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We could have ‘spun’ the information that it’s very unlikely we’ll see competing browsers in ARM edition of Windows 8, explaining that the difficulties make it the same as a ‘ban’…

…But we respect the fact that all (3?) of our readers come here for the truth on these topics, and only dirty laundry needs a spin cycle.

ChromeOS ? Yep!

iOS ? Yessir!

So why would Firefox/Mozilla come out today and only complain there’s a ‘ban’ on Firefox for Windows 8 ARM Edition?

Well from what I can tell, they never did, and the ‘b-word’ was all ‘spin’ by a very annoying technology news site that keeps amazing us with bad headlines and horribly inaccurate publications.

The TRUTH is that it will be VERY hard for any company to get approval for a browser running in Windows 8 ARM Edition because it’s not just ‘another version’ of Windows, it’s a Mobile OS with very clear goals that make it unique.

First of all is memory handling and battery use. By now we should all understand that you can’t deploy programs coded for x86 operating systems and expect them to sip carefully on resources like batteries and memory without some major changes.

Since ARM is aimed at ‘portable’ we can also expect people to seek more privacy and security on these devices. Allowing any-old-app onto the OS won’t happen. You’ve had to have a certificate to publish your apps on Microsoft’s mobile operating systems since the very first days of Windows Mobile, and that will not change any time soon.

If Microsoft wants to protect the quality and end user experience of their mobile products, locking down risky third party software clearly is one of the best ways for them to do it.

This is in no way a ‘ban’ on applications, and Microsoft admits that they are willing to help developers reach a quality standard that will permit them to publish to this new mobile platform.

On the plus side, I was tossing out some rather negative feelings about Microsoft’s investments in technical news sites, and this latest fumble leaves me with some doubts as to who’s invested in whom. Either that or this oft mentioned news source is chock full of people who not only don’t know what’s going on but they don’t even know the hand that feeds them? Crazy.

 

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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.

The Star Wars saga continues to grow in popularity with the increasing May the Fourth be with You/Star Wars Appreciation Day. This unofficial day of recognition for anything Star Wars has grown from a meager recognition but has been given a ‘faster than the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs’ boost in popularity mainly due to SEO’s.

Search Engine Land has put together a great blog article about the role that SEOs have had in the rise in popularity of Star Wars Day. The growth in popularity of the internet meme that propagated the Star Wars Day phenomenon, speaks to the multitudes of youngling Padawans that grew up with the Star Wars movies (the original episodes 4,5,6…not episodes 1,2,3).

I take great personal pride that the first movie I watched in a theatre was Star Wars. I was immediately hooked. From the fly through opening text, to Chewbacca’s growl at the end of the award ceremony! Needless to say I dressed up as Luke Skywalker that year for Halloween. Buy why should we stop there? I think an internet community, we can encourage the spread of Star Wars Day phenomena and have people dress up for the May the Fourth date next year in appropriate star wars garb! Who’s with me? (pics to follow next year . Maybe a flash mob of stormtroopers and/or Jedi?

In very much the same way, Beanstalk SEO is akin to the Rebel Alliance. We are a last bastion of white-hat SEOs trying to work within the confines of the Google Empire while staving off a constant barrage from the black-hat forces of scum and villany seeking to bring ruin to our peaceful Alderaan of search results. (ok, the metaphor was a stretch, but just go with it…)

Remember: Don’t give into hate. Do not turn to the Dark Side as Vader did. Complete your training and become an effective SEO Jedi worthy of a seat on the White-Hat SEO Jedi Council. Many Bothans died to bring you this message….

Have fun with this soundboard from starwars.com

 

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It seems like Internet censorship, privacy and net neutrality are continually in the news these days and today is no different…

The Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron is reported to be announcing “network-filtering plan” that would target pornographic websites.

Initially the campaign received little support from the Prime Minister and was met with criticism from digital right groups and a variety of industry bodies, the movment is being spearheaded by The Daily Mail and MP Claire Perry

MP Claire Perry states that this is not censorship. Plans are to have ISP users being forced to opt-in in order to receive anything rated as adult content. “There is a ‘hands off our internet’ movement that sees any change in how access is delivered as censorship,” she said. “We are not being prudish, but we just think the current method of blocking that material is broken.”

