Should blogs be included in Google News? That’s not an easy question to answer with a simple yes or no. The content of any given blog will likely have a huge bearing on your opinion, right?

At approximately 7:26pm CDT today, Google News added Technology Evangelist to their syndicated news sources. I say approximately, as I am basing this estimate on our first visitor to the site from Google News on a search for the term [goog]. A fitting search considering Google announced their earnings after the market closed today. We quickly disappeared from the top results for that term due to the deluge of news on GOOG tonight. Clearly, other sites have better content to offer Google News readers tonight on this subject than what we’ve posted here.

Here’s a screen shot from Google News for the search [yahoo] tonight:

TechnologyEvangelist.com is the 2nd story on the page.

Rather than getting to be bottom of the inclusiveness issue, I’ve put together a list of blog categories that I don’t consider Google News-worthy:

• Personal Diaries
• Daily Porn Links
• Reblogs: Blogs that aggregate news stories they found on other sites, but don’t create any original content
• Fiction Blogs

What am I missing? Add additional non-Google News-worthy blog categories to the comments, or tell me what’s wrong with my list.

PS: Traffick’s analysis of Google’s quarterly report is worth a read.

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Building on yesterday’s post covering network neutrality / prioritized bandwidth, here are a five things bugging me about the business models proposed by telecommunications companies:

1. Multiple Classes of Service: Telecommunications companies suggest that networks should adopt models similar to airlines, with business and economy classes. Telecommunications companies are in more trouble than I thought is they’re looking to the airline industry for business models.

2. Charging 5-10 cents for iTunes downloads: If consumers had a choice between downloading songs at current speeds, or paying an additional nickel or two for faster downloads, I think they’d stick with the former. In a download and play business model, how much does speed really effect the quality of service?

3. Differentiation degrades service: A model that makes the best margins off premium services (faster downloads in this case) would have to differentiate the services significantly enough to justify the premium rates. Would carriers hold back evolution of the non-premium services in order to entice more premium business? How often does your cable company upgrade your basic cable compared to offering additional services with attached fees?

4. Inefficiencies of Dual Networks: American telecommunications companies haven’t been able to keep up with most of Europe and Japan while running only one network. Just think how inefficient they would be running two.

5. Mission Critical Applications: Mark Cuban should take a look at how mission critical services are delivered offline. We don’t build separate roads for ambulances. We build an infrastructure that’s capable of carrying everything from a groups of teenagers to movies, to ambulances racing to save a lives. Is it perfect? No. But it’s much more efficient and cheaper than building dedicated lanes for mission critical services like emergency vehicles.

Five negatives. Frankly, I’m having a hard time thinking of any positives. Any help?

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Is Google your primary search engine? If so, why do you use it? If you’re anything like me, it’s because Google helps you find what you’re looking for, and it’s fast. As a Google user, can you imagine switching to Yahoo search as your primary search engine? Considering just speed for a second, how slow would Google have to become compared to Yahoo before you decided to make the switch? That’s a question you may have to ask yourself again in a few years if telephone companies start charging for prioritized bandwidth on their networks.

Washington Post reported last week (The Coming War Over the Internet) that “… you may one day discover that Yahoo suddenly responds much faster to your inquiries, overriding your affinity for Google. Or that Amazon’s Web site seems sluggish compared with eBay’s.” Under this scenario, a company like Yahoo could pay for prioritized bandwidth, causing their site’s content to be delivered faster than Google’s. Communications companies, including AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth see prioritized bandwidth as a way to generate new revenue from content providers. This is a hot issue deserving attention from internet users because congress is updating the 1996 Telecommunications Act this year.

Not sure how this would effect you? Marketwatch.com has reported that BellSouth’s CTO, Bill Smith, “suggested that Apple Computer might be asked to pay a nickel or a dime to insure the complete and rapid transmission of a song via the Internet, which is being used for more and more content-intensive purposes.” Would Apple happily absorb that dime per download, or pass along the costs to you, the consumer? The answer is pretty obvious. But more importantly, aren’t we already paying for this content with our ISP bill? Doesn’t this degrade the quality of consumer’s online experience? As Randall Stross put it in the January 15th New York Times (registration required),  “Woe to us all if the Internet’s content is limited by the companies who also handle the plumbing.”

