Guest Post | SocialWayne.com by Wayne Sutton

Archive for the ‘Guest Post’ Category

Posted on December 14, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest Post: The Great Debate: Are Meta Keywords Worth Your Time?

Guest Post Author:

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to background checks. She gives advice to entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

Photo Credit lyntonweb.com

To get straight to the point, I think Meta Keywords are annoying. For those who are unfamiliar, as you create and design your website you will be prompted to insert Meta Keywords. These keywords, words that are most relevant to describing your site, are hidden from the public because of what we call Meta Tags, or pieces of code seen only by search engines. The keywords are generally placed between the HEAD tags in your HTML code, and each keyword is separated with a comma. The idea is that these keywords will help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Believe it or not, most people I talk to also find these keywords annoying, and many are now saying that they are completely useless. However, these Meta Keywords are easy to type into your website or your article, so businesses have been filling in these blanks since search engines become popular ten years ago. Although it only takes two minutes, there is no sense in bothering, even for two minutes, with something useless. If you are going to do something for your website, it is important to know what the benefit is (if there is a benefit at all), regardless how long it may take. Consider the history of these Meta Keywords and how their role has evolved over the last ten years:

Meta Keywords Then and Now

In the 1990’s, it worked like this:
1. A website would place these keywords on their site to signify its main and relevant topics
2. Search Engines would then use meta data to classify and index a website
3. A website with correct meta elements would then rank highly in search engine results

Today, the Meta Keywords work very similarly, but with one major difference:
1. Business owners place these keywords on their site to signify its main topics
2. Businesses began to take advantage of meta keywords, and sites then began to appear in unrelated search engine results
3. Major search engines no longer use keywords to classify or index a website

Now that the biggest factor, Google and other search engine page rankings, is no longer, many businesses are wondering whether or not Meta Keywords are worth their time. Although it is simple to add in Meta Keywords, the whole concept can be a bit confusing to a startup company or employees new to the SEO world. At first glance, most would say these keywords have lost their value. After all, Google is the end goal for an SEO director. However, there are a few reasons that these annoying little words are still worth your time:

Google Doesn’t Want Them, but Meta Keywords Are Here to Stay

• Smaller search engines still use Meta Keywords

It may seem like Google and Bing rankings are the only way to get ahead, but many companies are realizing that local search engines also bring in business. After all, creating dishonest keywords was worth it for companies looking to rank on Google, but now that this is no longer available, smaller search engines have nothing to worry about.

• Directory sites still use Meta Keywords

Directory sites often use these Meta Keyword tags to help categorize your website. These sites will need to know where to index your site, and they are more likely to do so if you make it easy on them through Meta Keywords. Think of it as a document management tactic for directory sites. In other words, your site will appear much more often in directories when compared to sites without Meta Keywords.

• Meta Keywords work well for internal uses

Tagging specific keywords works well when it comes to documenting each page. As your company grows, your pages and your team will likely expand. If you have a Meta Keyword in place, future employees looking to develop pages will know the goal of each page exactly.

• Preparation if major search engines ever go back to the Meta Keyword system

This is unlikely to happen with Google simply because they have new algorithms for ranking pages, but it could very well happen with other major search engines. If done correctly, this system is an easy way to help index a page. It only takes a few seconds to set up a keyword tag, so it can’t hurt to get ready for the unexpected.

As I said before, I will be the first to admit that worrying about Meta Keywords is a bit annoying. However, once you know that this habit has positive effects, you can begin to think of these keywords as just another way to increase popularity in your company. Although they may not yield quite as obvious results, they cannot hurt your company. In other words, they are still worth the extra two minutes.

Posted on December 13, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest Post: Apps to make you seem musically talented

Guest Post Author:

Lisa is an avid yoga enthusiast who enjoys writing in her spare time for Usdirect.com – home of USdirect.

I love music. Unfortunately, the only thing I know how to play is the radio. My husband sings, my daughters play the piano and my son not only beat boxes, he can hear a song twice and sing it back to you in key. Makes me sick.

