest changes didn’t put an end to gaming as was intended. Instead, gaming is now required of active diggers who seek to hit the front page.

If you’re an active social network user, then you’re likely familiar with Digg and the latest problems that have arisen with recent algorithm changes. In short, Digg recently made an effort to curb gaming of their website by changing how stories are promoted and if you’ve been following the drama, it looks like Digg succeeded on some levels.

There has been a lot of talk about the casual-digger versus power-digger conundrum that has played out on Digg. Casual Digg users have laughed and even prodded at the Digg community’s top supporters for losing “power”.

Who got squeezed by the new Digg algorithm? It’s not who you think!

New users got what they wanted and top diggers with a huge fan-base are a tad uncomfortable, but they’ll survive. Arguably, the most important users of Digg’s community are the ones hit hardest by new changes, it’s the active diggers that provide the Digg community with diggs, comments and link “new users” to “top users” via social networking.

If you don’t believe me, ask the top digg users if they have hit the front page in the last 48 hours. The response will be similar from our mini-celebrities in the community. MrBabyman / Muhammad Saleem and Zaibatsu (aka “Reg” / Z) aren’t the ones denied access to the front page, nor should they be! It is not those users that have had their Digg experience ruined and chances are they didn’t miss a beat despite participating (in some form) in the backlash against Digg last week.

Did Digg go too far and were active diggers right to react angrily to the new changes?

My initial position was that diggers were being melodramatic and reactionary. But hey, drama is what makes the world go ’round and it sure helps drive communities on social networks, especially if you follow politics.

I’ll give an example of something that the new Digg algorithm did cure and explain how this cure essentially served to squeeze out the large base of users that are active but lack the strong fan-base that Digg’s top users have.

Digg’s Front Page — taking out the trash

Digg did a good job of removing the spammy lame garbage posts from the front page. What I mean is, some blogs essentially quoted long passages from other sites and added a line or two of commentary and would make the front page.

The reason these garbage sites would hit the front page was because of the way the algorithm worked – it focused on friends and lobbying and sites with already large communities would get automatic diggs in addition to the friend’s of diggers who would submit the articles.

The problem that Digg is going to have to deal with is that they seem to have tightened the screw a bit too much making it difficult, if not impossible, for active diggers to have their content hit the front page. In fixing the ‘garbage-blog’ problem, Digg killed the ability of middle-of-the-road diggers and some quality digg content-submitters to hit the front page. One of my active interests on Digg is politics, so a good analogy is when cities actively clean the streets by ‘removing’ homeless people during the Olympics. They may have good reasons for doing it, but hiding the problem and cheating the public out of the truth only temporarily hides the homelessness problem and doesn’t actually fix it!

Where does that leave top diggers that are marginalized by the new system?

Whereas active diggers previously may have accomplished multiple front-page articles with quality content before, they can’t make the front page to save their lives. A number of diggers who actively engage the community on Digg are no longer front-page worthy using prior Digg strategies and friend support.

Where does it leave active users who don’t have two to three thousand fans? People in my boat aren’t interested in switching social networks, we don’t have time to get situated in a new community or learn a new system, so my only option is to do exactly what Digg programmers are trying to prevent.

In order for active users to hit the front page with quality content, gaming is now required! Essentially, users like me are forced to add more friends and shout-spam while commenting and lobbying for support on articles I’d like to share. The entire purpose of Digg is defeated for people like myself who are boxed-in by the new rules.

Based on what I know so far, I can’t defeat the algorithm without ‘gaming’ the system and I’m not exactly a new user in-fact I’m probably one of the more active diggers around! Here, let me explain. Before the Digg algorithm changes, getting to the front page with ‘good stuff’ wasn’t terribly difficult for me because I managed to make friends with a lot of active diggers and frequently contributed to discussions that would help give my profile exposure.

Digg wants to prevent ‘trivial’ front-page submissions, understandable, but the problem is that now a lot of really good stories will not hit the front page. If you’ve been paying attention – like I have — minus the spam-blog fix, the over-all quality of Digg’s front page stories have diminished considerably.