The break from network neutrality does nothing improve internet performance for consumers, and will lead to increased costs passed on from companies being charged an additional bandwidth toll. Is this a good thing?

Yes, according to Mark Cuban, who provides a compelling example of why we need prioritized bandwidth:

That’s certainly a compelling argument for multiple tiers - especially compared to charging a toll on iTunes downloads - but who decides which services are mission critical? A case can certainly be made for protecting mission critical web applications, such as medical diagnostics equipment without turning the web into a set of basic and premium channels like we have with cable TV today.

Major web sites, including Google and Yahoo share the belief that network bandwidth costs are currently shared by themselves and consumers. They pay for bandwidth leaving their buildings; consumers pay for bandwidth entering their homes and businesses. They’re lobbying for “network neutrality” and they seem to hold the high cards in this debate, as Jeff Pulver explains:

Yes, I do believe Google has a better hand to play.

So, what’s the answer? How do we provide faster, more reliable, and cheaper access to consumers? Do we bow to companies that have failed to provide bandwidth speeds comparable other countries - Verizon’s $20/megabit connections vs. France’s $1.80/megabit - to selectively improve the quality of our infrastructure through additional tolls, or do we legislate network neutrality like other countries have done? Here are a few quotes that connected with me while studying this issue:

Lawrence Lessig: Broadband is infrastructure ?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á∆íÀò like highways, if not railroads. If you rely upon “markets” alone to provide infrastructure, you?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äll get less of it, and at a higher price.

Om Malik: “[the] consumer, not Yahoo or Apple is [the telephone company’s] first and primary customer.”

Christopher Stern: “The Republican-led Congress is struggling with the issue. On one hand, it has taken a deregulatory approach to the Internet, but on the other, it can’t ignore the concerns of Google, Yahoo and eBay, some of the most successful companies of the last 10 years. These companies alone have built up businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars on an unfettered Internet. Moreover, unfettered Internet access has come to be seen by Americans in general as not just a privilege or a product, but a right akin to free speech and free association.”

Vint Cerf: “The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation.”

Tying those together:

1. I want to see Yahoo beat Google by providing a better service rather than prioritized bandwidth.

2. I want to see network providers compete for my business by regularly improving my bandwidth at a competitive price.
3. Due to the heavy concentration of internet service in the hands of a few providers today, a lack of regulation has more potential to create poor service than legislation mandating network neutrality.

Is legislating network neutrality a must-have? Possibly not, but how could it hurt? Let’s add network neutrality to Telecommunications Act so we can get back to creating and delivering great content rather than squibbling over this anti-growth internet strategy?

Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts below, and call your elected officials to make sure they know where you stand on this important issue.

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I found out today that I have a problem: I like technology too much. Good tech, bad tech, expensive tech, cheap tech, I like it all and WANT it all. That?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s the problem.

I have wanted an Xbox 360 ever since I first heard of them. What a cool bit of technology that looks to be. Only thing is?¢Ç«®¨∂ I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m not a gamer. Not only do I suck at gaming, but I simply don?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t have the valuable time necessary to, well, game. So why in the world would I ever want an Xbox 360? I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m a technoholic.

I have owned such great pieces of gaming hardware as the PSP, original Xbox, Playstation 2 and Gamecube. I play each for about a month, remind myself that I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m not a gamer, then sell the equipment at a great financial loss (usually for ?«¨? of what I originally purchased it for). Outside of gaming I have owned the Apple Newton, Philips Nino, EyeTV (when I didn?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t even have TV), every Bluetooth headset ever made, Handspring Visors, Palm Pilots, XM radios, about a dozen WiFi routers in the last 2 years, and that?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s just what I can think of in 60 seconds. The list goes on and on and on and on. This would not be a problem if I could sell the equipment for just as much as I purchased it for, but technology depreciates too fast and I almost always take a big hit.