On the other hand, I also love technology, which can help you look more musically talented than you really are if you know which programs to use! Personally I believe everyone can make music, and everyone should. So here are some brilliant applications you should consider if your interest is in music, but your talent isn’t.
Ocarina. One of the top 20 selling Apple apps of all time, Ocarina will have you making incredible music in moments. This amazing application uses the microphone on your iPhone to create a wind instrument. There are several ways to create music:

You can hold down each of the four “holes” on the iPhone to create the pitch (or combinations thereof).
You can change the way you hold the iPhone by tilting it and change the depth and vibrato rate.
You can even change the key.

Another fun aspect of this app is Ocarina’s user community. There are over 2000 user-generated songs you can learn with cool finger charts to show you how to do it. Just plant your fingers and blow! When you’re ready, you can name your Ocarina and allow other people to listen to you play, from all over the world. Want to listen to what other people are playing? Then just tap on the globe icon!

Magic Piano. Makes playing the piano and sounding like a musical prodigy virtually effortless. Created for the iPhone, you can now take music with you anywhere, and with it, the ability to spin your own versions of popular songs. Magic Piano is fun and easy to learn, because all you have to do is follow the beams of light. It’s that easy to sound that great. By the way, Magic Piano is FREE!

I Am T-Pain. Want to sing instead of playing an instrument? Then show off your amazing vocals with I Am T-Pain. Use it with your headphones or plug your iPhone to an external speaker and sing away. This powerful app applies the T-Pain vocal effect as you sing! You heard correctly: this uses the same correction technology used in professional studios, now available in the palm of your hand.
GLEE. Another fun option is the #1 music app in 21 countries: GLEE Karaoke. It’s FREE, it’s incredibly enjoyable to use and it lets you strut your stuff. The app has pitch correction with a little taste of reverb, so you’ll sound, well…better than you actually do. Made for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, GLEE allows you to sing along with any song you have in your iTunes library. You can even join into someone else’s performance and add your voice to theirs! One feature I find especially fun is owningmy own radio tower from the app itself. Share songs on Facebook and Twitter and once you’re ready for the big time, compete in weekly contests to win free songs.

Magic Fiddle. Want to show off your sophistication? Mashable says Magic Fiddle is “…pure, unadulterated musical awesome.” I couldn’t agree more. This brilliant app teaches you how to bow, pluck, vibrato, trill and glissandi right from your iPad. Give yourself and hour or two and you’re sure to blow away your friends and family. You can share your experiences with other enthusiasts around the globe as you perform like the masters. The fiddle shows you all the right notes and gives you a piano accompaniment to show off your new found musical genius. Heck, I bought it just so I could say “glissandi” more often.

Posted on December 8, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest Post: What does Google+ Need to Fix?

Guest Post Author:

Paul works in the marketing department for CliqStudios, a cabinet manufacturer that sells white kitchen cabinets and more factory-direct, and is a blogger and Apple fanatic.

We all know of Google’s dubbed “Facebook killer” called Google+ that has, in fact, failed to kill Facebook. We also know that the success of Google+ is also highly debated. Sure, it sports over 40 million users, but only a fraction of those users actually remain active. In contrast, as of last September, Facebook has over 800 million active users worldwide.
So, what went wrong for Google+?

From the outset of its beta, the primary selling point of the service was its almost too simple way of organizing your friends into Circles so you can share specifically and privately with only certain people. Circles was meant to be a means of one-upping Facebook’s lackluster and underused Lists feature.

However, Circles is by no means perfect, and the way it’s intended to be used is somewhat laborious. Using Circles is a manual process and requires you to drag and drop your friends in a variety of friend categories that you’ve created.

The problem is that friendships aren’t one or the other, and are constantly changing. Google+ can’t keep up with your life outside of your interactions on Google+, and thus requires you to continually evaluate your friendships and manually change them on the service.
If you think about it, most people wouldn’t bother spending the time to organize their friends into super specific categories, let alone keeping the Circles organized and up to date. This, basically, then renders Circles useless.

Shortly after Google+’s release, Facebook announced Smart Lists, a feature capable of automatically grouping some of your friends. For example, it creates Smart Lists for people you are related to, places you work, and for where you are currently living.
What’s more, and what is the most important part of Smart Lists in terms of updating relationship and organizing friends on a social network, is its ability to dynamically update. If a work friend leaves for a new job, he is automatically removed from that List once he updates his employment. Facebook is showing that developing better ways to categorize your friends without you having to think about it is important for its users.

