StumbleUpon Don’t Know Their Ass From Their Elbow

First of all appologies.. You are too late. As you know I love doing testing, and this was a test of Twitter responsiveness… and yes, before you ask, this window of time was picked for a reason. Unfortunately, you didn’t get my Twitter message in time… This is not a bad thing… It probably means you have better things to do than spend every waking moment on a computer… Which is cool…

But credit where credit is due, those of you who did follow the instructions will be getting a very special prize which I will reveal in the next Thirty Day Challenge TV show when I get to Australia.

               

As part of a project I am involved in at the moment I had the pleasure of spending a few of hours on a video chat yesterday (good old iChat) with some engineers from a couple of the large and well know search engines.

In relation to this project we were discussing indexing sites, and how the infamous NoFollow tag breaks the ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ mandate. But this may not necessarily be true. Does the NoFollow tag really break this?

When does the importance of links from an authority site break through the NoFollow barrier? If you are using NoFollow to stop comment spam then that is understandable, but should all outbound links be treated equal?

Is NoFollow perceived as an explicit instruction, or a suggestion? After all, this is just a backlink thing.

From the conversation I can say with certainty say that not all NoFollow tags are valued the same. Search engines still take note of new URL’s that they find (NoFollow or not) but are perceived as not ‘giving weight‘ to NoFollow tags. In reality, it is more a difference between bantam, light, middle, and heavy. And certain sites who are NoFollowing their links can still fit in the 200lb category whether they like it or not…

               

Ed has had a great makeover thanks to Nez. Not sure if he was just trying to recapture his youth, or just intimidated my amazing site, but whichever it was, the result is great… Let this trackback/pingback be my christening of your site..

Head on over to http://www.TubbyNerd.com/

               

Well it is only a couple of days now until I fly to Melbourne to get ready for the Beechworth Conference and as usual I still have slides, diagrams, and naked pictures of Ed to prepare for the event. Now apologies in advance to all those attending… I don’t do the usual conference style of presenting. I am not sure if that is a good or a bad thing, but personally, I hate conferences.

(not really selling it here am I)

Ok, let me try and write that one a little better… I hate big conferences, pitch fests, and a thousand people in a room all trying to hand out as many business ‘networking’ cards as possible. Really I do.

But these are all the same reasons that I am really looking forward to Beechworth. A small event, a couple of dozen people and their partners, a chance to hand out cards (well you might as well), a bit of social, and a monster learning event!

Couple this with a few Vodka’s and Coke’s and we are going to have a craik. (and let’s not forget the Spa and the Beechworth Bakery)

Not only is this a chance for us to build a friendship in gold rush city and Ned Kelly land (Tourism Australia Ad to be placed here)… but…

We have some amazing stuff to teach over the three days, techniques that can literally make you millions this year, skills that other people will be teaching in two years time, so, thank you for attending, I am looking forward to meeting you all, and we are going to have an amazing couple of days…

Now back to my presenting… Well best not, I do want you to turn up after all.

               

Not directly marketing related but the history of the Gutenberg Press is truly fantastic. I watched a great program tonight with Stephen Fry, who apart from being a fantastic author, actor, comedian, and generally an uber fantastic guy, managed to convey just how revolutionary Gutenberg was, and how his risk taking, (or vision), changed the world as we know it.

What got me though, was the attention to detail…

Gutenberg produced eight variations of the letter ‘e’ so that the text could be justified. Seriously, it is this attention to detail, and design that really stood out as an amazing feat. Nearly a years worth of work was required to produce the letters to set the press alone.

He was a perfectionist, and although one of our tenants is to ‘just get it out there’, you have to admire a man like Johannes Gutenberg for his self belief, fortitude, and drive to produce a machine or system that would revolutionise information forever.

               

I always saw Twitter being a prime candidate for a buyout from one of the big four media mountains, but it looks like Twitter are seriously thinking about revenue generation in the form of advertising. To be honest I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

They are just approaching their critical mass stage where everyone seems to be talking about them, and I always judge how widespread a service is, when my circle of close ‘non-marketing’ friends start talking about it and only in last couple of weeks has this happened, so bringing advertising into the mix at this stage is kind of a risky move.

On one hand, you don’t want to kill growth… but on the other, why not, new users will just accept it as part of the standard service. Will be interesting to see how this pans out.

               

The labs have spent months working on this and today we are proud to announce a first in Internet Marketing… Automated Peer-To-Peer Social Bookmarking… We all know how important social bookmarking can be, and we all know how time consuming it is to do. Ed and I are going to give you the tools to take the pain out of bookmarking forever…

This will change the way you work forever... But… I want to say right now… This is not a spam social bookmarking system‘. This is a huge time-saver for legitimate users…

To Find Out More, Visit The Thirty Day Challenge

Also, If you are an Edge Member then check out the latest post for details of the additional benefits you get as part of your membership…

               

Well it has been a while in the making but this week I will be officially opening up this blog. Ok, a tad pompous I know but I have never really spent time on my own blog, I post on The Edge, and The Thirty Day Challenge, and a couple of years ago I made some vain attempt to post but that really never happened… So… behold… The Dan Raine Blog… Ok, you can stop laughing now.

               

I have come to realize over the last couple of weeks that the iPhone has fast become the number one device I can’t live without. Now I know it’s nice to get away from technology now and again, and true, we are in an age of information overload, but sometimes technology enhances your day to day life, and the iPhone is the top banana device for doing this.

So read on for my top iPhone apps that I can’t live without.

• Google Docs. This is probably the number one online service which I use every day, and recently they made an optimized version available for the iPhone. Now currently there is no editing feature available, but just being able to instantly get access to all my documents when I am out and about, more than makes up for that. Visit
• Facebook. Without a doubt, one of the best implemented iPhone applications out there at the moment. A good clean interface with direct access to the feed, and a great working inbox implementation. Visit
• Twitter on ThinCloud. Now you can use twitter in just about every way these days, but this twitter client is pretty cool as it has a full graphical interface showing all your friends, big enough buttons for easy use, and it works fast even on the UK EDGE network.Visit
• JiveTalk. Instant Messaging for the iPhone. Previously I was using Meebo, but this application is better designed, and is fast and easy to use. Visit