I am constantly inundated with spam from supposed “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) companies that go something like this:

We are interested to get your website on first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Please get back to us for more details.

These are always the same, normally someone sitting in India using a Gmail account, not disclosing their website and claiming to be named “Bob”, “Anna” or any other American sounding name.  (On occasion it’s some bored college kid, trying to not get a real job, which I can respect, but I still am not going for it.)

To be fair, there probably are legit “White Hat” SEO companies out there, but the “Black Hat” crowd has muddied the waters so bad that it’d be hard to spot them.

Without going into all of that, I’ve came up with my own canned response that just as full of crap:

We have all the SEO we can handle AND are already on the 1st page of every site. We own half of the Internet.

But hey, if you want to sponsor us to help you get on the 1st page too, feel free to do so.

All joking aside, if you’re really interested in hiring someone for SEO, here’s one main fact that you need to know:

No one can guarantee you the #1 spot in any search engine.

Now with enough money, you can purchase the top spot for an ad for a specific keyword in the search engines, but that’s a different animal which has absolutely nothing to do with the SEO company/individual. Money talks & why pay someone else to spend your money for you?

Anyway, if you want to talk general “SEO” practices, I’ll leave that for Watershed Studio.  And before you ask, no, SEO isn’t an official service that we provide, mainly as a business choice due to the nonsense mentioned above.

A few days into really using Windows 7 I’d say it’s not as bad as most people say, though it will take a little getting used to.  So as questions come up in Windows 7, I’ll be adding links to useful tips.  Feel free to submit your own or ask your own question.

• Add the Quick Launch Bar to the Taskbar in Windows 7
• How to Manage Windows 7 Power Settings
• Make the Windows 7 Taskbar Work More Like Windows XP or Vista

Related Blogs

• Windows 7 Version Comparison – Home, Professional, Ultimate
• Clewis T&T – Windows 7 tips & Tricks – Taskbar & menubar Customization *HD* | DLB-Network
• Tips: Adjust volume levels between programs

While people drool over the glorified netbook/tablet PC  known as the Apple iPad, a.k.a. the overgrown iTouch, I think Shania Twain sums it up best. “That Don’t Impress Me Much”.

Via ABC, there are millions of dollars of jobs ’saved or created’ in Congressional Districts that don’t exist, using Stimulus funds.  While I don’t know if this money has legitimately used elsewhere, this is just crazy.

And the most ludicrious part:

The Recovery.gov Web site was established as part of the stimulus bill “to foster greater accountability and transparency” in the use of the money spent through the stimulus program. The site is a well-funded enterprise; the General Services Administration updated it earlier this year with an $18 million grant.

It does not take $18 MILLION dollars to create a website like that, no matter how you cut it. Creating websites and programs is my business, so I know that first hand what something like that should run on the high end! What a bunch of buffoons that continue to squander away OUR money while taking everything else away from us and asking us to fill up the coffers.

GeoCities Is Closing On October 26th, 2009.

Am I the only one with the thought being that the bigger shock that GeoCities was still around?  I honestly thought it went the way of the dinosaur years ago.

Only a few weeks ago my wife & I were recalling the GeoCities days back in the mid to late 1990’s and wondering if it was still around.  Now we have our answer.

While it’s a little sad to see it go, it was clearly time.  In it’s day it was a good option and blazed the trail for things to come.

Similar posts around the web:

• End of an Era: GeoCities to Close This Month

This time last year most of us tech-savvy types were on Twitter and the “mainstream” was just starting to pick up on it.  Prior to that the main thing I always heard other bloggers talking about was that you you needed to have people “Digg” your posts in order to gain readership.

Today it appears to me that having your post retweeted is more important and I’ve noticed more and more people ditching the “Digg This” buttons for the “Tweet This” ones (myself included, though I always use Share This as well to make all options available).  For me, one big push for the change is that Twitter is much less involved to post to than Digg with the main drawback being that I don’t have a nice clean link list from my tweets, but that can happen via other tools.

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Via the Princeton pilot program of the Kindle DX:

“I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,” said Aaron Horvath ’10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.”

OK, to say it sucks may be a bit unfair as I have never personally seen one, but at the very least it’s probably not as good as the real thing (a printed & bound book).

I am a techie through and through, but the Kindle has never made sense to me regardless of the iteration.  Yes, the thought of not having to lug a library around and having text be easy to read is appealing, but having grew up on books, it just doesn’t cut it.  I need something to hold sometimes, that feels like paper, not just looks like it. Something that I can write in. And if I want to read on a screen, I already have a perfectly capable laptop that goes with me everywhere. Just send me a PDF.