I realized my problem today (I have known it for a long time, but never wanted to admit it) while at an Electronics Boutique. They had an Xbox 360 Core system. I wanted the larger system with the wireless controller, hard drive, component HD cables and headset, but they only had 1 core system which has none of that, just the basic system. This was at 4:45pm. I went home and called my wife (who is in school until 5:00pm) leaving her a voicemail asking her opinion. Should I spend $300.00+ on a system I know I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m going to get rid of in a month? Should I suppress my technology obsession and not get the system? What should I do? My wife called back at 5:30pm and told me to just get it and shut up (I think she was sick of me talking about it). I went back to Electronics Boutique to pick up the system, and the person right in front of me bought the system. OUCH, burned.

When I got home I started thinking about why I want the system. Is it marketing? Is it status? Is it ?¢Ç«®¿˙mine is bigger than yours?¢Ç«®Ç—¢ syndrome? Why did I want it? Why do I want all the technology that I want? I want it because I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m a technoholic. I am addicted to technology. I must have the latest and greatest hardware. Computers, gadgets, devices, whatever. I want to see it, play with it, figure out how it works, and once I know it inside and out, upside down and backwards, I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m bored with it and don?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t want it anymore.

Am I the only one? Are there other technoholics out there? If so, what drives you? How do you curb the desire to have the latest and greatest? Am I doomed to a life of buying technology as soon as I see it, or is there hope for me?

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I found out today that I have a problem: I like technology too much. Good tech, bad tech, expensive tech, cheap tech, I like it all and WANT it all. That?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s the problem.

I have wanted an Xbox 360 ever since I first heard of them. What a cool bit of technology that looks to be. Only thing is?¢Ç«®¨∂ I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m not a gamer. Not only do I suck at gaming, but I simply don?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t have the valuable time necessary to, well, game. So why in the world would I ever want an Xbox 360? I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m a technoholic.

I have owned such great pieces of gaming hardware as the PSP, original Xbox, Playstation 2 and Gamecube. I play each for about a month, remind myself that I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m not a gamer, then sell the equipment at a great financial loss (usually for ?«¨? of what I originally purchased it for). Outside of gaming I have owned the Apple Newton, Philips Nino, EyeTV (when I didn?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t even have TV), every Bluetooth headset ever made, Handspring Visors, Palm Pilots, XM radios, about a dozen WiFi routers in the last 2 years, and that?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s just what I can think of in 60 seconds. The list goes on and on and on and on. This would not be a problem if I could sell the equipment for just as much as I purchased it for, but technology depreciates too fast and I almost always take a big hit.

I realized my problem today (I have known it for a long time, but never wanted to admit it) while at an Electronics Boutique. They had an Xbox 360 Core system. I wanted the larger system with the wireless controller, hard drive, component HD cables and headset, but they only had 1 core system which has none of that, just the basic system. This was at 4:45pm. I went home and called my wife (who is in school until 5:00pm) leaving her a voicemail asking her opinion. Should I spend $300.00+ on a system I know I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m going to get rid of in a month? Should I suppress my technology obsession and not get the system? What should I do? My wife called back at 5:30pm and told me to just get it and shut up (I think she was sick of me talking about it). I went back to Electronics Boutique to pick up the system, and the person right in front of me bought the system. OUCH, burned.

When I got home I started thinking about why I want the system. Is it marketing? Is it status? Is it ?¢Ç«®¿˙mine is bigger than yours?¢Ç«®Ç—¢ syndrome? Why did I want it? Why do I want all the technology that I want? I want it because I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m a technoholic. I am addicted to technology. I must have the latest and greatest hardware. Computers, gadgets, devices, whatever. I want to see it, play with it, figure out how it works, and once I know it inside and out, upside down and backwards, I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m bored with it and don?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t want it anymore.

Am I the only one? Are there other technoholics out there? If so, what drives you? How do you curb the desire to have the latest and greatest? Am I doomed to a life of buying technology as soon as I see it, or is there hope for me?

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Yesterday’s post on Technorati Optimization has fueled some stinging commentary from a few sites:

Brendan Borlase of Incoherenly Surreal was the first to respond and really broke things down well. I’d like to go through some of Brendan’s comments below:

True, but I’m submitting sites that are not registering links on Technorati, so they must not have preconfigured their blog platform’s pinging capabilities. I highly recommend using a site’s pinging feature, or utilizing a site such as ping-o-matic or pinggoat. If you take the time to write something, take the easy extra step to make sure it gets syndicated.