Feds seized a popular Hip-Hop music site on assertions from the Recording Industry Association of America of copyright infringements and that the site was linking to four pre-release music tracks.

Control was relinquished to the owners of Dajaz1.com after 13 months with Feds unable to produce sufficient evidence to warrant any civil or criminal charges.

Feds state that the inability to obtain evidence was largely due in part to apparent recording industry delays in confirming infringements according to the court records. The site was returned without explanation or apology.

Although the Internet has been available en masses for over 20 years, we are still far from reaching any kind of consensus over these issues. Certainly conflicts will continue to arise over copyright infringement, censorship, privacy and net neutrally.

The conversations that arise from these ongoing debates are necessary to shape the future of the Internet and many more discussions are required before we can reach an acceptable balance of protection for the industry and the artists it represents and the freedom and exchange of uncensored information.

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In the recent wake of the Penguin update from Google and the impact it has had on many sites, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, announced on his Google+ page that SEOmoz is currently developing tools to facilitate the “classifying, indentifying and removing/limiting link juice passed from sites/pages.”

SEOmoz wants to develop software to add to their existing toolset available to subscribers on their website to aid in determining if their own website or a competitor’s website appears to be spammy in nature.

If SEOmoz has developed a method to analysis signals that can be used to determine if a site is spammy, it is safe to assume that Google is viewing the page or site in question in the same light. Links that are determined to be spammy will pass little link juice and could potentially incur a penalty from Google. Fishkin summed it the process by saying that if they (SEOmoz) classifies a site or page as having spammy backlinks, “we’re pretty sure Google would call it webspam.”
Some in the SEO community are angered at Rand Fishkin’s policy of “outing” SEOs for spamming practices, so this time, Rand has enlisted the public to answer whether or not he should do so.

Some of our team members, though, do have concerns about whether SEOs will be angry that we’re “exposing” spam. My feeling is that it’s better to have the knowledge out there (and that anything we can catch, Google/Bing can surely better catch and discount) then to keep it hidden. I’m also hopeful this can help a lot of marketers who are trying to decide whether to acquire certain links or who have to dig themselves out of a penalty (or reverse what might have caused it).

Preliminary results show that most are in favor of Rand’s reporting of other SEOs for spammy practices. Certainly the reporting of offenders will help Google to combat the unwanted webspam that has permeated search results since the inception of the Internet into mainstream society. It is the new mantra of the modern web; you need to follow the rules and guidelines established by Google for fear of serious reprisal – whether or not you agree with it. Ultimately, what benefits the search results, benefits the searcher.

On a slighlty related note, I would like to suggest Feathers McGraw as the new face for the Penguin algorithm update from Google…

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Recently there have many claims by job seekers that they have been asked to provide their personal login credentials for their Facebook accounts. After much public outcry from potential employees and several complaints that were filed, it initially seemed that Facebook was threatening legal action to protect its 845 million users by either getting politicians to pass a law stopping this practice, or by suing employers outright who are shown to have asked persons to divulge their information.

Facebook then decided not to pursue this course of action. Following this disappointing decision by Facebook, House Republicans also voted down a bill that would have prevented employers from doing asking for login credentials.

While some Maryland took steps to protect individuals from being asked for private, sensitive information, the ACLU seemed to be the only group willing to deem these practices as a blatant invasion of privacy. They even went so far as to produce a video called “Want a Job? Password, please!”

According to thehill.com, it seems now that a bill titled: “The Social Networking Online Protection Act” introduced by Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) would prohibit current or potential employers from demanding a username or password to a social networking account.

They bill was summarized with the following statment:

“We must draw the line somewhere and define what is private,” Engel said in a statement. “No one would feel comfortable going to a public place and giving out their username and passwords to total strangers. They should not be required to do so at work, at school, or while trying to obtain work or an education. This is a matter of personal privacy and makes sense in our digital world.”

Ars adds, “The bill would apply the same prohibitions to colleges, universities, and K-12 schools. … Facebook has already threatened legal action against organizations who require employees to reveal their Facebook passwords as policy.”

