Pay it forward with Google One Today

Google One Today 

A not so subtle attempt at simultaneously giving and growing the GOOG. 

Google One Today

As if Google was not already enough a part of your life, now Google lets you be generous and choose someone to give funds to, for them to pick a charity to donate the funds to.

Check out Google One Today for more details. Seems kind of like a nice viral marketing gimmick. After all, why not just let you donate the charity of your own choice directly? Why pass it on through someone else? What's the point of that?

The answer to that is pure, simple marketing. By passing it on to someone, you're feeding the google with more data about you and the people you know.

Smart move? Lame attempt at growth hacking? What do you think?  Please leave your comments and feedback.  

Speaking of paying it forward, take a look at this inspirational clip, of a guy who gives haircuts to the homeless as his way of giving to people in need.

Grow, Market and Test Your Customers with This Simple Tip That Will Blow Your Mind

How To Succeed At Email Marketing Without Breaking Your Back

Email Marketing Success is @ the tip of your fingers

Want to attract and grow a loyal customer base?
Want to be able to directly market to your past customers?
Want to have the ability to track which advertisements worked and which ones failed?

Well then it is time to get serious about launching your own online marketing strategy with a strong email marketing campaign.

Watch this video (which I saw on the fiverr blog) and prepare to have all the old lines of your misperceptions about mobile marketing ... redrawn.

Seven Q&As That Will Rock Your World

7 Questions and Answers about Rosetta Philae

Rosetta Philae on the comet - artist's rendition

Philae and the comet tchouri seven questions to understand what works ... or not

If the Philae landing on the comet robot is already considered a technical success by the European Space Agency, its current position made it difficult to start any drilling while its batteries would soon after be out of power.

Wednesday's landing was seen as a victory for scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA), but its current position could be fatal to the world's most famous space robot. A vertical and standing on two of its three feet, Philae "works well" but its position in a little sunny area, caused it problems to recharge its batteries.

1. Where should the robot Philae have landed?

The researchers predicted that Rosetta mission Philae would land on the Agilkia site, an area near the top of the smaller of the two lobes of the comet. The site selection was made based on its topography and its mapping.

"The situation is not optimal"

2. Where is Philae now?

Due to the very low gravity of the comet around 100,000 times lower than on land, it was necessary to provide harpoons for the robot not to bounce.

Unfortunately, the trigger system did not work and Philae, weighing a hundred pounds, bounced three times. The first bounce of more than a kilometer lasted almost two hours. Still, the ESA does not seem to pinpoint its exact location.

"The rally lasted almost two hours"

3. did the robot do its work despite the chaotic landing?

Yes. Philae is equipped with 10 tools that were tested. Among them, cameras from which images were provided to the press and world by the space agency. Another tool to collect samples of the comet is also running.

4. Could Philae accomplish all its tasks if it was not properly grounded?

One of the priority tasks of Philae is boring and it is impossible to undertake anything of that nature without ground anchors. Nevertheless, during landing, the robot was able to sink 4 cm, suggesting that the screws on the feet fulfilled their role.

5. How long was the battery life?

That scientists feared what might happen. They were afraid that the robot would be attached to a rock wall that would shade the solar panels mounted on the robot. However, Philae is almost vertically on a sloping 30% slope and solar panels can be found in the shade. Batteries allow it to be on for 50-55 hours. Despite the chaotic landing, the antennas are facing the sky which facilitates communication.

6. Do we know what kind of data was already collected by Philae?

The National Space Research Centre refuses to give any information whatsoever but indicates that much data has been collected. "Our priority is to continue to make scientific analyses without moving anything," said Philippe Gaudon, the Rosetta mission boss.

7. Is the purpose of Philae to bring back samples of the comet on Earth?

No, it would be far too expensive. Besides, scientists from the Rosetta mission would not even consider its return to Earth. Philippe Lamy, astrophysicist mission said that eventually it could be ejected from the comet. Anyway, it can not remain indefinitely because comets are gradually eroded.

ESA Press Conference Following Successful Philae Landing

How The Managers Told Of Rosetta Philae Lander's Successful Landing

Here's how the ESA shared the news with the world, of the Rosetta Philae Lander having successfully landed on the Comet Choury:

Be Amazed. Be Very Amazed. The Rock Is Coming As A Comet Towards The Sun ... Hurtling Through Space, With A Manmade Lander On Its Back.

