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On May 25, Google released Google Correlate – and statistic nerds everywhere spent the weekend playing with it.

            Google Correlate is the math-nerd cousin of Google Trends. With Google Trends, you can input and compare any given websites or keywords and phrases. You can see spikes in search and web traffic, see where the most traffic is coming from geographically, and other details. But you’re not really working with any raw data and you certainly don’t need to know what r is.

            Google Correlate, however, is a more statistical analysis of keywords and trends – telling you the correlation between your keyword and other keywords based on either time or geography. You still don’t have to be a stats junkie, but it might help.

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A third party client for access Twitter is now becoming part of Twitter. Rumors have been surfacing for weeks that Tweetdeck was going to be purchased and now the rumors appear to be true. Unnamed sources at several technology/money websites including CNNMoney and The Next Web have reported the price will be near $40 million when the sale is finally announced. This price will include a combination of private stock and money.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Let’s face it: the average web user’s attention span is pretty short, and Google knows it. For this reason, the importance of diverse content in achieving higher search engine rankings and increased sales cannot be overestimated. In recent years, Google has revised its search engine ranking algorithm several times, each time with an effect on the sales prospects of commercial sites. To take advantage of these changes and provide the best possible chance of success, web designers and business owners must incorporate diverse media types in their overall marketing strategies. Video content is especially important for these websites, since it not only offers the full audiovisual experience for the target audience, but can be viewed on a wide array of devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

When it comes time to hire a copywriter to develop your marketing messaging, there’s no shortage of options for you to choose from. Just Google the term “copywriter” or “freelance copywriter” and you’ll be able to choose from dozens, even hundreds, of potential candidates.

Obviously, not all copywriters bring the same skills to the table. How can you make sure you choose one who will write copy that sells and gets good response rates?

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In some ways, technology can make it easier to control your finances.  However, some people fall into the tech trap and use whatever programs and applications that they come across to keep a tab on their finances. Unfortunately, new and cool does not necessarily mean useful and time saving.  Some programs and services offered by banks, credit card companies or third parties can actually make things more confusing and complicated.  Truly streamlining your banking process and gaining greater control over your finances and information about your finances requires a bit of planning and choosing those few programs, services and smart-phone applications that can work together to make your financial life easier.

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The Volkswagen Beetle has been through several major changes throughout its long life. It started out as the Volkswagen Type 1, an economy car that was produced from 1938 to 2003. Over 21 million cars of this type were manufactured during this time period. Although the exterior appearance of the Type 1 Beetle didn’t change that much over the decades, there were thousands of smaller changes undetectable to the average consumer.

The timeless Type 1 Beetle came to an end however in 1998, when the Volkswagen New Beetle was introduced. The exterior of the car is heavily inspired by the original Beetle, but the engine and internal workings are different, with major changes like having the engine in the front and having luggage storage in the back of the car. But the newest Beetle didn’t last long – Volkswagen announced in 2010 that they were ceasing production of the New Beetle in 2011 and introducing a brand new version of the Volkswagen.

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Apparently it seems that Comcast has blocked access to the PirateBay, which is a well known and still defiant bittorent site. There is a battle going on here but for the moment the rules regarding net neutrality still hold. Although as a writer this person does not submit to the iron hand of Comcast, many publications are free to make their strong statements. For example Doug Aamoth claims he is being actively denied as a Comcast subscriber. In Boston where he is located he can not get access to the site.

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Did you ever feel the need to tag the picture of a coke can which you are holding on your picnic on Facebook? It is now possible to tag the pictures as the social network allows tagging Pages in Facebook photos.

Starting from Wednesday, Pages for Brands & Products as well as People can now be tagged by the users in their Facebook photos.

Instead of the Page’s Wall, the tagged photos will be shown in the Photos tab of a Page, and a page can be tagged by anyone even if the user has not liked it. Photos from the tab can also be disallowed by page admins by going into Edit Page > Posting Options > and unchecking “Users can add photos.”

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In what is likely to cause increased doubts in the viability of cloud-based servers and systems, the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) crashed last week. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. Which is to say, computer systems have crashed before. Web servers have gone down and web sites have become inaccessible. Email servers have gone down and customers have been without their electronic mail for extended periods of time as a result. In fact, in the days of network television (as in ONLY network television) broadcasters had their signal go out and the channel would go dark for a period of time. So the idea that a company might suffer an outage and we would lose signal for a time, that is not new.