Prior to the Algorithm Changes…

I purposely kept my list small, maybe in the 100-110 range for the most part and I did so for the purpose of following all of my friend’s submissions. If they submitted good stuff, I wanted to be there to digg and/or comment! It made sense, it worked well but it made Digg a strong lobby system that spammers quickly exploited for their own profitable gain. The fact is, however, that I never felt a need to “game” the system when I was submitting quality articles… the system just worked.

Digg fixed the problem with mass-friend adding and spam-shouting but because of the user interface, many stories on “upcoming” aren’t seen. The only way I can imagine getting articles on the front page is by adding a few hundred more friends and hope they aren’t on the digg shit-list.

Active Digger “Shit-List”

I call it a “shit -ist” because if you’re friends with active diggers chances are ‘you are one.’ If this is the case, the threshold for promotion is very high and requires the effort that you’d expect from a full-time job.

Fine, I’ll play along with the “new Digg” and I will go ahead and add a bunch of new friends that allow ’shouts’ to their profiles. If they don’t allow shouts they are useless because others won’t see my shout-spam for articles I’d like on the front page. Is that the effect that Digg programmers were hoping for? I really hope not, because it sounds counter-intuitive and inefficient. Further, the system is so damned slow as it is I can’t imagine why they’d want to see the system taxed further.

Conclusion: I’ll play the game, but it isn’t a very fun game because I feel like I’m working a job now and getting no love in return. My intent is not to come off as a whiny digger and I know that my words may come off that way to some. The idea was to share my latest Digg experience and the logic that goes through the minds of people adversely affected by the algorithm who nevertheless want to be front-page capable again.

I’ll report back with my results and findings to complement my above views on how the middle guy, not just the ‘top diggers’ got squeezed out of the equation by Digg’s brilliant new algorithm.

As you may be aware, Digg recently tweaked the algorithm it uses to determine which stories make the front page. This might not seem like a big deal to most, but some of the top Diggers were up in arms and staged what they referred to as a near “revolt”. Several of the top Diggers expressed concerns that the new algorithm makes it more difficult for their submitted stories to make it to the front page, amounting to what they construe as punishment for their success.

It’s been estimated that approximately 30-50% of the top stories on Digg are submitted by top Diggers. As such, many of the top diggers feel that they have “built this site from the ground up” and are mulling a move over to other social news networks such as reddit and mixx.com

According to Wired,

“Several top contributors to the social news site Digg held an emergency online meeting at around 8:30 to discuss their response to a recent change in the algorithm Digg uses to determine which stories appear on the site’s front page.”

First of all, some of the top diggers need to get over themselves. This is Digg, so when one reads of “emergency online meetings” and “boycotts”, it’s hard not to laugh at the absurdity. Now I understand where the top diggers are coming from. They are responsible for a good number of the front page stories that hit Digg and they feel that it’s unfair that they are essentially being punished for their past successes as top contributors.

In Defense of Digg:

It is well accepted that new users have a considerable disadvantage when it comes to getting stories to the front page. In contrast, many of the top diggers have an online following that range in the thousands. When they submit a story, they instantly get numerous Diggs from their fans. With that in mind, doesn’t it make sense that a top digger like Mr. Baby Man (with over 4,000 fans) should have a higher hurdle to getting to the front page than a digger with no fans?

Digg wants to continue to grow. It wants new users to join and feel like they can become part of the community. It’s daunting, however, when new users see quality stories they’ve submitted go nowhere simply because they have no clout. The changes in the algorithm might not necessarily be about blindly helping new users get to the front page, but more about leveling the playing field on Digg, where a few of the top Diggers arguably have too much power.

Another reason why Digg might have decided to tweak its algorithm is that Digg has turned into a lobby system of sorts — “I’ll digg your story if you digg mine.” As people began amassing friend lists in the hundreds, spamming via the shout system became common place and though it didn’t happen all the time, some questionable content starting hitting the front page.

