There are quite a few online subscriptions I read regularly and the one I read pretty much on a daily basis is ‘The Best Article Every Day’. The articles tend to be short and informative.

For example, today there was an article entitled; ‘15 Noteworthy Websites That Changed the Internet’ by Cameron Chapman. Pretty much everyone agrees that Wikipedia, Facebook and Amazon changed how we search for, relate to, and purchase items online. But did you know Project Gutenberg has changed the way people read, as they created the first ebooks for free and Pandora, one of my favourites, allows me to create my own playlist that reflects my personal musical interest vs listening to a pre-programmed radio station that tends to play the same songs to ad nauseam. And of course we all know Google keeps changing how we interact with the internet. Continue reading about more noteworthy websites

When I was at SMX West 2010 in Santa Clara a couple of weeks ago, I attended a session called Technical SEO. One of the speakers was Maile Ohye (one of the best Google speakers in my opinion)  who showed a very cool comparison of the various URL structures that can be used for multi-regional sites. Maile also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using a country code top level domain (ccTLD = .ca, .co.uk, etc.) or a global top level domain (gTLD = .com, .net, .org, etc.) for multi-region websites.

Anyway, Maile mentioned the URL structure comparison chart from her presentation would be available online soon and here it is reposted in along with other great information by John Mueller. This should be very handy as a reminder for anyone planning their multi-region web marketing. Note that I quickly whipped up a slightly easier to read & print PDF version of the table shown in the article. View a screenshot of the original URL structure chart here...

Dear Microsoft. While I value a wider selection brought on by competition, ever since you launched adCenter, your back-end has been plagued with troubles. I find it alarming that even after all this time, some basic fundamental usability issues are still not addressed and getting things done within your system continues to be a burden. The complete frustration brought on by using your system significantly reduces the value of its existence, simply because I dread even using it!

There are too many issues that drive me completely up the wall to even write about – the thought of including every little problem overwhelms me to the point of wanting to just shut off my computer and forget about even writing this memo. I will however grin and bear it and share with you some of your faults that drive me bonkers. Continue Reading a Memo to Microsoft

It is all over the airwaves, er ‘netwaves’… Yahoo has signed a deal with Twitter to create a relationship that rivals any other search engine’s connection to the tweeting platform. I am short on time so here are some excerpts from the very unpunny Yahoo release titled “@yahoo + @twitter Sitting in a Tree…T.W.E.E.T.I.N.G.“: More on the Yahoo Twitter Partnership »»

I am in the midst of a project at the moment and I got distracted by a couple of interesting articles from Google that, I expect, are well worth the read for many of you:

25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

Segmentation with Google Website Optimizer = Testing on Steroids! Not all customers are created equal, nor should you deal with all customers equally. Testing different versions of your page or funnel is powerful. Testing different versions based on the type of visitors is even more powerful. There are different ways of doing this, but we recommend starting with BTBuckets or with these instructions.

5 Buzz Tips

Mute posts so they don’t get sent to your inbox. Comments on your posts and comments after your comments send buzz directly to your inbox. If you don’t want a lively conversation to keep appearing in your inbox as people reply to it, you can mute it. Click the arrow in the corner of a buzz post and select “Mute this post.”

Just a couple things to keep you reading…

According to breaking news from the Wall Street Journal, Google will be resuming talks with China after the Chinese New Year holiday over the future of the company’s search engine in the heavily censored country.

Why is Google Considering Leaving? A Basic Timeline of Events

If you have missed the boat on this story then here is an timeline overview:

1) 2005: Google opens in China and censors its content heavily to ‘respect’ the Chinese legal system. Many scuffles over free speech occured over the next few years but  Google ultimately buckled to Chinese law. (more on Google China at Wikipedia)

2) Mid-December 2009, Google gets hacked by cyber-terrorists and after some research, deduces that China was the source of the attack.

Here are some excerpts from  Google’s extensive media release about the cyber attacks:
More of the Google China timeline

On February 14th, Danny Sullivan posted a frustrated Buzz about Google Buzz that lured me into making a few comments. Well, low and behold, but a man by the name of Josh Wills who is involved behind the scenes in Google Buzz jumped into the fray and listened. Yes, listened! I was so impressed, I thought I would share with you the conversation.

To set the tone, this all started when Danny Sullivan shared his frustration about how badly the reply system is designed within Google Buzz and that spawned a bit of a hackfest from other frustrated users.

Ross Dunn - Yes the whole thing is a confusing mess. I just don’t get what is going wrong over at Google. Have they lost perspective entirely? I am very disappointed; I actually had high hopes for them. I guess I have been taking it for granted that their products are well thought out. I won’t make that mistake again…

Josh Wills - @Alex is right, there is alot to fix. @Ross, I am sorry you’re disappointed. …

Josh went on to discuss spam issues on Buzz. I will just show you the parts where we interacted from here on in. More Insight into the future of Google Buzz

Just a few hours ago Google announced an enhancement to Gmail called Google Buzz that will be rolled out over the next couple of days. What is Google Buzz? Essentially, it is the incorporation of an important part of what made Google Wave so sexy for many people (me included) – the ability to manage conversations on other platforms (like Twitter) from a central location that we already frequent – GMAIL.

So how does Google Buzz work? Below is a video outlining the cool new capabilities but if you can’t access that at the moment, here is much of the key video transcribed to text:

“Buzz goes beyond status messages. It automatically pulls images from links, shows videos in line, and lets you flip through photos the way they were meant to be seen – big and fast. You can connect to other sites you use; like Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter. So your friends can keep up on what you are doing on the web, all in one place.

“Buzz makes sure you see what matters most. The best part about sharing is getting responses to your post; Buzz sends these comments to your inbox to make sure you don’t miss them. You can respond right from there to keep the conversation going. If you want to make sure you friends see something, you can send it right to their inbox by adding them with an “@” reply.

“You’ll sometimes see recommended Buzz from someone you are not directly following. Buzz identifies posts that may interest you or are popular among your friends and recommends them to you so you don’t miss out. And it works on your phone, so you can keep up with what your friends, or people near you, are Buzzing about.”

Here is the official Google Buzz video followed by why Google Buzz could help Google advertisers and those with high Google rankings: More Buzzz on Google Buzz