Brendan goes on to write:

I absolutely agree. And since search engines rely on inbound link counts to determine authority, strategies that help search engines make an accurate count is a good thing, right?

He continues:

If a professor misgraded your test, would you bring it to her attention? If every student didn’t bring the professor’s errors to her attention, that would be ‘artificial inflation’ on your part, correct? I certainly don’t think so. Getting credit for what you’ve earned isn’t artificial inflation. Creating splogs that link to your own website would be, but the links in this case are coming from legitimate, third parties who have been kind enough to create unsolicited links to this site from their site.

To me, this sounds like a “Technorati isn’t perfect, so just accept it” argument. I’d rather be the student, with his arm raised asking about the test result that doesn’t seem quite right. The squeaky wheel does get the grease (credit) in the form of Technorati Optimization.

He goes on:

Sticking with the professor/student analogy, it’s certainly not gaming the system to hold the professor accountable for their oversight. In fact, not doing so would be accepting mediocre performance from the professor (or search engine in this case).

Brendan then offers a series of possible negative outcomes from my perceived “gaming”:

Technorati’s site relies on links to determine relevancy. The more content they’re aware of, the better the site becomes. My optimization tactic aligns quite well with the goals of their site.

Should I assume Brendan thinks I’m pinging spam sites? If so, he is mistaken.

True. Just like search engines do every day. Search engines generally operate on an opt-out model. Why? Because they would never be able to provide relevant search results if they were dependent on sites opting in to their site.

Am I inflating Technorati’s data or correcting it by bringing missed data to their attention? Getting proper credit for what I’ve earned is simply smart marketing.

How so?

Brendan concludes:

Going back to the professor/student analogy one more time: have you ever heard of a college cracking down on students who ask their professors to review test results that were incorrectly scored? I sure haven’t. The same reasoning applies here. Take steps to get credit for what you’ve earned. There is nothing unethical about this. To the contrary, I would argue it is advisable.

Steve Rubel takes a different approach to criticizing this Technorati Optimization technique. He chooses to stand up for the person who doesn’t want to be counted:

I’m convinced that people publishing a blog with a public feed are not opting out of search engines. They simply don’t know that blog search engines exist or how to use them properly. Blogging application providers could certainly provide better information on what pinging does and why it is a useful tool for most bloggers. Until they do, however, I’m going to keep pinging unpinged sites that were kind enough to link to me.

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Anyone who has a blog and is familiar with Technorati is probably very aware of their blog’s ranking on the popular blog search engine. If you’re not careful, watching a blog’s ranking fluctuate may lead to carpal tunnel from clicking the refresh button. Every blogger obsesses about this at some level, including respected bloggers like Steve Rubel, Frank Gruber and blogging newbie, Guy Kawasaki.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that a blog’s ranking is directly tied to the number of links and unique sites that link back to the blog. This is similar to how Google determines web page authority and has proven to be an effective ranking metric because it relies on third-party endorsements in the form of links.

Knowing that, what can be done to make your site rank higher? The most obvious strategy is to create interesting content on your site that’s worth linking to. Great. But what should you do when Technorati doesn’t register the hard earned links you’ve earned?

Technorati Optimization

Imagine stumbling across a site that has linked to you, and noticing the site does not appear in your Technorati ranking report. Does this happen? Yes. How could that be? Most likely, it’s because the site didn’t ping Technorati after publishing the post. Shame on them. Should your Technorati ranking suffer (um, be held back) because of this oversight by someone kind enough to cite your blog on their blog? Of course not.

The solution: Ping their site for them. Make a quick trip to Pingomatic.com, fill out the form with your new best blogging-friend’s site, feed information and submit the ping. You should get credit for your hard-earned link in short order.

Is this ranking strategy gaming Techorati’s search engine? Exploiting a loophole or optimizing a blog’s ranking? I call it optimizing because it simply takes steps to make a blog rank as high as it rightfully deserves, but no higher. What do you think?

PS: If you found this post interesting, feel free to mention it on your blog. And don’t forget to ping Technorati!