Therefore, rather than Google+ requiring its users to manually update their Circles, Google should start to give Circles some artificial intelligence capable of evaluating and updating for you. While there’s not a way that I’m aware of for Google to know every detail of your life, there must be a way to analyze your behavior and interactions across the site to do this. I don’t know what that is, but I’ll leave it to the developers to figure out.

What do you think about Google+’s Circles? Do you use them? Do you constantly update them? Please share your opinion.

Posted on December 6, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest Post: Remotely Control a Mac From an iPhone

Guest Post Author:

Rebecca is blogger by profession. She loves writing on topics related to luxury and fashion. Beside this, she is fond of books. These days she is busy in writing an article on celeb on beach.

Controlling a computer and accessing it remotely is required to stream down the important data from a system to an iPhone. It helps the work to be done conveniently as the user wishes. Google has launched an application named “TelekinesisG” to access a mac system remotely from an iPhone. Controlling a mac from an iPhone is different, interesting and new. It helps in streaming music, videos, browsing important files, performing online searches, performing mouse clicks, running apple scripts, taking pictures in the icamera, entering text in the system using an iPhone. This application is really helpful and simple to work with.

By following the below mentioned steps, a mac can be controlled from an iPhone:
1.From Google code web-site, an iPhone remote needs to be downloaded.
2.Set the price option as “Free”.
3.Install iPhone remote after it has been downloaded.
4.Click open iPhone remote.
5.Create a login id with required password.
6.Go to apple menu in the iPhone.
7.Select System Preferences.
8.Select Network.
9.Select the network connection on which the iphone works from the pop-up menu.
10. Click on the Tcp/ IP tab.
11. An IP address appears.
12. Go to the iPhone and launch Safari.
13. Enter the IP address as :5010. For example, if the IP address found comes to 192.22.22, enter it as 192.22.22:5010.
14. Enter the user name as password created earlier in the iPhone.
15. A set of icons are displayed on the iPhone screen.
16. Click on the icon you want to access.

The mac can be controlled if the internet connection is active on the system and the iPhone as the iPhone depends on the IP address to access data from a mac. The controlling can be done when there is no Local Network connection. It requires being aware of the external IP address. After getting this IP address, the internet router can be set to pass the external traffic and thereafter, it can be connected to a computer. When iPhone remote is not required to be in use, it should not be launched. It helps to retain the security of the iPhone as it disables other sources to access the mac. Despite the inventions of this Telekinesis and other applications, at times the remote controlling does not happens. It can be blamed to the application crashes that happen in the system. Sometimes, the iPhone and system do not support the Telekinesis application.

This has been considered as a useful technique to access the mac remotely as it serves many problems to be solved easily without sticking to the computers for a long time. It helps to work and fix the important issues whenever the user gets leisure time. It does not require to transfer and to store everything in the iPhone to work with. It only accesses the files and after working on those files, it is again saved in the computer. Eventually, it is proved to be time saving and comfortable way of performing the tasks.

Posted on December 5, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

Guest post: How Google+’s Integration Of Blogger Attempts To Legitimize The Web

Guest post author:

Francis Santos is a writer and blogger for Benchmark Email and can be found on Twitter.

A few months ago, internet users suddenly found a big black bar across their browser windows whenever they accessed Google’s services. Standing out in stark contrast to the gargantuan corporation’s usual light colored palette, this bar became “Google Control Central.” This was the first step in a comprehensive effort to harmonize all of Google’s far-flung serviceswhich range from search and translation to email and social networking.

Blogger users should now identify themselves
This harmonization recently extended to the untold millions of users on Google’s über-popular Blogger site. A pop-up field on the Blogger In Draft Dashboard holds out the promise of accessing future Google+ social media features. However, the blog writer has to switch out their current Blogger site profile with a Google+ one. From then on, any social connections would have their blogs appear in Google search results along with an annotation that the writer shared it.

With this announcement came a footnote that this new integration facility would not be available to any writer who is currently using a pseudonym. This policy provoked considerable oppositionfrom a wide range of users, not just on the Blogger site but also on Google+ itself.

Google+ is integrating with Blogger but not all users are thrilled.

