A story I found today made it on the homepage of Webmasterworld.com. I love it when that happens. Thewrap.com interviewed Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Google. In the interview Eric said “In about six months, [Google] will roll out a system that will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it.” Also, Google believes it will be able to sell premium ad space with this content. This is huge. Google is taking steps to be a major player in the news industry – an industry whose print model is failing. The timing is perfect. The AP has been complaining about websites needing to pay for the use of AP news on their sites. The demands for compensation is alienating site owners… guess who will step up to the plate? Yep. The more scary thing… how will the AP be able to compete as their online and print news delivery models fail? Will they still be able to afford to pay a preimum to reporters? Could they afford to out-bid Google?! Yep. Now you’re getting it. Google employs the reporters. Google decides based on your profile’s history what kind of news you’re interested in. Google runs ads along with their news to subsidise the program. Progress? Sure. Big Brother getting bigger? Yep. Brace yourselves for the Google News Channel. Kidding. (Kinda) (Read Thewrap.com article) (See the Webmasterworld.com thread)
Archive for the ‘WebmasterWorld’ Category
Google Will Spoon-Feed Your News
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
Pubcon Austin
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009It’s bee quite a long month around here with lots going on. I attended the Pubcon Classic down in Austin in the beginning of the month, my sister came to town to visit and my daughter turned five in the middle of the month. I’ve been going so hard lately that all ideas for a blog entry escape me. I have been working on a new backup server for my office / servers. Thanks to the folks at Gigabyte I didn’t have to purchase a third party RAID controller. The mother board I bought had built in RAID support and 8 SATA ports. I’ve got all the data setup on a RAID 5 array (6 1TB drives) and I’ve got the OS loaded on RAID 1. Also, I added a new tool to the SEO Tools page. It’s not an SEO tool but a tool that will help a lot if you plan on building a system. It’s a power supply calculator. The system you build might work when idling, but crank it up to full load and it may come crashing down due to lack of power.
Pubcon 2008
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Well, lots to say in my updated but I don’t have time for all of it right now. Just got back from pubcon and had a great time. Saw good old friends there and sure enjoyed the BlendTec guy destroying a rake. I’ll updated my list of SEO tools pretty soon with new finds from the conference, and I’ll be back on here with a free tip or two that I learned at pubcon. Probably won’t be another update until after Thanksgiving.
1,000 WebmasterWorld Posts and Still Going Strong
Monday, March 10th, 2008Today was the day I made my 1,000th post on WebmasterWorld. I’ve been SEOMike for almost 5 years now. Others have copied my name, but none compare to my experience. Ok, enough ego talk 
I’ve learned a lot over the past 1,000 posts. The first five years (97-03) of my career as an SEO are kind of blurred. It was a long time ago and I have trouble remembering specific clients (especially by real name, not site name) but I remember all the things that made SEO work back then. Almost five years ago I came to WebmasterWorld and started learning how to apply a set of Best Practices to my work. It took me from a cowboy SEO to one that is methodical yet spontaneous. It’s a strange duality… a tech geek with a list of rules, while at the same time a free-roaming wanderer looking for loop-holes and things to exploit. I’d love to give a link to my 1,000th post but I put it in the supporter’s forum where it belongs. My posts are usually not the fluff that some people put out there just to increase their post counts on the web. I try to give well researched and thought out responses to people’s questions rather than “Yeah, me too.” or junk like that. That’s not worth a tick on someone’s belt! That’s what I call “net noise.”
Pubcon 2007
Friday, December 14th, 2007I went to pubcon last week and had once heck of a time! Thanks to Joe Morin I got to see what a suite in the Wynn looks like! I made some new friends like Jessica, Sheirly, Andrea, Lyndsay, Mark, John, Michael, and others. I also caught up with some old friends, Craig, David, Bruce, Rob, & Joe. What a week of partying! Also, I learned a nice little bit of information that I’m testing right now. I always get something out of the Pubcon and this time I think it’s a really good one! We’ll see! When I get more time I’ll post a little bit more about the goings-on at Pubcon Vegas. It was a GREAT time!