There have to be safeguards in place in order to prevent users from simply adding an inordinate number of friends and mass shouting to them for diggs. Digg’s new algorithm supposedly takes this into account, and deals accordingly, with diggs that come from users who digg every submission sent their way. The problem with this, however, is clear. While this might take care of the user who blindly diggs away at anything their friends send them, not all diggers are spammers. In fact, the majority of them will only shout when they feel they have a high quality submission that will be of interest to users. So if a friend of mine on Digg consistently sends me great stories, and I digg every one, is it fair that my digg should be weighted less?

On the other hand, let’s hypothetically analyze a story submitted by a top digger. Let’s assume that 50 diggs on that story means 20 diggs on weight due to serial diggers, and that thats visually represented in the “hot list” as a “50 digg” article. At that point, it’s up to the non-friends to digg it up and achieve that highly coveted “diversity” spread. If it’s a good enough article, the diggs will start coming in and the article should be queued for the front page. Is that really so outrageous?

In Defense of the Users

One might assume that if all the top Diggers decided to leave Digg that others would simply fill their void and the stream of quality content would continue. But if you peruse the submissions of the top diggers, they really do a great job of finding interesting and obscure stories around the web.

The question then, is this: should we assume that only the top diggers can find great material online? This is a dangerous line to toe because we risk elevating the top diggers to a status akin to an editor on Slashdot, the complete antithesis of what Digg is supposed to be about. Moreover, because it’s so difficult for a new user to make the front page, new users (potentially the next Mr. Babyman) might be inclined not to even bother submitting. The fact that a Digger has a history of great submissions should not be overlooked or taken for granted, but that shouldn’t give diggers a free pass for the rest of their Digg days.

The fact remains, however, that Digg is a user-generated content website and Digg must be open to hearing the concerns of those who helped make Digg what it is today. Otherwise, it risks “alienating its most loyal users.”

Digg’s Dilemna

The heart of Digg is quality content, and to get that, you either need an algorithm that favors power users or a completely blind algorithm that favors the masses. The problem with a completely blind algorithm that lets the masses decide what makes the front page is that there are so many submissions to Digg that people will miss a lot of great stuff if there aren’t ‘power users’ to shape and shift what makes it through. Essentially, there has to be an incentive for ‘power users’ while also having measures in place as to prevent them from attaining too much editorial power.

Some have suggested that Digg should remove the “friends and fans” aspect of the site. This would presumably ensure that people will start digging for content, rather than out of obligation to friends or for reciprocal diggs. This won’t happen anytime soon, though, because the system of friends and fans is actually beneficial to users. If I see that a user is consistently submitting stories that I find interesting, I should be able to add him as a friend and follow his submissions. With such a setup, I am more likely to become an active member of Digg.

What’s interesting about Digg is that its created a virtual world where you have “elite” users who happen to be the top diggers. Then you have the serfs who are fighting for their “rights” as users. Then there are a slew of random diggers with no loyalty to digg who might login to the system once every two weeks. And then, of course, you have a large number of people who don’t even have digg accounts but make sure to visit the Digg homepage a few times a day.

Keeping all of these users happy is no easy task, and Digg is trying its best to maintain the most beneficial balance. Before even giving the new algorithm a chance, however, some top diggers decided that Digg wasn’t listening to them and they were going to jump ship to other social networking sites. The talk of a revolt was amusing because some of these top diggers clearly felt that they had some sense of entitlement. They feel that they’ve invested more of their lives into Digg and want that to be taken into account. That is an understandable position, but at the same time, no one forced them to digg for 8 hours a day. They did that on their own accord, presumably for selfless reasons.

Digg is being challenged with maintaining growth while, at the same time, maintaining the dynamic that made them so popular in the first place. Time will tell how the new algorithm tweaks affect the stories that hit the front page so all of the hullabaloo about boycotts was a) stupid and b) premature.

