When It’s Time To Change…Again

Hello friends.

Today is the first anniversary of this blog. I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve ignored it, I’ve used and abused it. I thank you for the interaction, and the support. Now…I will be making some changes around here very shortly, and if you’ve been reading regularly or have subscribed, you may want to stop now.

After the surprising increase in traffic during my most recent Google Garbage™ experiment, I’ve decided for the time being to spend some of this blog’s precious PageRank on more such specious pursuits.

The fact is, posting a bunch of nonsense is good for business. I supposed the television networks figured this out decades ago, didn’t they?

Putting up posts on hot topics and/or “long-tail” niche keywords has made me a pretty nice little chunk of change over the past few months, here and elsewhere. Apparently this is how kids can make money these days. Since I don’t particularly have the time to do much else, that’s what I’ll be using this blog for, at least for the foreseeable future.

This is just to announce the change to the handful of readers who have stuck around through the garbage posts. If I have anything interesting to say or show, I’ll probably post it at my Tumblr blog.

Again, I suggest you unsubscribe and stop reading now, or you’ll find yourself reading about car radiator repair, rapid drug detox, natural snoring remedies, home surveillance cameras and Bowling Green State University.

Thanks all!

SEO Advice for Bloggers

When it comes to Google, Matt Cutts is the man. Not only is he the head of Google’s Webspam team, he is the oracle who confirms or denies the swirling rumors of sandboxing, site penalties, Toolbar PageRank updates, and everything else search engine optimizers spend all day obsessing about.

This morning I ran across this video of Matt at a conference discussing SEO, with a particular focus on Wordpress blogs. Though experienced SEOs should know most of this info, there will be something in here that is new to almost anyone, and beginners in particular will benefit.

And as a bonus, a more advanced talk from SEO pro Stephen Spencer on “SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make”:

Augmented Reality: The Coolest Thing You’ve Ever Seen

At least that was my reaction. I think it will be yours too:

I know what you’re thinking: that wasn’t real, was it? Take a look at this one and see if you believe it yet:

Desktop Fireworks from Saqoosha on Vimeo.

I’ve tried it, and it’s real. All you need is a printer and a web cam.

It’s called Augmented Reality, and if this doesn’t achieve World Domination, I don’t know what will. The commercial applications are endless, and I think we can safely predict that soon you’ll be seeing this everywhere. Any technology that can be used by both the military and the porn industry has a very bright future indeed.

Here’s that implementation by GE from the first video, promoting green energy:

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

How about a 3-D interactive greeting card? Well, here’s a start:

FLARToolKit Demo from Ryan Stewart on Vimeo.

Wait until Hallmark gets their hands on this.

The technology is called FLARToolKit, and it appears to have been invented by someone named Saqoosha (that was him in the last video) at Spark Project. It’s apparently just a brilliant use of existing technologies to make something very impressive. Actually from a technical standpoint, it appears remarkably simple:

http://saqoosha.net/en/flartoolkit/start-up-guide/

The commercial license was released on Monday, and I for one hope Saqoosha makes a fortune.

I know you want to try this now, so go here:

http://www.strafwerk.nu/ar/

Oh, and you can even do this without a printer – just draw a square on a piece of paper and go here to prove it:

http://saqoosha.net/lab/FLARToolKit/2/

So, as Stephen Colbert might ask: cool, very cool, or coolest thing ever?