It would appear that many states are getting on board with the new laws to protect their citizens. Many feel that the bill will be successfully passed this time as it is a bill of its own and not an amendment to an existing bill that would have attempted to reform FCC procedures. Certainly we have not heard the end of this and if this bill fails, then a large public outcry will surely be inevitable. But if it passes it will certainly be more than One Little Victory!

(On a side note I have been looking for a way to incorporate a tune from Rush into my blog post for sometime…but I also get to mix Queen meme with Rush

 

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Google Docs adds 450 new Fonts, themes, and image import options:
I tried making a normal document which gave me a chance to see some of the great new fonts:

… but it crashed on saving and now we can’t use Google Docs because the servers are flooded with people trying out the new fonts!

If only I hadn’t already used that face palm image too much.. Oh wait! I can see the new presentation themes and they have a LCARS theme?!

So we’ll have to come back to this later on when the service isn’t packed full of people checking things out.

Just when you thought you were done with the ironic face palming?

Apple and Microsoft’s heavy handed patent abuse forced Google to buy Motorola’s Mobility division, and now Microsoft is scrambling to avoid insane fines or a complete ban on sales of Windows 7 and XBox 360 consoles in Germany because they clearly infringe on H.264 video encoding and playback patents owned by Motorola.

Microsoft has two remaining strategies left to save them, and neither are that great.

Microsoft themselves have calculated that if they were to pay the licensing demands set forward by Motorola they would have to pay $4 billion per year, a figure that Motorola has already dismissed as incorrect.

If Microsoft can get a judge to accept their math as correct they could try to appeal the decision on the grounds that such excessive fees would violate Motorola’s Frand obligations. This is a bit hollow in terms of legal defence because the Frand-commitment is simply:
“a promise to licence innovations deemed critical to widely-used technologies under “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms”

The other strategy is appealing to Motorola’s humanities with statements like this:

..we are confident that Motorola will eventually be held to its promise to make its standard essential patents available on fair and reasonable terms for the benefit of consumers who enjoy video on the web

Yep, Microsoft wants Motorola to ‘do the right thing for the consumers’ like some professional shot-putter standing in the middle of a glass window manufacturing plant.

Typical of Hollywood, any advancement that could be used to unseat the unnecessary roadblocks between consumers and entertainment must be met with fear vs. evolution.

Google is currently laying down fiber optic cables in Kansas City that will bring tornado like speeds of over 900 Megabit downloads to houses and businesses in the area.

While most people are very happy with this advancement, the MPAA is ducking for cover fearing the worst for it’s industry if even more people have even easier access to downloadable content while they have yet to make a system that can handle selling said content.

It could just be me, but if they spent less time hiding under the bed with Toto, and got to work building a system that makes piracy less tempting, they would welcome faster internet access?

Considering that the MPAA had to refer to South Korea’s high speed internet as an example of how fast internet access impacts a film industry, literally taking the long walk for the short drink of water, we’re doubting they will do much more than ‘remark’ on the potential for piracy, but even that seems really disappointing.

This wraps up the week of face palming for me; Hopefully next week we’ll be able to cover some more ‘positive’ stories and show off a bit more of the new Google Docs features!

 

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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.

Following up on a previous blog post, Google has released an FCC report detailing the Street View Probe controversy that has been plaguing the Search giant in what has been dubbed the “Wi-Spy scandal.” The report details the FCC’s findings into the investigation of the collection and storage of data by Google from millions of households across the US while operating specially equipped cars for its street view service.

The initially released report has many redacted blackouts after arguing with the FCC over what details could be releases to the public. An updated release only black outs the names of individuals and raises many new questions about how Google captured personal data for over two years. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed two requests to obtain an un-retracted version of the FCC’s report with the Justice Department.

Google stated previously the cars were attempting to record Wi-Fi hotspots and wireless activity and that any collection of personal data was “inadvertent.” The code was written in 2006 and provided a snapshot of online activity as the Google cars drove by when utilized in 2008 and continued until 2010. This practice was dubbed “wardriving” and its disclosure caused a large uproar in the US and Europe.

“The report points the finger at a rogue engineer who, it says, intentionally wrote software code that captured payload data information –communication over the Internet including emails, passwords and search history — from unprotected wireless networks, going beyond what Google says it intended. The engineer invoked his 5th Amendment right and declined to speak to the FCC.”