Many hesitate to use their real names
Google seemed to forget that their users are located all over the world, including the 42 nations Freedom House claims have repressive governments. Therefore it could be understood that Cuban, Iranian, or Tibetian citizens wishing to even mildly criticize their leaders might be hesitant in linking their real name to their comments.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything states that that “we are Google’s product, not its customers”. That was clearly evident when Google+ first launched and the admins went into “seek and destroy” mode. They erased thousands of profiles because they suspected that the name on the profile was not the user’s “legal name.”

Bloggers have received death threats
For many of the users of the Blogger service the real name policy also presented a clear obstacle. Bloggers don’t have to be in Third World countries to receive credible death threats, as some in North America and Europe have. There are a number of reasons why an online writer might want to remain anonymous in perpetuity. They might have been blogging for years under a pseudonym and could confuse their readers when they found that their habitual read of TheCreepingGecko’s blogs were now being written by Mr. Bartholomew Featherstonehaugh. Or perhaps they had made some deprecatory remarks about clients or co-workers that they did not want to be personally identified with.

Google changed its policy to allow nicknames
The real name debacle is a primary reason why Google users everywhere welcomed the official announcement that the policy had suddenly changed. Google will soon allow users to maintain their anonymity and chosen public identity on Google+ and Blogger. However this is not the only worry Google users have, as participating in the services offered by the web juggernaut can lead to some very unpleasant results.

Google shuts down all access to violating users
An underage user in the Netherlands signed up for a Google+ account. As soon as the Googleplex discovered that the boy was three years younger than the minimum allowed, they not only just deleted his new social network account but all of his Google services. In a single action, Google shut down his access to email, documents, maps, and everything else they supply.

Of course Google has the right to enforce its policies, which include prohibitions against “copyright infringement” and “publishing of someone’s private or personal information”. The worrisome question is whether any Google adult user could see years of their personal emails and precious work documents vanish because they violated the terms in any way. Perhaps they did something as innocent as posting a photo they copied from a copyrighted site, or mentioning in a post that “BTW, if you need Steve’s cell number, it’s…”

Impossible to change your primary email address
Google+ users also found a troublesome, albeit less critical quirk in their new accounts. Whatever email account they used to sign up for the service remains the primary one… with no way to change it. Alternate additional addresses can be added but the primary remains immutable for all eternity. You might have signed up for Google+ with your work email and changed jobs; got married and are no longer using your maiden name; or used one of your websites’ domain names which you’ve now closed down. If so, your “no longer applicable” primary email account will continue to be associated with all your Google services. And there’s nothing you can do about that as it’s against Google’s terms to open another account.

Google’s global search market share is 85%.
The original name for Google was BackRub.
W3 Markup Validation shows that Google’s home page has 37 errors and 3 warnings.
The Googleville Data Center uses up as much electricity as all of Tacoma, Washington.
The current market capitalization of Google is more than 12 times greater than the CBS TV network.
Google Co-Founders’ Larry Page & Sergey Brin have a net worth of $16.7 billion each.
$16.7 billion can buy you 68,940 2011 Ferrari 458 Spiders, or 282,840 houses in Kansas.
Excite CEO George Bell was offered Google for $750,000 in 1999. He turned it down.

Publicly identifying yourself can be a boon
To be fair, there are many advantages to write on Blogger under your own real name, as Google continues to be the online leader that Microsoft could have been if their internet policy hadn’t run off the rails when we were still using 2400 baud modems. Blogger is a major platform which can allow the savvy writer both an effective platform and a wide-reaching pulpit. It is far easier to identify with Mr. Featherstonehaugh than to TheCreepingGecko. Google is essentially correct in stating that the change could boost blog readership and help readers gain a greater insight into the personality and viewpoint of the writer.

Google certified as a U.S. government identity agency

Google has recently had their user credential policies certified so that they meet U.S. federal privacy and security requirements. The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace now includes Google as an accredited identity agency, which makes its services suitable for a number of federal applications.

The slow death of the anonymous web
The move to the use of real identities on the Wild Wild Web is meeting with begrudging approval by most of its users. However, many are recognizing that a network directly responsible for pumping trillions of dollars a year into the world economy needs to grow out of its “sophomoric prankster” stage and into the light of greater legitimacy and verifiability.Google is leading the way to this future of near-universal identifiability where the internet will be less anonymous and by extension, perhaps tamer.