Skype 3.0

Skype just released its 3.0 version.

They will also start charging users within US and Canada in 2007. They would charge $29.95 for a year of unlimited calling but if you purchase the plan before January 31, 2007, it will only cost you $14.95

Those who are fond of using Skype, better get the plan quick.

I don't really care about it that much, we have VoIP in our office :D

Yahoo Food

Ever wanted a place to search for all your food related needs like restaurant details, locations, recipes, videos on cooking and answers to cooking related questions? Yahoo has this covered. They recently launched Yahoo Food.

It seems that this URL has been around for a while since it is displaying a PageRank of 7.

There you go, the perfect place to find all your food related needs, I heard that Google is also coming up with something like this, no official confirmation yet though.

What Shade of SEO are you?

What shade of SEO are you? Really? Do you fit in to the categories listed below or are you somewhere in between within those categories?

Here's the list :

Dark inky black: The SEO's (or in this case the spammer's) interests are totally divergent from both the engines and the users - the SEO wants to trick the search engine into handing over users who are ripe to be tricked themselves into a situation of malicious harm. For example, the SEO might name his domain just one typo-character away from a famous domain name, then install spyware on the computer of any user careless enough to visit, or attempt to impersonate a major portal's login page to collect logins and passwords.

Charcoal: The SEO tries to trick the engine into showing the user something totally unrelated to the query, and possibly offensive, but doesn't actually commit any illegal or fraudulent acts within five seconds of the first user click. Example: a (heinous) pornspammer who stuffs the page with irrelevant non-porn keywords targeting innocent queries, maybe via invisible text. 99.9% of searchers will be searching for something else and will be put off; 0.1% will be searching for something else, but will, um, flexibly and opportunistically reorient their interests.

Dark gray: The SEO collects (aka steals) random text from other sites, and uses it to create thousands (or millions) of pages targeting particular queries. The pages have nothing original of value, but do have ads.

Slate gray: The SEO creates thousands (or millions of pages), all of which point (by linkage, or framing, or redirection) to the same content, which might actually be interesting to the searcher.

Gray: The SEO reads the guidelines of search engines, and tries to juice up their sites just enough to fly under the radar on all dimensions - artificial linkfarms that remain small, automatic content duplication that is arguably not too abusive, etc. The goal is to get enough referral traffic as possible, without too much reference to whether it is interested traffic.

Light gray: The SEO creates "original" content in bulk the old-fashioned way, thinking first of all of search engine rules, secondly of duplicate detection algorithms, and lastly of whether the text makes sense to human beings and is something anyone would ever want to read. Then the SEO experiments with all the parameters (keyword density, internal linkage) trying to move up for the queries of interest.

Off-white: The SEO ensures crawlability of the site, restructures it if necessary for size of pages and internal linkage, and then injects terms to specifically target the important keywords and queries. He doesn't create linkfarms, but friends and allies are importuned to link with specific text and phrases.

White: The SEO starts (if lucky) with a site full of content you can't find anywhere else, and that answers a need that searchers actually have. Then the SEO makes sure the site is crawlable, and that titles and internal links make sense and are descriptive. Then the SEO thinks hard about the queries that really should pull up this content, and tries to discover if the right terms are present. Then (the hard, artful part), he or she rewrites content with a dual consciousness of the infovorous human reader and the termnivorous spider, making sure that the most important terms and phrases for the spider are present (in all their forms) and forefronted for the spider, without degrading the quality for the reader.

Luminescent pearly white: This would be a case where the SEO designs a site to show up for relevant queries and not to show up for irrelevant queries. Do luminescent SEOs exist? Well, Jon Udell is one anyway.

If I was to do SEO on my own site, I'd probably be in between gray hat and light gray hat. If I was working for an employer or client, it will depend on what they would like me to do :)

I wonder what ituloy angsulong participants would be be using for the contest? But as Marc said "All hats are in".

Goodluck to you guys!

Ituloy angsulong

PS:
To Flickr users out there, want more space for your photos? Try using Zooomr. They are providing twice the size of photo uploads per month as compared with Flickr.

Cintiq - Digital Paper

I recently saw this gadget online and I am really glad I did. It is from a company named Wacom, and the product's name is Wacom Cintiq 21UX For art lovers and artists alike, this tool will surely make sketching and painting really quite enjoyable.

I bet Jozzua could really enjoy making one of his comics using this gadget. I bet this could help him win the Ituloy angsulong contest. :)

For a frustrated artist like me, I would really like to have something like this. But the $2500 price tag surely hurts :(

I was really hoping to join the contest but I guess I wont be able to commit myself to it due to lack of time and available resources out of the moment. Hopefully I could decide on joining the contest by the end of this week, for now, Ill just settle with cheering for my new found buddies :D

Ituloy angsulong!

ITULOY ANGSULONG! - 2nd Philippine SEO Contest

The event last Saturday night at Jill's was quite awesome, the food was nice, beer and other drinks were flowing nonstop. I was lucky to be seated at the front with some notable personalities like Miguel Paraz, Elymar "Jozzua" Apao,J. Angelo Racoma and of course, Marc Macalua

I really enjoyed staying on that table, with Jozzua cracking up jokes once in a while, sure was an interesting night.

I just waited for the keyword since I was quite curious to know what it was. The keyword, as revealed by Marc around 10 PM I think, it was

ituloy angsulong

Here is the contest details page.

I went home at about 11:30 PM since I was kinda tired, I had quite a busy morning after all. Im sorry I wasn't able to say goodbye to Jozzua and Migz, looking forward to hear from you guys soon.

So, for now, ill just watch out for the contestants new entries. Ituloy angsulong!

GahooYoogle?

Stumbled upon this site yesterday. Kinda funny how they interchange the Y and G. Other than that. It is really a simple page. It just shows results of your search query in Google and Yahoo in an equally divided page.

However, this page has become quite popular with some "amazed" users that they simply keep on linking to it :D Nice idea, but I would prefer something like combined results for both search engines, maybe better if MSN Search (LIVE) would be also included. But that's just me :)

Firefox 2 is not included in the Google Adsense referal program. That means you cant earn money from referring Firefox 2 as of the moment.

Ever Wondered how to use Google in a sentence properly? The Official Google Blog answers that question.

Here are examples on how to use Google in a sentence:

Usage: 'Google' as noun referring to, well, us.
Example: "I just love Google, they're soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!"
Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There's no question here that you're referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.
Example: "I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Well, we're happy at least that it's clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to "Google" means "to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web."

Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only "Google" on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to "search" on Yahoo or any other search engine.

So that means we cant Google on Yahoo or Live, I wonder if we can Yahoo on Google?

Blogger is Down!

At around 9:00AM this morning I opened up Blogger to add another post to my blog. As I am currently writing this, Blogger is still down.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who took notice of this, there is a thread at the Digitalpoint’s forum regarding this matter.

Thankfully, Blogger Beta is up. Now, Im really glad I switched.

I also stumbled upon some data regarding Google employees. It seems that Googlers are rapidly increasing in number, from 2000 in 2004 to 9000 today. Wow, wish there was a Google branch here in the Philippines J. I only know of one person associated with Google in the Philippines and she is part of our Yahoo Group.

Ms. Aileen Apollo, Google Philippines Country Consultant, will be present on the upcoming SEO Philippines BeerCon 2006 which will be held at Jill’s Fort Bonifacio Global City, Taguig on October 28, 2006 at 7 PM

It will also be the launching of the second SEO contest handled by Marc Macalua.

Thanks to Mr. Macalua for making the event possible.