What We Learned From Philae ... So Far

Things Humanity Has Gained From Philae Comet Lander / Driller

Photo: Philae Comet Lander / Driller, Nov. 13, 2014

SPACE -- The robot, which was still working Friday evening, is finally asleep ...
Rosetta Philae transmitted data on drilling the "Choury" comet.

The photo above, wast taken by the Rosetta Philae robot lander on comet "tchouri" and transmitted by the European Space Agency November 13, 2014

This little robot is a tough guy. Stuck in the shadow of a rock comet "Choury" with almost empty batteries, Philae was able to send data to Earth Friday night. "We have received everything."



"Everything went exactly as planned. It could even make the rotation to optimize reception of light on the solar panels," said Jean-Pierre Bibring in a telephone interview from the control center of Philae in Cologne (Germany).

"The relationship with Rosetta was established a little later than expected. Maybe I moved a little ;)", tweeted the European Space Agency.

It was however the last contact with Philae. "in standby mode," he "will doze off soon", it was announced on Friday night to Saturday by the European and French space agencies. The contact was finally lost to 01:36 French time, according to the CNES in Toulouse, which believed that the battery should be fully discharged by Philae around 3am.

Before dozing off, Philae was able to make a last-minute drill. However, it will wait to see if the sample has been brought to the surface.

Rotation before hibernation

One of the great abilities of the lander is the little robot's ability to rotate 35 ° to reorient its solar panels. This could allow Philae out of hibernation around the Summer, when the comet will approach the Sun, according to Philippe Gaudon, head of the Rosetta project at CNES.

Whatever happens at Philae, the Rosetta mission is far from over. The probe, which has traveled 6.5 billion miles in space, continues to escort "Choury" at least until August 13. It is at this time that the comet will pass closest to the Sun and should become inoperative.

Selling On The Net

The top secret genius marketing list

Discover "How To Sell on the Internet"
The 7-step formula Randy Marshall
The secrets of web marketing finally revealed!

To get in on the action, just Follow Randy Marshall.

For over 10 years, when outside of the lab, Randy Marshall has secretly led web entrepreneurs with an unbeatable formula for marketing or selling any product or service on the internet.

After 20+ years of experience in internet marketing, Randy's formula has worked to make fortunes for tends of thousands of clients in areas as diverse as: online sales of physical products (b2b & b2c), on-site shop sales (b2c), subscription sales to online services (b2b), real estate sales (b2b), relationship marketing (b2c), and selling ebooks and information products (b2c & b2b)

Randy's sales method operates profitably using only web technologies available openly to entrepreneurs. 

Constantly updated with current technologies, it remains unchanged in its foundations because it is the defining key pillar in the formation of any contractor on the web.

Do not miss out on this monumentally powerful information. The secrets Randy reveleas inside will allow you to boost the income you currently earn, or greatly accelerate the success of your startup if you're a beginner.

Differences In Techniques

doggies delivering differently

This vs. That

You don't have to be Charlie Sheen to know what Winning really is or what Losing feels like.

You don't have to be a genius to know the difference between working hard and working well.

The differences are stark, most of the time.

Yet sometimes, the difference between light and dark, left and right, up and down, English and French, Italian and Spanish, or Fruit & Veg can be, well, quite hard to see.

When it comes to publishing online, the same applies.  What's good SEO? What's negative SEO? What about SEM?  

Though negative SEO can be a problem because you have competitors in your industry, a strong SEO and SEM campaign can help to be the best defense. 

When you optimize your site to appear on the first page of search engine results pages, in addition to using paid ads to drive traffic to your site, you strengthen your web visibility. 

So here, without further ado, is a great guide to helping you distinguish the differences between tweaking your web pages for SEM vs. SEO.

And here's a great infographic from that article that you should refer to whenever you forget the basic "must Dos" of SEO:

By the way, if you visit the article in the link above, be sure to read it all, and then checkout the amazing SEO linkbuilding guide that's at the end.  A friend of mine tried it and has already tripled his daily traffic to his site about farm animal medicines, in just 7 days.