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Firefox is one heck of a nice web browser, but Firefox with a few key extensions blows plain old Firefox out of the water. If you’re not familiar with Firefox extensions, they’re add-ons to the browser that increase the functionality. They can be anything from toolbars for blogging, to shorcuts for commonly used web resources like TinyURL.

But today, I’d like to talk about an extension I added the other day that’s particularly cool: Viamatic foXpose. This extension lets you view all of your open tabs as thumbnails within your browser window with the click of a mouse. After installing the extension, just click on the little window pane in your status bar to view all of your tabs at once like this:



Very cool, but also quite useful. The presentation potential of displaying four side by side by side by side websites seems quite powerful. Not as powerful as having four projectors displaying the four sites simultaneously, but cool nonetheless. It’s certainly been a time saver for me when I find myself with way too many open tabs.

Have you tried this extension? If so, what applications have you found it useful for?

Contest: Can you name the nine web sites I was viewing using Viamatic foXpose? Take your best guess in the comments below. If you have an idea for a prize, add that to the comments as well.

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WebProWorld has a forum discussion called, “Who You Are According to Google” that looks at what you can learn from Google Suggest. Suggest is a feature that offers auto-completed searches based on the characters one types into the search box. For example, the word [home] adds [depot] and [homes] adds [for sale].

The WebProWorld thread has some fun with the tool, starting searches with terms like [Americans are ] and [Europeans are ] to see what it would come up with. Try those for yourself if you’re interested in the results.

But what does Google think of Google? Here are a few interesting things I learned using Suggest:

• Gmail is down, creepy, evil, bad, not working.
  
• Google Search is slow, messed up, not working.
• Beta is dead, over, better. Will Beta ever be dead at Google?
  
• Google is crap, your friend, stupid, evil, god, cool, and a few things not worth repeating.

It turns out that Microsoft shares many of the same suggestions as Google, including evil and crap. Google really is growing up.

I may have to take back my post from earlier this week on why Google is better than Yahoo. According to Google Suggest, Yahoo is “better than Google” but not only better, “Yahoo is the best.” Just take Google Suggest’s word for it.

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Occasionally, friends of mine ask me if they should consider buying lots and lots of domain names as a marketing strategy to drive more traffic to their web sites. They theorize that many domains names will cast a wider net on the web for prospective site visitors. Is this an effective online marketing strategy? In most cases, no.

Having dozens of domains is like having dozens of wives. It may seem like a good idea, but it’s not nearly as satisfying as one truly rich and rewarding relationship.

People who register tons of domains seem to be working from the assumption that they’ll cover more online real estate. However, online real estate doesn’t work like offline real estate. There is nearly an unlimited amount of available property online in the form of domain names compared to the finite amount of real estate on Earth. The online version of a land grab is limited to only the most obvious domains, which do indeed fetch serious cash.

Take a moment to think about how people generally find web sites. In the vast majority of cases, people find web sites through:

1. Searches on Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN
   
2. Links from other web sites
3. Typing in a domain they saw in a print ad

Where does randomly typing addresses into the location bar fall on this list? It doesn’t.

A much better investment of online marketing time and money comes from focusing on strategies that address #1 and #2. It turns out that addressing #2 helps increase your visibility for #1, as described in my previous post, Top Three Search Engine Optimization Tips. It really comes down to link popularity.

Having dozens of sites with no inbound links (or only links from other sites in the same network of sites) will lead to dozens of virtually invisible online properties. Taking the same resources and applying them to the marketing of one site through link building, improved sales copy, and some pay per click advertising, will lead to upward movement in search engine results, more people finding the site useful, more bookmarks, more people emailing the site to friends, and more leads or sales.

When to buy additional domain names: If you stumble across an available domain that people may type directly into search engines, should you buy it? Sure, they’re cheap. Also, buy any common typos of your primary domain name.
PS: While writing this post, I stumbled across a splog (A blog that is set up to redirect people to another site but has no value of its own. Considered to be spam.) called get-a-domain-name.blogspot.com. The irony of that domain kills me. It looks like this particular spammer also uses good-domain-names.blogspot.com, domains-cheap.blogspot.com, and nu-domains.blogspot.com. Frank Gruber of SomeWhatFrank.com is working to rid the blogosphere of splogs through his take-action site, SplogReporter.com.

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