Tag clouds for presidential speeches

well done and crazy engaging

History of Presidential Speeches in tag cloud form. Watch it go from War to Appropriations to Constitution to Economy to Terrorist
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of these for a wide variety of things. Maybe I’m just not looking.

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I thought I got away from this stuff when I moved out of the Midwest. Nora has had 5 snow/ice days and a few late starts to school. I first thought it was ridiculous that people couldn’t drive with a “trace” or “dusting” of snow. But watch this video and it’s much more understandable.

A well-stated theory about what an SEO’s job is & how to go about it - in tough cases. A couple points that get at the heart of what I think is a huge bonus of hiring an SEO.

If you don’t have at least 10-20 sites in your portfolio, get them. Come back and finish reading this article after you have them.

and

you can still create a community of long-tail Web sites that use unique content to establish visibility for related topics and point their visitors to the client site.

The danger, of course, is that when the SEO that has built that network of sites decides he doesn’t need clients anymore it could get tricky. If an SEO is using his own sites as a primary tool it is in the client’s best interest to get that in some kind of contract. I don’t know any search marketer that would be ok with a contract like that but that’s what makes this industry so interesting.

this chain-letter blog circle-jerk is really getting out of control in the SEO community. Once was even too much, but now that the ego “gets a taste of the honey” (one of my dad’s common phrases) they can’t stop.

So for this “trust meme” (it’s not really a meme after 2 posts Michael) I trust that somebody will have the sense to recognize this is just dumb. Rae’s post was awesome and if we would talk about answers to some of her very pointed questions then the community benefits. But it doesn’t benefit from more pecking-order stack-rank garbage.

I do trust Todd absolutely and have even referred work to him on more than 1 occassion. It must be hard to stop a meme when it’s coming from a friend, but I think/hope somebody will…

edit: ok…sorry…too harsh. bloggers should have their fun too. i just find those posts tedious after the very recent previous one that just went around. i’ll just skim the noise and accept it’s part of the culture.

Quantcast is the latest public stats/metrics company I’ve seen. They have a great interface and some interesting data. Accuracy…eh…

Competitive intelligence is key to every industry but finding an accurate inexpensive tool is nearly futile. So instead use them all:

• Alexa (alexaholic is more fun)
• Bill Gross’ (idealab) Compete
• Quantcast
• Google Trends

For pay ones:

• Trellian’s Competitive Intelligence
• Hitwise
• Nielsen netRatings
• comScore Media Metrix

Some SEO ones:

• Based on AOL data: DontDelete.com
• SpyFu for PPC intel

And for those with big budgets and resources to devote:

• Do it yourself with a little help from these guys

I found out about this panel from this widget blog. The author Lawrence isn’t too harsh on Michael Arrington, but that’s just because Lawrence is too nice. Here is Michael Arrogant Arrington going off:

Mike’s opening comment: ” User Generated Content is something that I used to think was great.”

Mike: The videos watched on YouTube are copyrighted, not user generated. YouTube is little more than a way for people to watch professionally generated content.

Mike: I will challenge you (the panelists) to convince me that I am wrong. Revver is my primary target, as they have no copyrighted content.

Micki: Every video on Revver reviewed by people to check for copyrights and hate speak.

Diet Coke and Mentos video case study. 3 weeks the video made $35K from advertising. Then Mentos reached out, video up to $80K. Total revenue brought on by Revver? Not telling.

Mike: Exception that proves the rule. If you look at MySpace, they are now being sued by Universal. UGC is a red herring, it’s really about copyrighted content. What does the rest of the panel think?

I’ve heard that statement used incorrectly so many times & it’s one of the few grammar/logic/whatever things that bugs me when it’s abused. Somebody from Yahoo Answers sums it up best.

The phrase is simply a fallacious cliche. Exceptions disprove rules.

The fallacy is usually used by those who have previously committed the fallacy of “sweeping generalisation”. Someone points out an exception that disproves the generalisation and the original arguer then uses this empty cliche to dismiss the objection.

Example:

A: Exercise is good for you.
B: What about my friend John who went out jogging and got run over by a bus?
A: That’s the exception that proves the rule.

There, she proved you’re wrong Mr. TechCrunch. I don’t totally disagree in his premise - youtube really is only popular because of it’s copyrighted content, but his statement on UGC is off. He’s good at creating sensationary headlines & statements, but everything isn’t black & white.