Plus the thought of paying the same price (or thereabouts) for a print and digital version is just nuts. Like with music, for a few bucks more I’ll grab the CD and rip it to my mp3 player myself. No, I’m not going to scan a print book so I can have a PDF version, but if they want more people to adopt it, they should include both.

But maybe it’s just me.

Occasionally you need or want to view the grade reading level of what you write. Here’s how you can do just that in Microsoft Word  (Via Yahoo! Answers).

In Word 2003 or earlier, click on Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar tab | check the “Show readability statistics” box | OK. Then press F7 to rerun spelling/grammar check, and when it finishes, a statistics dialog box will appear that shows the reading level.

In Word 2007, click on Office Button | Word Options | Proofing | check the “Show readability statistics” box | OK. Then press F7 to rerun spelling/grammar check, and when it finishes, a statistics dialog box will appear that shows the reading level.

Yet another sports related ban of Twitter.

Via ESPN:

Coach Mike Leach said Monday he has banned his players from using Twitter after one of his linebackers noted the coach’s tardiness to a team meeting in a tweet Sunday, one day after the Red Raiders lost 29-28 at No. 12 Houston.

According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, linebacker Marlon Williams asked on his Twitter account why he was still in a meeting room when “the head coach can’t even be on time.” That tweet has been deleted and his page no longer exists.

Leach said players don’t need Twitter or Facebook. He called them “stupid” distractions.

“I think that a guy who plays college football gets enough attention,” he said. It’s “a bunch of narcissists that want to sit and type stuff about themselves all the time. We’ll put mirrors in some of their lockers if that’s necessary but they don’t have to Twitter.”

While I agree that Twitter & Facebook are often distracting, the sports worlds’ take on it is quite paranoid if you ask me.  But of course, according to Coach Leach, I’m one of the most  narcissistic people on the planet. I blog, I podcast, I tweet & apparently I even peddle narcissism by encouraging and enabling others to do so as well.  I guess if nothing else I can add another title to my repertoire.

Last October I put up a post about my abhorrence of sploggers.  This morning while making my usual rounds of checking on my blogs and search engine updates I found someone doing this with my Fall television post from a few weeks ago.

Here’s my original post: Fall 2009 TV Viewing Schedule

Here’s the splogger post (at start4all.com): Fall 2009 TV Viewing Schedule, Blue Shotgun, Indianapolis, Indiana

As you see, they run the posts through a plugin* (or other software) which changes the verbiage here and there to where it makes no sense but certain keywords will get picked up by Google and the other search engines.  Then they throw in Google AdSense and turn off the comments and have no way to contact them.  In some cases the sploggers will at least link back to your site (a.k.a. “source”), but that is not the case here.

The site behind this particular instance is start4all.com, which I’d never heard of before now.  I tried to contact them through their main page but it appears that the contact form isn’t working.  This appears to be some sort of hosted service running WordPress (probably WordPress MU from the looks of it).  So it’s hard to say with certainty who is behind this and I’d be surprised to get anywhere with pursing it.

Needless to say, this drives me batty and is a nuisance to bloggers everywhere. We don’t spend our time writing posts just for people to steal the content.  Most of us offer the content freely out of our passion for blogging and I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little courtesy.  If you actually like a post, feel free to quote it and reference it on your own site and/or comment on the post. But please don’t try to claim it as your own (especially when you include the blog’s name and phone number). And this applies to Tweets & Podcasts as well, both of which I’ve had happen.

So what to do? In my case I’ll suffice with this post and hope to get a response from start4all.com. But I’ve seen other bloggers:

• Turn off their full RSS feeds. I’m not a fan of this option as it eliminates your RSS readers.
• Start throwing all sorts of advertising in your face. I have no problem with advertising and do it to some extent myself, but when you start adding pop-ups and other intrusive ads I’ll just go elsewhere.
• Start charging for membership to your blog. I have no problem with membership blogs if your blog is an appropriate candidate (specific subject with frequent valuable content).
• Stop blogging all together. This is the worst option, but one that I understand.

With that said, please share your stories and thoughts. And as always, feel free to leave a message for the podcast (voicemail number below).

* There are a handful of WordPress plugins out there with hefty price tags which do this sort of thing while claiming to automatically “create” content for you. DO NOT ask me what they are or where to get them.