Read/WriteWeb, one of my favorite blogs, just posted an interesting article on a new site called Wikirage; a site that shows what topics are the most trendy (popular) at Wikipedia.

How Does Wikirage Work?
Wikipedia’s detailed traffic statistics are not available to the public so Craig Wood, the creator of Wikirage cleverly leveraged the editing statistics that are open to the public to create his statistics. As a result, Wikirage creates its popularity index by identifying the top 100 pages within Wikipedia that have received the most updates; a relatively accurate indication of the topics that are driving current trends.

Other Great Trend Resources

• Yahoo! Buzz
• Google Trends

At the SiteProNews blog today Jim Hedger announced that his contract as the daily editor for SiteProNews was not renewed for another year.

The whole staff at StepForth wishes our friend and former in-house writer all the best as he refocuses his attentions on other partnerships and his company Markland Media based in Victoria, BC, Canada.

Nerds and techies rejoice! BUG Labs has launched its official website where they released more detail on their flagship product that, in a sense, is like the ultimate Lego for nerds and techies

In quarter 4 of 2007 BUGbase will be released which will allow inventors to create an infinite variety of gizmos and gadgets from programmable building blocks. The blocks are called modules and all connect to the BUGbase which is a “a fully programmable and “hackable” Linux computer, equipped with a fast CPU, 128MB RAM, built-in WiFi, rechargeable battery, USB, Ethernet, and a small LCD with button controls. It also has a tripod mount because, well, why not? Each BUGbase houses four connectors for users to combine any assortment of BUGmodules to create their ultimate gadget.”

On their About Page, the Bug Labs team coins this concept as “Community Electronics” because in addition to being able to create your own custom gadget you can also share your code and learn from others in the online community called BUGnet. This innovative move by BUG could open up a whole new level of advancement in technology where the eccentric and brilliant minds of inventors join as one to continually advance this hardware and software to unimagined heights.

In a post today dotMobi CEO, Neil Edwards announced that dotMobi would be releasing approximately 500 premium domain names to auction in the next few months. And yes, that includes Sex.Mobi.

Neil goes on to explain why dotMobi waited over a year to release these highly sought after domains: “We are a well funded company who has a long term view on dotMobi. The content publishing tools were not available last year to build good mobile content sites. It was not in the best interest of the consumer or the company to release names for sale when buyers would have had no good way to produce content.”

As an added note Neil Edwards should have quieted a few naysayers out there who believe dotMobi is going nowhere; in a period of only 3 months, Google’s index for .mobi pages has increased five times from 1 million pages to 5 million pages. Not bad for a relatively fresh domain in a emerging marketplace!

Congratulations dotMobi! I hope you guys make a killing on those premium domain names.

News of the potential Google Phone (gPhone) has been slowly but surely taking over the net over the past 6 months or so. As of late, however, the hype is louder than ever since recent (supposedly more concrete) evidence has appeared of its existence. At this point there is simply too much hearsay to really know what the heck is going on but a bit part of my gut says this may just be the biggest bad rumor ever. Unfortunately the other half of my gut wonders why Google’s Marissa Mayer never actually denied the existence of the gPhone at the latest Search Engine Strategies conference. Read more…

Well I am at Search Engine Strategies San Jose; the weather is beautiful, the company great and the discussions so far excellent. The following are point form notes from an interesting seminar that discussed how search can be used to aid in branding instead of just as a direct response sales vehicle. Each point, stat or anecdote is in itself intriguing but overall add up to a helpful overview of how to use search to brand. Please brace yourself, however, this discussion went to many edges of the marketing universe so this post will have gems from many disciplines. Read more…

Next week I will be attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. I will be covering the event as Press so you can expect some interesting updates over the course of the week – but I can’t promise when.

If you happen to be in San Jose and want to hook up please email me – rossco at stepforth dotcom and hopefully we can arrange a time to meet.

For all those marketers out there: my writing focus for this trip is on the vendors that compliment my company’s SEO/SEM clients and in turn my readers. Pitching other SEO/SEM companies is not in the cards.

All the best,
Ross Dunn

In my recent article “Is Wikipedia Corrupt?” I asked other online encyclopedias to speak up and introduce themselves so that users could explore alternatives to Wikipedia. The lines had been silent until I received a kind introduction to an alternative site called Citizendium from the founder, Larry Sanger. Incidentally, and quite ironically, Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia and another property called Nupedia. Read more…

Here are a few articles I came across today that I felt would add some richness to your Friday:

• “Interview with Google’s Sep Kamvar, Lead Software Engineer for Personalization”
  Are you curious how Google’s drive toward personalization might affect your privacy or the quality of search results? This short interview might answer some questions you have.
  >> thanks for the tip from the blog “Geeking With Greg“
• doMobi: Growth in the .mobi mobile web is undisputed in this post. Skip to the bottom if you just want that facts ma’am.Huge kudos to James Pearce and the gang; I am a big fan of the .mobi concept and frankly the great support and awareness the .mobi squad brings to the mobile revolution.
• Matt Cutts published a blog posting with Whitehat SEO Tips for Bloggers. I haven’t read it all yet but by nature these posts are often interesting.
• “Listen Up (Why your customer’s native tongue matters)“: Marketer Drew McLellan explains that for sales content to be effective you need to make sure your content is written in a fashion similar to how your customers speak.

All the best and I hope you all have a great weekend wherever you are. – Ross Dunn

I was browsing through StepForth’s Google Analytics statistics for The StepForth SEO Blog when I came across the browser share report and discovered something wonderful… Internet Explorer has lost lots of market share!

There was a time where I can fairly say Internet Explorer enjoyed a 60-75% majority of the web browsing marketplace. This made many a web designer rather flippant towards other less popular browsers when ensuring browser compatibility of their websites. I even remember, not long ago, a supposed ‘expert’ designer condescendingly telling me that Firefox did not have enough saturation to warrant much concern. I argued the point but it was like talking to a brick wall.

The fact is, though, that at least in the visiting realm of the more tech savvy (which our SEO blog caters to) designers had better test their new sites (and existing ones) in Firefox or else they may alienate 42% of the marketplace! Read more…