What the FCC and millions of Americans want to know is whether the engineers and managers of the Street View project knew that data was being collected or if not, why didn’t they know? Following is a breakdown of the investigations highlights:

According to the report, the engineer in question did speak to two other engineers and a senior project manager regarding the data collection.The engineer also submitted a copy of the document to the entire Street View team in October 2006 in which stated that Google would be collecting this data.Those working on Street View told the FCC they had no knowledge that payload data was being collected.Managers of the Street View program said they did not read the 2006 document.A different engineer says he remembered receiving the document but did not recall any reference to the collection of data.Another engineer while debugging the code did notice the software was designed to capture data.A senior manager said he preapproved the document before it was written.Street View team members told investigators that engineers on the project were permitted to modify the code without approval from managers.The FCC accuses Google of withholding an email discussing the engineer’s review of the payload data with a senior manager of the Street View project.Google maintains that it did not authorize the collection of personal data.Google denies that it stonewalled the investigation and that any delays were caused by the FCC.

“We decided to voluntarily make the entire document available except for the names of individuals,” Google spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said in an emailed statement. “While we disagree with some of the statements made in the document, we agree with the FCC’s conclusion that we did not break the law. We hope that we can now put this matter behind us.”

Google first denied it collected the data.Google then stated that they were only collecting “fragments of data”Google admits that it had intercepted emails, passwords, search history and apologizes.Google temporarily grounds Street View car fleet.Google appoints a director of privacy to oversee project, trains employees in “responsible collection and handling of data” and incorporates more stringent privacy safeguards.FCC begins its investigation in October 2010 as the FTC completes its inquiry.Justice Department investigated and closed its inquiry in May 2011.The engineer in question in the report was involved with Street View as a side project and stated that he was interested in collecting data from unencrypted wireless networks to determine if it could be used in other Google products or services.The engineer dismissed privacy concerns stating that vehicles would not be in the proximity of “any given user for an extended period of time.” He did have a note in which stated that he should discuss the matter further with a product council.The report does state that the data was reviewed by the engineer to identify frequently visited website to determine how much people were using Google search but states that it was not pursued due to being told that the data had no value.

The FCC has debated whether Google’s actions violated the US wiretapping laws and considered charging Google with a violation of the Communications Act but stated that there was no legal precedent to do so as Wi-Fi technology did not exist when the Act was established. The FCC states that they still have “significant factual questions” as to why the data was ever collected.

 

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If you took a very heavily spam-influenced search engine like Bing for example and removed the first 1 million results for a query, how good would the result be?

How about doing the same thing to the best filtered search engines available?

Well someone got curious and made the million short search engine.

What this new service does is remove a specific # of search results and show you the remainder.

I became immediately curious about a few things:

Where are they getting their crawl data from?What are they doing to searches where there’s only a few hundred results?Where is the revenue stream? I see no ads?

Given the lack of advertising I was expecting them to be pulling search data from another site?

There’s no way they are pulling from Bing/Yahoo, there are 14+ sites paying for better spots than we’ve earned on Bing for our terms..

And while the top 10 list looks a bit like DuckDuckGo, we’re seemingly banned from their rankings, and not at #6 at all. It’s funny when you look at their anti-spam approach and then look at the #1 site for ‘seo services’ on DDG. It’s like a time machine back to the days of keyword link spam. Even more ironic is that we conform to DDGs definition of a good SEO:

“The ones who do in fact make web sites suck less, and apply some common sense to the problem, will make improvements in the search ranking if the site is badly done to start with. Things like meta data, semantical document structure, descriptive urls, and whole heap of other factors can affect your rankings significantly.

The ones who want to subscribe you to massive link farms, cloaked gateway pages, and other black hat type techniques are not worth it, and can hurt your rankings in the end.
Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, is probably is. There are some good ones, and also a lot selling snake oil.”

We know the data isn’t from Google either, we have the #1 seat for ‘seo services’ on Google and maintain that position regularly.

So what’s going on?! This is the same company that gave us the ‘Find People on Plus‘ tool and clearly they know how to monetize a property?