And in the spirit of being a provocateur, I say to the top diggers — Boycott away! This is the web, it’s not real life. Get over yourself and try to understand that you’re not the only people out there who can find great diggable content. The Digg community has 25 million people on the site, so by assuming that 10 diggers out of that mass of people are that important is ridiculous. Some of the top Diggers were contemplating moving to reddit, mixx, propeller, or any other social news network; imagine what they’d think if they came to an already mature social news network and no one cared about what they had to submit because they were newbies. A quote from their manifesto of sorts said:

“If Digg is a game then we are ready to play for keeps. What happens if the most powerful users in the community decide to leave? Will others join? Is Digg anything without us? Let’s prove it.“

Drama much? No one is born a top digger, so there really is no need to blackmail Digg.

Again, why should a top submitter who gets an automatic 50 diggs seconds within a submission have a perpetual advantage over a “new guy” who submits the same story and gets 3 diggs from complete strangers? At the same time, are automatic diggs really a problem if a top Digger has a proven track record of quality submissions?

A balance must be met and that’s what Digg is attempting to do. I say “attempting” because judging from the front page stories of late, the algorithm is not in full working order. The new algorithm, however, isn’t written in stone and is subject to constant tweaking, as admitted by Digg CEO Jay Adelson. Digg seems to have the best interests of the Digg community at heart so people need to relax, take a few days or weeks off and come back and see what happens. Long story short, stop crying and start digging.

I have a few stories to share about myself and the story below reminded me that I need to take care when embarking on this new world of ‘professional blogging’. I have a number of sites and the amount of stress can be overwhelming at times, I can’t imagine how much worse it’ll get when all of my blogs have the amount of traffic that my flagship blog does. (a second blog of mine is already threatening to do that)

GigaOM founder suffers from Heart Attack

Om Malik’s blog, GigaOm, regularly breaks news about the technology industry. Last week, the journalist turned blogger broke a big story about himself. Mr. Malik, 41, blogged that he had suffered a heart attack on Dec. 28.

“I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since,” Mr. Malik wrote. “With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be O.K.”

His heart attack — and his blogging about it — raises the issue of what happens when a blogger becomes a name brand.

Lately, it seems Google has turned to the dark side on several levels. If you’re politically savvy, you know there is a serious problem with government invading our private lives. Now, the CEO of Ask.com is fighting back.

Ask.com is serious about privacy. We are committed to meeting and exceeding emerging privacy trends in the search industry. Not only will we proactively delete the search activity of all Ask.com users from our servers after 18 months, but we also offer AskEraser, which, when enabled, deletes your search activity within hours.

Your privacy on Ask.com

At Ask.com, we believe that you as a user should have the power to control the usage of your search history. When enabled, AskEraser will completely delete your search queries and data from Ask.com servers, including: your IP address, User ID and Session ID cookies, as well as the complete text of your search query–all within a matter of hours.

Read more about Ask.com’s new privacy policy and features

I first heard about this strategy over the summer and my initial thoughts were that I’d dump Google in a heartbeat if Ask.com protects people from invasions of privacy. Of course, everyone’s hope is that Google will implement a similar feature. The problem with that is that they may be in too deep. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re already giving the government tons of user data or profiting off of user’s private information in much the same way Face Book does.

Could net nerds put the heat on Google? Any chance of a revolution that would turn the tables and save our future from unwarranted invasions of our privacy? I won’t hold my breath, but if there was enough interest in such a movement, I’d gladly help lead the way.

Instead of a grand introduction, I’m just going to dive into the meat of my post. Ask questions in the comment section if you’re confused.

Niche Market: Understand your Audience

First things first, you need to make some simple calculations regarding your niche, audience, and the competition that exists for the audience.