Optimized Camel Photos and Selfie Posts

Too Many Selfies! Not Enough Camel Faces!

The face of internet vanity is you.

It's something else, the selfie. The word, believed to be coined by a drunk Australian on an online forum in 2002, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.

And now, camels are getting in on the action.

But first, here's an amazing video that explains how exactly to optimize the photo selection you choose if you want to be popular (or unpopular) on social networks.

Keep in mind, if you're posting your selfie on a page on your own website, or a blog that lets you include articles to accompany your beautiful autoportrait, here's an important (and free) lesson in how to optimize your articles for search, so that people looking for articles with selfies in them can find them easily in google, yahoo and bing.  (duckduckgo users are obviously too cool to make a selfie page).

Something to think about when creating great content that you want to share and be well indexed by the major search engines:  Are you worried that writing articles with SEO in mind will make the writing worse? That maybe it won’t be worth the effort? It’s a delicate balance, but incorporating SEO does not need to hamper your writing. In fact, it can enhance your content. Learn the 4 keys behind successful SEO writing (see the link above) and get on with your life ... or at least with your post.

On that page, you'll learn some valuable information about things like how to write the best Title tags for your selfie page (or any other page you make), as seen in this video:

And now ... a roaring camel selfie photo selection from this post full of selfies featuring camel faces ... with some funny people.

camel selfie

Image: Imgur, Reddit, _JSL_

Sci-Fi Food Cultural Icon

McDonald's. Japan. Batman. 

Super Hero Fast Food Packaging Satisfies Nippon

Japan is (or was back in the '70s and '80s, anyway) famous for taking great ideas and inventions, and making them better at scalable, affordable and efficient rates.

Apparently they've done it again with this cooler than cool Batman themed packaging for Batman Burgers and Cheesy Fries.

Batman Burger & Cheesy Fries, Japan, 2014

[Photo: jc1593@Reddit]

Is it just me, or is it a sure sign that fast food is so super unhealthy that the only way the golden arches corporation can move their product is to smear it in super hero branded packages?

All the same, cool art.  

But where's Robin?  Is that used for packaging things like their famous apple pie?  or salads?

Batman and Robin on jealousy

U.S. Secret Service Aiming For President Obama?

Unauthorized Gunman and President Obama in Elevator
Not-So-Minor oversight by The White House's Protective Services

The White House, near La Maison Blanche restaurant, Washington, DC

Ok ... what the heck is going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

This story is breaking bad ... and I don't mean the TV show.

http://gawker.com/jesus-is-the-secret-service-trying-to-kill-obama-1640971274

Seriously, with this being the third recent widely reported potential life threatening circumstance that America's Chief Executive has been indirectly involved in, why doesn't the Secret Service try not letting that sort of thing happen again?

You can't just chalk it up to human error and move on like everything will be fine.

Everything will not be fine if you are just lazy about protecting the leader of the free world.

It is imperative that his security be their top priority, and that protocol, designed to protect his life, not be broken as easily as it has been.

I really hope that the brainless twits involved in these slip-ups get properly taught their lesson not to repeat their mistakes.

Love 'em or hate 'em, presidents are presidents. They are extremely important, and they do need to be protected from the crazy people who would harm them.

Now go have some apple pie and listen to some patriotic country music.

Triple Boob FAKE Causes Real Triple Boob Halloween Costume

You Knew This Was Coming ...

It seems like an eternity ago, when just last week Jasmine Tridevil's triple boob photo was exposed as a FAKE, made with the help of a prosthetic mammary gland.

In case you missed it, here it is:

Jasmine Tridevil's fake triple-boob selfie, Sept. 2014

Since then, so much creativity has been poured into covering (or uncovering, as it were) the story by the boobs who call themselves internet journalists.

Aside from having the perfect nom de plume for such a stunt, Ms. Tridevil has inspired some creative arts, at least commercially.

You can now buy a triple boob costume (which looks hilariously awful and exceedingly fake) online, just in time for Halloween.  Sooo ... If you're wondering, yeah, it must be said: This year, when shopping for your Halloween costume, be sure to heed this advice from Allison Grant of Forsyth, Ackerman, Kim & Ellsworth (F.A.K.E.) Research Ltd., whole recently stated:

"Don't be fooled by imposters. Only go for the real fake triple boob costume. "

Of course, with such a great acronym for that sort of insight, why wouldn't you listen to her?