My guess is that they are blending results from multiple search engines, and likely caching a lot of the data so it’d be very hard to tell who’s done the heavy lifting for them?

All that aside, it’s rare to see a search engine that blatantly gives you numbered SERPs and for now MillionShort is, on the left side-bar, showing numbered positions for keywords. That’s sort of handy I guess.

You can also change how many results to remove, so if your search is landing you in the spam bucket, then try removing less results. If your search always sucks, and the sites you want to see in the results are on the right, you’ve apparently found a search phrase that isn’t spammed! Congrats!

Well my enthusiasm for Google Drive just flew out the window on my second week using it.

What a joke! If you are a Chrome user, the inability to resume a broken download WILL make you weep tears of Shakespearean grade irony.

If you install Google Drive as a service, the download is attempted once, and then it fails, with no further action. You can re-try to sync failed files, but it just fails again.

I’m going to try the download in FireFox now, and hopefully it’s boasting about resuming downloads isn’t all crockery. “>UPDATE: Turns out the disk was full and Google Drive has no feedback at all. Thanks FireFox for telling me WHY the download failed. Oh man.

 

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It’s official, if you see a car drive by with nobody inside, the license plate has a red infinity logo, and you’re in Vegas, that really happened, you’re not just in bat country.

Google can now legally send it’s self driving cars out solo, with nobody inside.

I had to say that to myself to fully appreciate how impressive this moment is in history.

Sure this puts a twist on Driving Miss Daisy 2 – Drive Harder, but overall I’m very excited about the countless ways this will improve our lives, save gasoline, time, money, and most of all, lives.

Hopefully Mr.Freeman won’t mind?

Lets say you had money that isn’t already invested in proven winners like Google, HTC, Intel, etc.., and you wanted to invest in something a bit different, and for some reason wanted to gamble on something as fickle as social media (remember MySpace?).

Personally, even with that list of caveats, I wouldn’t be looking at buying FB stocks, and Reddit’s co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, agrees.

In an interview that is circulating the web like mad, Mr.Ohanian explains why he wouldn’t invest anything in Facebook, citing their support of CISPA as a primary reason. While I agree that the CISPA support is horrible, my list of concerns is a bit longer.

For my needs I’d want to pick a business with a clear path forward, not one with heavy investments from Microsoft, yet promote’s the competition’s browser :

This is taken from the Power Editor tool in FB

I also wouldn’t invest in a company that’s decided it’s crucial to place privacy so far behind promotion.

These ‘login to view this story’ roadblocks are a bane of FB and recent studies back up my own findings: people will not login to FB to read something. It’s much easier to highlight the title and right-click it for a Google search and that’s what users are doing.

When you stop listening to your users, and usher them to the competition, you really can’t be shocked when people don’t struggle to get their wallets out for a chance to buy some stock.

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You have undoubtedly heard about the Penguin algorithm update from Google and the effects it has already to have on rankings. There is increasing speculation around the Google webmaster forums that another update has just been rolled out.

Scattered communications from Google seem to indicate that this is not a new update being rolled out, and that it is not a Panda refresh either.

Regardless, there have been many reports in the forums discussing major ranking fluctuations during the last 24 hours. One user details the steps he took to recover after being hit by the latest update stating:

“I had around 30 sites hit by Penguin on the 24/4, yesterday the first one resurfaced back to number 2 for its keywords which is encouraging.”

“What did I do – the site was just 15 pages, the inner pages were all thin content boiler plate stuff, so I deleted them all to see what would happen and left the home page which is 500 words of original content.”

“Links – did i touch incoming links, no I am going to try anchor text dilution on some other sites where I suspect this problem but did not create any more links on the recovered site.”

Barry Schwartz is in the process of contacting Google for clarification on weather this is an isolated incident related to Mother’s Day search skewing traffic and rankings or is it a legitimate algorithm change.

As with the Panda updates, several more iterations of the Penguin algorithm are inevitable and will certainly cry havoc on many sites over the coming months.

While Google retains its standoffish approach to divulging information to the public, it is comforting to have someone like Mr. Schwartz advocating on behalf of the confused millions left to the mercies of the Google gods.

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