Determine what is popular and useful in your niche and figure out how you can get that information to your audience. If it is hard for you to conceptualize the user process, think about how you browse the Internet when you have free time and compare that to how you operate while at work. What happens when you need information and what kind of search terms do you use? Additionally, think about how you phrase your search queries. Do you do this in the form of questions or are they simply topics? And What about generic information? What search phrases do you use and why? Write this stuff down, it helps if you’re a student of the search engine optimization game.

Beware the SEO Expert “References”

Many SEO experts will write crash courses on proper website optimization and they’ll also try to sell you “expert” services. Paying the price of a SEO expert is well worth the investment if you can manage to find a SEO pro and don’t have time or know-how to research this subject yourself. Hey, it’s OK if this stuff just isn’t your thing, but maybe you just don’t want to pay for something you could do on your own!

Search Engine Optimization made simple: Learn to communicate using properly tailored titles and phrases.

One of the biggest problems with Search Engine Optimization is poor communication.

It doesn’t help that a lot of “experts” out there throw out phrases and terms that are industry standards but not conducive to SEO learning for beginners. Along the same lines, a number of SEO articles are written for the wrong audiences or for the wrong purpose: profit. Sadly, because of the SEO niche audience, profit is often the sole motivating factor behind helpful guides on blogging and design.

SEO Tip: Optimize your site for your audience and search indexing or your “masterpiece” will not get the exposure it deserves.

Ever wonder why “SEO Experts” use 10,000 word articles and shady tactics, like bolding the title and bolding key words that appear throughout an entire article? If you’re reading this article, you’re probably intelligent so I don’t have to answer that question. Aside from keyword stuffing and trying to game search engines, however, they’re doing something that every blogger and designer needs to learn. They are trying to direct search engine crawlers to properly categorize the article during crawls. This can lead to higher search engine rankings for the site and higher listings for the article which is especially important in highly competitive niches.

Bold titles and sub-headings

If you’re just getting started, this is key. Make an effort to bold sub-headings to help your readers understand your content. Think about it, if you were creating a search engine indexing algorithm, what is the first issue you’d want to tackle? Relevance: how helpful and relevant is content to potential search users. One warning, don’t be like the “SEO experts” out there that bold several dozen words and phrases throughout the entire article without rhyme or reason. It is cheap, they look more like desperate losers rather than “professionals”and frankly it is annoying and makes it harder to read what might otherwise be a quality article. If Google has any sense, it’ll start penalizing these so-called experts, because it’s exploiting and cheapening the search experience.

Try and figure out how search engines work:

Some people will tell you not to fret and simply write content that your writers want to read, it’s true, this is good advice. However, when you’re stuck in a difficult niche to crack, you -must- write for search engines in addition to targeting your audience. Google owns the world of search and this is significant for a number of reasons. If you aren’t finding ways to optimize your website to help crawlers and users find you, why bother wasting your time with blogging or sharing your creative mind with the world? I’m not trying to be mean here, you simply won’t be discovered or it’ll take several years before your work pays off. Seriously, unless you are an established blogger, you are going to struggle if you don’t learn to manipulate titles so both users and search engine crawlers will love your site.

The Lost Art Of Creating Quality Titles

Title phrasing is KEY

I cannot emphasize this enough. Pick a title that is both descriptive and interesting to your niche audience. Blogging is often driven by emotion and bloggers make the mistake of thinking their emotion can be conveyed to a prospective reader by using clever sounding titles or being “funny”.

Example: “This rocks!”

The title might entice bored users to click, but most people will roll their eyes and move along. If your article is about chimps besting humans in a memory competition, the title will not give your work-of-art, justice! Why?

1. Too vague, no description makes the title useless to search engines and it’ll get indexed improperly and your audience will likely never find you.
2. Social Network users will ignore vague titles because they are spoon fed juicy and descriptive titles on their social news site of choice.
3. If indexed by a blog engine like Technorati, people aren’t going to read your article. Most people seeking content are limited in their time so they’ll click on the title below that may be a spam article but has a script smart enough to provide quality titles.

Use your knowledge of human behavior and psychology to optimize your titles for Search Engine queries and social networking

For a more sophisticated audience, a better example:

“Chimps tested better than humans in cognitive study.”

