New Haven Coliseum Implosion January 25, 2007 7:50 AM

Here are my results of the Superhero Personality Quiz
You are Superman

Superman 80% Spider-Man 60% Iron Man 55% Catwoman 50% The Flash 45% Robin 40% Hulk 35% Green Lantern 30% Supergirl 30% Wonder Woman 20% Batman 20%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.


Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Study shows Google filtering more than 98% of invalid clicks
Andy Beal has published an interesting interview with Google's business product manager that sheds some light on the process that Google goes through to filter out invalid and fraudulent clicks. Their studies show that less then 2% of clicks in AdWords and AdSense are invalid and only a fraction of those are actually fraudulent. Google's goal is to filter out 100% of invalid clicks.

Read more here

Getting Listed in News Search Engines

Lee Odden has a great article on how to get your press releases listed in News Search Engines
Research web sites that are already trusted news sources and work on getting your articles or press releases published with them. Either pitch the journalists of those sites with contributed articles or story ideas or engage them via comments if it’s a blog.

Submit press releases though wire services such as Business Wire, PR Newswire, PRWeb or MarketWire that supply news. Not every release makes it through into Yahoo News so be sure to write a quality release offering news of real value. Include full urls in the release as most wire services and news search engines will convert this to an active link. This method is where press release optimization skills come into play. It’s a challenging task to write press releases that are both engaging to journalists and consumers as well as to search engines through proper use of keywords.

Apply to become a trusted news source. If your site produces frequent, original content, and/or has multiple contributors and a clear editorial process, then you may qualify as a trusted news source.

Here are the links to apply for Google News, Yahoo News and Topix.net.
Apply to Google News - Suggest a news source
Apply to Yahoo News - Suggest a local source or a source for news and blog search
For Topix.net find the relevant news category and click on the “Feedback” link at the bottom of the page

IE 7 Officially Launched!

Video Blogging, New Camera, Windows Movie Maker, YouTube

Wow, I'm trying out all kinds of new things today! We went apple picking at Hickory Hill.
I brought my new camera and tried out the video recording features. I then edited the video with my oldest son using Windows Movie Maker and then uploaded it to YouTube!

Here it is:

Riddles

My Sister-in-law Katie sent these to me. I had lots of fun solving them. Give it a try...

A woman shoots her husband.
Then she holds him under water for five minutes.
Finally, she hangs him.
But 30 minutes later they share a lovely dinner together at a restaurant.
How is this possible?


I have keys that open no locks,
I have space, but you cannot fill it,
You can enter, but you cannot leave.
What am I?


You throw away my outside and cook my inside.
Then you eat my outside and throw away my inside.
What am I?


No legs have I to dance,
No lungs have I to breathe,
No life have I to live or die
And yet I do all three.
What am I?


I am slim and tall,
Many find me desirable and appealing.
They touch me and I give a false good feeling.
Once I shine in splendor,
But only once and then no more.
For many I am "to die for".
What am I?


The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place

Mason Awarded Gold Partner Status With Major CMS software company

Great news! I'm really excited to announce that Mason Inc has been awarded Ektron Gold Level Reseller status. We are now one of only 2 interactive agencies in New England that have made it to this level! Mason was given this designation because of the scope of the ongoing project we engineered for Gardner Denver Inc. To see what they have to say about us, visit:
http://www.ektron.com/partners.aspx?id=4140

Ten Things You Should Know Before You Redo Your Web Site

Esther Schindler wrote a great article called "Becoming Clueful". In it she highlights tips on what businesses should expect from their web developers.

1. Understand what you want
2. It Costs More and Takes Longer than You Think
3. A Web Site Has Several Pieces. Don't Cut Corners.
4. Balance Glitz and Guts
5. If You Build It, They Won't Necessarily Come
6 Avoid Bit Decay: The Site Needs Maintenance
7. Treat the Web Team as Professionals

I actually have a few more to round it out to 10

8. Content is still King. - Visitors to your site are looking for quality information. The search engines rank the relevance of your website based on it! Your site needs regularly updated, relevant content. That means you will have to dedicate time to it.

9. You get what you pay for - If you use your neighbor's sisters nephew who is in high school, it will show

10. Don't use Flash because it's 'cool' - Flash has it's place use it when there is a NEED to use it not because you like to see spinning dancing babies on your homepage.

Fuel Cells Around The Corner?

BBC has an interesting article on the fuel cell prototype laptops. The good news is the fuel cell runs the laptop for 10 hours on a 100 ml of methanol. But wait before you start stocking up on your methanol cartridges... the bad news is that the prototypes are the size of a liter bottle of water and weigh about the same.

When I first heard about this on NPR a few weeks back and this one, I had this vision that the fuel cell laptops would just have this small methanol cartridge doc on the side. Ah, Imagine just stocking up on 4 cartdriges to run my laptop for a week without needing to plug in once! I bet we will see it some day....

Skype Out Free in the US and Canada

I tried the new skype out free service to call from my computer to a regular phone when it was announced on May 15th. The person I was calling complained that there was a lot of echo over the phone and that he found it distracting. Since I was using the built in microphone, I suspect that if I bought a headset that would solve that problem.

Add Email Notification to Your Blog

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have set up a blog for the town of Bethany (www.bethany-ct.com/blog).

There was an editorial on one of our local weekly papers here in town that talks about needing to update the methods of communication in town. Since RSS probably won't become a mainline tool until the next version if Internet Explorer comes out, I think it would be a good idea to add an email subscription link.

I use Feedblitz through my feed through feedburner for this blog, but I figured I would try to find other solutions as well.
I found blog alert (http://shootthebreeze.net/blogalert/) that looks kind of interesting. It has a pretty basic interface for the signup screen with a bunch of google ads. I have signed up. It will be interesting to see the format of the email.

I will do some additional snooping around, but if anyone else has a

The Town of Bethany is now blogging!
I met with the first selectperson today to review how to post to the Bethany Blog.
http://www.bethany-ct.com/blog.

You can check out her first post - Bethany Blog: May 11, 2006 Town Meeting

Autism Rocks!

On Sunday April 2nd, 2006 Catalyst Music Group will be sponsoring a benefit concert at the Acoustic Cafe in Bridgeport, CT to help raise money and awareness for the CT-ARSC (Autism Spectrum Resource Center). The event will run from 4-9pm with live music as well as some items up for auction / raffle.

Confirmed performers are:

Brian Dolzani
Darian Cunning
Nick and Gerard (of Scarecrow Collection)
The Alternate Routes

Check out the website for more information - Autismrocks.org

Google Has Billed More Than $11.2 Billion For Ads

Google has billed advertisers in 65 countries more than $11.2 billion in 48 currencies, and made payments to advertising partners of more than $3.9 billion.