And here's what that genuine three-boobed costume looks like:

Real Fake Triple Boob Costume

I wonder how many organic search queries they'll get for that in google, bing and yahoo.

Read more about that on, what else, Jezebel (because you shouldn't just trust any old media boobery to expose such an extra important story).

KLM Dog Ad FAKE

To Fake Or Not To Fake

Don't blame the messenger ... which in this case was a dog

The cute Beagle in the fake KLM Lost & Found service advertisement. September 2014

KLM made a very cute ad. It went viral.

And it turns out, it's a fake.

Had they just said "this is not real" anywhere in the video (ie: in the title or credits), that would have been enough, and all that wonderful public relations stuff would have worked for them. It did not need to be pawned off as an authentic ad, to garner millions of views and "aaaaaawwws".

But they didn't.  Instead, they ended up getting a little bit of backlash from the episode.

Lesson learned (we hope):  When you're a big brand, don't mess with people's trust in your name.  You should be forthright and stand behind what you say, or else don't say it.

Still, you can't fault man's best friend. That doggy was doing its best to shine on camera. And what a beautiful performance it gave.

Maybe this is an opportunity to actually use bloodhounds (better than beagles for lost & found work) to do this sort of work.  I bet that would win significant public support, especially if it's done as a sort of "make good" effort, and to lead the way in innovative techniques to rejoin people and the things they lost on board a KLM flight.

Note: If you have not yet seen the video, here it is:

When Fantasy meets Space Exploration Technology

Space Probes

Thou Shall Be Tested By Probe

It's not every day you get to experiment with a space probe.

It's also not every day you get to tell people that you used a probe for space exploration, and not have
them look at you funny.

I had the pleasure of testing out several space probes last week.  What a thrill!  I can tell you with certainty, as much as has been discovered, there is more space to be probed.

Mars was the latest step ... of course there are more planets to probe next.

NASA - please make more probes! The solar system and the heavens beyond likes when you poke around it.

What if Gandalf was your Chemistry teacher?

So you think you know Chemistry?

How's this for a substitute Chem 101 lab substitute?

Best. Substitute. Ever.

The burning of money is probably best viewed as a metaphor of how the public school system uses the slice of hard-earned taxpayer money they extract from the government budget pie.

Englishman on being a celeb and Social Media

On pain of fame and vain

British comedian Stewart Lee explains what he got by going on tele (that's English slang for television).

Then he goes on to kill two million twitter bird tweets with one punchline.

On Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality

You don't want to wake up one day and worry about Net Neutrality.

Here's a funny way to learn about it:

Protect the Internet the way it should be. Keep it democratic, open and accessible.

John Oliver burns Miss America

This is .. brilliant:

The ever hilarious and satire news comic genius John Oliver takes to task the Miss America beauty pageant, and "the world's largest provider of scholarships to women".

Oops ...

Google Can Be So Prejudgy

O for a googlebot of ire

One blog associated with my blogger account seems to have been accused by Google of having done something that is not liked by Blogger.

The email address that is linked to the blog in question was not completely signed up to about 20 email newsletters (probably less), which seem to publish mostly very informative stuff.

Apparently, the email lists had received a request to sign up the email address in question. However, no confirmation of subscription were submitted, so actually the email address is not a subscriber to those lists.

None of the content was actually shared, so I don't really see what the problem was.  When I share stuff, I always give with full and proper citations or links to the best known source.

Strangely, I received a bunch of "confirmation messages" from the email lists into my blogger "Posts" bin. Very odd.

Not sure what triggered the temporary block or ban on the site. When I confirmed my ID to Google, all of those confirmations messages disappeared. I don't know where they are, which is just as well since I did not actually confirm subscribing to those lists.

In any case, it's something I'll be sure to avoid repeating.

Secret Internet Lesson Learned: If you spend a good deal of time online, make sure you check your email accounts daily to ensure that nothing weird is happening. And if you suspect something is happening, be sure to report it accordingly and take appropriate measures to secure your account by changing your password regularly to something very good.  And of course you should be backing up your data separately, but that's another discussion, and you can surely google it, at least until I pump out the ultimate guide to data backups for dumbdumbs.