If your crowd is a bit younger or the tone of your blog is dumbed down a bit, you might want to try this example:

“Proof that monkeys are smarter than humans”.

A final example that helps you cast a wider net:

“Are chimps better at memorizing numbers than humans?”

Before we move on, consider what these titles are doing for users and search engines alike. The latter title is useful because it is descriptive, it gives users what they are looking for, and even those that aren’t seeking the information might click because you piqued their interest with the inquisitive, provocative, if not humorous title.

Title Structure:

Keep it simple: Use as many relevant key words, make it readable and if you must, place the site name at the end.

Example: [title] [topic] [web site name]

The reason you place the title first is because sometimes words at the end of titles are truncated. Also no one likes seeing the domain name as a title, it looks like spam! Finally, the higher concentration of key words must be near the beginning of the title because that is the stuff that’ll probably be checked against your content to determine your web site’s relevance and subsequent search listing.

I hope this was helpful, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. If you haven’t done so, please subscribe to the itola.com – RSS News Feed. It’s a regularly updated column and costs ya nothing!

Katina Schubert, a deputy leader of the Left Party charged the Wikipedia’s German site with containing too much Nazi symbolism and a fetish towards a Hitler Youth movement.

…there may be a Nazi plot afoot on Wikipedia itself: “There are signs neo-Nazis are trying to take advantage of such structures, and this needs to be stopped.”

Wikipedia Germany denied the allegations, saying that the imagery used was used for educational purposes.  Read the entire article at Tech Crunch: “Wikipedia Sued for Nazi Sympathies“

If you saw this one coming, give yourself a very large prize. Google is experimenting with Digg style voting features on search results that allow users to vote up or bury search results they see.

I’d like the very large prize! A bit over a year ago, I wrote up a business plan to create a search engine with social networking features. Imagine a search engine like Google that could be sortable and carry only quality material? What’s the best way to filter out spam? That’s right, have users regulate the content. Of course, there are issues with users abusing this kind of system and competitive jerks burying quality items to move their sites up lists, but there is some potential in having search engines revolutionized to encompass social network elements.

The tech crunch article continues:

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made.

At the moment the results of the program will only be stored per user and not applied to the general search index, so that sites buried (”I don’t like”) will not appear in future results for the user, where as sites voted up will stay up. Google Labs notes that “this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks,” still, who would have thought that Google would even experiment with Digg style social voting.

Honestly, I think Silicon Valley gurus need to get out and discover talent. They’re too bogged down by their corporate structure that innovation and advancement in technology is almost predictable. The difference between the evolution of Google’s ideas and those ‘creative’ minds out there is that there are ideas that will sit in notebooks years, maybe even decades before some of the juggernauts catch on. If Silicon Valley wants to do the Google shuffle, they really should reach out and look for rainmakers in nontraditional places.

Maybe it’s just my bias, because I’m a budding entrepreneur, but these companies are falling flat (Microsoft, Yahoo, and other ‘mainstays’) because they can’t think outside the box, it’s really sad!

Professional Blogging and a quick lesson for budding Entrepreneurs

I’ve been meaning to write this article for some time. I found inspiration on the Problogger website off a guest article entitled: ‘be brave break your blog!‘ I’m new to blogging on the tech side of things, so please bare with me as I make a minor introduction! Despite the fact that this article focuses on blogging, please recognize that these tips generally apply to any kind of work you’ll do on the business side and entrepreneurial thinking.

Before I offer tips, I’ll give you some background about my personal situation. A few years ago,I graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, primed to take the world by storm and showcase “my talent.” One little problem, the real world isn’t very receptive to non-traditional thinkers. Firms want rank and file types, and that isn’t me. If you are of like mind or in a similar situation, then at this point, you’re probably contemplating a major decision. Either you take the plunge and make a full transition into blogging and/or entrepreneurial flirting, or you stick to a ’safe’ job with a steady salary and spend the rest of your life wondering, “what if?”