I love you, Google! :) You are my friend!

Promote Your Site With The Right Stuff

You may or may not have heard of SEO. That's Search Engine Optimization, for short.

But once you watch this video, you will not be able to get it out of your head.

Getting together a sophisticated SEO campaign is exactly what you need to bring in more leads, customers and revenue to your business. Anyone who fails to take care of SEO will suffer lost opportunities in the way of lost sales and lower search engine rankings. See our eye-opening blog post for how to put together a winning SEO campaign.

Every time you feel something is disturbing the peace of your pages, remember these incredible piece of advice... even if your mind tones it down a little. And then remember that the Googlebot, the Yahoobot, the Bingbot and other crawlers are snooping around your website. So if there's anything you don't want indexed ... keep it hidden, or better yet, keep it offline.

And now that you've seen that amazing presentation, be sure to read this incredibly helpful and handy guide to the best SEO techniques, updated for 2014 and 2015.

The Ultimate SEO Primer Infographic of 2014

You Have Meddled With The Primal Forces of Nature

Messing up the balance

Order. Power. Explained.

How Ned Beatty's character explained the way of the Universe in The Network

If you think you know how the world is run, think again.

This brilliant little gem, a riveting speech by one executive character in the movie The Network (1976), reveals so much that you might already have thought, and just never dared to say out loud. 

Say what you want. It is as relevant today as it was 38 years ago, on the bicentennial year of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

The Best Speech Ever Given

The Greatest Speech. Ever.

As given by the unmatched Hollywood genius, Charlie Chaplin.

Watch this passionate performance, from the movie The Great Dictator (1940).

Some performances are so stirring, that even 74 years on, they still move grown men and women.

And can anyone doubt the uncanny resonance of the relationship between man and machine? Have we not grown more connected to our thoughts and less connected to our feelings?

Are we really so different than what the good Mr. Chaplin suggests?

YouTube pays millions to promote top talent

JennaMarbles, YouTube

As reported on September 18, the world's most watched channel, YouTube, is starting to shell out millions of dollars to some of its most popular users.

The project, which is more of an attempt at keeping the talent on the Google-owned network than it is an exercise in HR.

Of course, this is not the first time YouTube paid for content. This time, however, they say the focus will be different, and thus they hope to succeed where previous attempts being an epic FAIL.

The new programming push is apparently headed by Alex Carloss, an executive who reports to Robert Kyncl, the head of content.

“Now, we feel the time is right to make another important investment in our creators. That’s why we’ve decided to fund new content from some of our top creators, helping them not only fulfill their creative ambitions but also deliver new material to their millions of fans on YouTube,” Carloss wrote recently in a blog post associated with the relatively quiet leak of the plan.

When contacted by my furry squirrel, who is remarkably well trained despite not being an Internet star, YouTube officials had no idea there was a rodent playing with his nuts on the other end of the phone, and so they gave no related comment, other than to ask (in a sobbing, crying voice) "Who is this? Why do you keep calling us? Leave Us Aloooone!"

Google's blatant promotion of kittens online

You read right.

The GOOG is at least partly to blame for the seemingly unending popularity of the trend that is ... cute kittens!

Now, when you set up a Blogger account, the google-powered dashboard shows you some useful information about how to best use this amazing and powerful tool, which can be used to share just about any kind of information, from the mundane, to the extraordinary, and even life-saving.

In short, Google is telling you and many other blogger users how to optimize your website to get solid rankings in the google search engine index, if not how to get to the top of the search results pages. 

So which of these noble or good causes does the megawebgorilla choose to promote to new users?

Well, have a look for yourself at this screenshot, taken September 7, 2014.

Google Promotes Blog About kittens

When we attempted to contact the publisher of "Example Blog" for more information, said publisher could not be reached.

The same is true for the Google Blogger leader.

Meanwhile, an anonymous, unofficial spokesperson for the group denied denying any involvement, or truth to the rumor that Google prefers kittens to puppies.

So now you know. If you want to optimize your blog, do what "Example Blog" does ... create a page "About kittens" ... even if your website is about pollution management, or other fascinating arts and science.