The transition into professional blogging vs. blogging on the side “for fun”

Lets face it, few people blog ‘just’ for fun unless it’s a blog about life to keep others updated with your personal work, life, and family. If you are thinking “pro blogging”, chances are you’ve got the entrepreneurial twinkle in your eye, a desire to break away from the monotony of “the office” environment, or simply looking for something new because you are bored and would rather call the shots than have some idiot at work telling you what to do. It doesn’t mean life will be a bowl of cherries once you split off and take the dive into pro-blogging, in fact.. life may be much more grueling and challenging, but at least it’ll be under your control. That said, I’ll have tips later this week on how you can prepare to make the move into blogging especially if you aren’t ready to take the plunge.

The best advice you’ll ever read, is this:

DON’T BE AFRAID TO TAKE RISKS.

I emphasize that point, because if you don’t have the guts to screw up and learn from your own mistakes, you’ll go nowhere fast. No guts, no glory is very applicable to blogging. Trust me, every professional blogger and entrepreneur would agree with that mantra.

“Be brave, break your blog” is valuable advice on how to develop blogging and design skills over the long haul. I’ve had an argument with numerous close friends who develop software. The question arises over what constitutes ‘proper’ blogging techniques. I’ll concede it’s not a black and white issue, but software development is a different beast from blogging, period.

Creating a secondary site is useful for major site overhauls and changes and especially for software development and other ‘business’ environments where presentation is key and the slightest hint of amateurish design could ruin your reputation. I could be convinced that creating a second blogger website to test out design is also a good idea, it depends on how you use this tactic and how frequently you resort to this ‘detour’. Generally, in my experience, it can and is a major waste of time to set up a secondary site if you simply don’t know what you’re doing and you are doing it purely for the sake of avoiding embarrassing newbie mistakes.

Is it even appropriate to consider a secondary site if you’re an amateur blogger?

If you are visiting a web site on blogging or pro-blogging, chances are you are new to blogging or an amateur (at best). You may or may not be into graphics and web design, but there’s a good chance you couldn’t tell me what a “shell account” is if I asked. You might not have any knowledge about image compression, e.g. when it’s appropriate to use a .jpg, .gif, or .png. If this is the case, forget about this secondary site nonsense, you’ll never get off the ground because you are WAY behind the competition and have a lot of learning to do.

Remember this important tip: the more obstacles you put in front of you so that you don’t look bad, the more obstacles you create that you’ll have to overcome in the future. What this means is it’ll take you much longer than you probably would like for a shot at “prime time.” Don’t try to do too much, secondary sites are only good under certain circumstances and if you over think the issue, you are just asking for trouble!

Self-evaluation is key, you need to figure out where you stand on the skills front, and whether your traffic even justifies obsessing over making mistakes. When you start setting up multiple sites, mirrors, svn, etc, you’re basically creating obstacles to your success. It’s helpful for software developers and teams of web developers because so many people have their hands on the same files and not all are great at documenting their work. By having a test site, software developers are able to keep the ‘live site’ stable, steady and efficient in handling http requests and marketing their product.

If you’re a lone blogger that wears many hats, there are important ideas to consider:

1. Don’t be afraid to screw up! The biggest obstacle that inexperienced bloggers face is fear of making a mistake and looking bad. You know the “be brave, break your blog” article I liked? It’s great advice on its face but some of the hints are counter-productive if you are just getting started on your journey.
2. Content is king in blogging, duh! No matter what the neo-blogging experts are saying these days, people are looking for information first and foremost. You can have a killer design and great interactive functionality, but what does it matter if your content is crap, or worse yet, you have none?
3. Tighten up your writing skills Consider the first six to twelve months as boot camp for blogging. One of the greatest weapons for any blogger’s arsenal is the ability to communicate, connect with audiences, and write effectively. There is a time and place for long articles and short articles, you need to figure out how to push content regularly and when to modify your style to cater to the audience. The short of it is, you need a good mix of both long and short articles to capture different audiences within your niche.
4. If you blog it, they will come. If you don’t know how to design or install bells and whistles on your web site, please do yourself a favor and just start blogging. Take baby steps, first! Remember, blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. One article a day over a year gives you over three hundred articles one year from the day you start blogging! If you spend too much time trying to do too much, you waste time (assuming you’re not an ultra multi-tasking machine, most people are not).
5. Learn from others before you make a move on design. It’s important to wait until you’ve saturated your site with some quality content. By the time you reach 100 articles or 30-50 high quality longer articles, you’ve already learned so much about blogging because it’s likely you’ve read through countless blogs and ‘how-to’ articles along the way. Blogging experience is more important than any other aspect, including design. Until you get a point where you can write with authority and produce valuable work, the bells and whistles won’t matter! That stuff is primarily to keep visitors coming back, but it’s not gonna happen if you don’t update your blog or write your own material.
6. Wasting time is a blogger’s biggest enemy. Trust me on this, if you suck at blogging, your fancy secondary site will be irrelevant in the long run… so pump out articles, get comfortable with blogging, and blog some more. Do it until it happens naturally, it takes a long time to feel comfortable pushing content if you don’t write on a regular basis or lack the discipline and work ethic to become a success.
7. The eureka moment. You’ll arrive at a “eureka” moment multiple times as you grow into the professional blogger mode. The good news for newbie bloggers is that the greener you are, the more special moments you’ll experience!
8. Stay organized and set up goals. Expectations and a timetable for progression are important, they keep you focused and help you develop your skills. Never get ahead of yourself if you don’t know what you are doing, make a major effort to learn and tweak your site constantly to get to the pay dirt.
9. Break your site! It’s funny, because my tech friends constantly tell me “stop breaking your site!” It’s become a term of endearment, almost, because I’m very good at doing just that. I can’t stress enough, what great advice it is. (to break your site, that is) You will encounter problems, you will screw up, you will get frustrated, you will stop, reflect, and second guess yourself. These are all necessary evils, the growing pains happen, deal with it. So your first task after blogging a handful of articles is, GO BREAK YOUR SITE! Install that first php snippet you picked up off your favorite blogging site. Figure out how to fix the damn thing after you break it. Use google religiously and look up errors, chances are there were people before you that made the same mistake.
10. Forget about traffic. If you are learning and just started blogging, your traffic is insignificant. If the twenty people a day you get happen to see a PHP error for 3 hours or never get to see your article, who cares? If you want to make it in the blogging world, you have to think big. You want to aim for one thousand users a day, then ten thousand, then fifty thousand… the sky is the limit. This is why I believe you should just experiment to start off.
11. Consider your first year as your personal training session. Learn, learn, learn! People who gather information online, generally have a short attention span. Even if 5k users find your article because someone Diggs one of your gems while your site is broken, the short attention span will remove your web site from their memory. It’s no big deal, really, think about the big picture. Users will return if you give them what they are looking for. They don’t care about broken sites so much as they do the information that they are trying to acquire, so relax about the aesthetics and broken scripts and take a plunge.
12. Bloggers are a lot like Entrepreneurs. We’re all “Visionaries” to an extent. YOU have an idea and a vision of what you’d like to produce and it is time to put the idea into action. The greatest visionaries in Silicon Valley, happen to head up the largest corporations in the world. Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and even tech start-up guru Guy Kawasaki know something about success and they’re all risk takers. Guess what happens when they have a problem or make a mistake? They hit the books, make some calls, do the research and learn how to fix problems. That’s what you are now, a problem solver, don’t fret about the small stuff. If you want to succeed, you must be very resourceful, confident, and intelligent and for God’s sake, don’t give up!

Just do it! Remember, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for people overwhelmed by fear and lack of confidence.

The above links to my personal news page that I use for blogging purposes and to stay informed on the latest tech news, enjoy.