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All Posts Term: Internet Today
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Dreaming of 70’s Design Spirit

New York Wedding129

Image by srpatterson via Flickr

Neon orange alongside stark green. Bubbly lilac font on dead-pink walls. Overly stretched lines in contrast with playfully curved Letraset prints. Childlike hippie flowers and strict Saul Bass’ title sequences. Those were the “in” designs during my teen years--the happy days of the good ol’ 1970’s.

Loud and glaring and often gaudy, designs that are reminiscent of the 1970s are not completely gone. Buildings, kiosks, subways and other forms of transportation, structures, posters, ads--all these continue to sport a lot of 70’s-inspired design. If there’s anything that appears to be missing, it’s the SPIRIT. The design spirit that was palpable back in the day seems to have disappeared completely.

Are Fast SEO Results Realistic?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

When it comes to search engine optimization, most of us want to see results. But we don’t want to be waiting for too long. We want to see results soon!

The problem is that massive leaps in search engine positioning don’t tend to happen in a matter of days. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but it’s certainly unlikely, that you’ll see a website rising in this way.

Under normal conditions, a site will tend to rise in a gradual manner. There may even be occasions when it slips down the rankings, before making a further upwards movement. This can be frustrating, particularly if you’re relying on the optimization work to generate much-needed income for your business.

5 Tips to Get You Started with Google Plus

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - FEBRUARY 02:  Photos of Go...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Ever since launching Google+, Google has been getting an overwhelmingly positive feedback from current Google+ users. Though many are still beginners as to how this new social networking site works, the good thing is that you don’t need to worry about this until you get invited to join. Once you do manage to get invited however, you should immediately start learning how to use Google+ or navigate around it. To help you out, here are 5 tips to get you started with Google Plus:

Social Media - A Blessing and a Curse For Politicians

Anthony Weiner

Image via Wikipedia

U.S. politicians are increasingly discovering the benefits - and perils - of social media. While Anthony Weiner's Twitter scandal - or Joe Walsh's YouTube video - might be the most publicized examples of social media backfiring, far less sordid uses of social media by politicians have nonetheless demonstrated the limitations of a public figure's ability to control his or her online image.

As more and more politicians have begun creating Facebook and Twitter pages to communicate with their constituents, a growing number of those constituents have been communicating in return and, quite often, they aren't happy. Negative political talk back seemed to hit a fever pitch during New York's recent debates in the state Senate over the state's legalization of gay marriage.

Why Facebook is the Last Place to Look for a Job

Illustration of Facebook mobile interface

Image via Wikipedia

Facebook is arguably the number one social networking site on the Internet. From personal to business to commercial pages, Facebook claims over 700,000 users around the globe. But when you're looking for a job, Facebook is the last social network in which you should focus your job hunt. You stand a better chance of finding gainful employment off a job search engine than you do off Facebook, and those odds aren't great.

If Facebook has all those users, and virtually every recruitment and social network expert states just the opposite, why is this advice valid? That's a good question, and the answer is so simple that it's often overlooked: Time. You just can't often afford the time it takes to have reasonable hope of it working for you.

7 Smart Reasons to Pursue Online Career Training

A mathematics lecture, apparently about linear...

Image via Wikipedia

With fewer jobs and more college graduates applying for them, the need to keep up with information and technological advances in your chosen field is critical, if you want to stay competitive in the job market. The challenge is to balance the time demands of work with the demands of furthering your education. Fortunately, with the advent of  online learning colleges, which offer accredited courses in virtual classrooms,   opportunities for career stability and advancement are readily available. With that in mind here’s a list of 7 smart reasons to pursue online career training.

The Basic Points to Keep in Mind When Advertising Your Website

ad - T-Mobile - Anne Hathaway lookalike Carly ...

Image by George Morris via Flickr

You have built the perfect website and it clearly offers all the services you provide. It is user friendly, has a great look and feel to it, beautiful colors, great pictures, everything anybody could want from it. All that is left to do now is have it advertised. There are an estimated 312 million websites on the web today and this number is forever growing. So how can you make sure yours is different? How do you make sure yours is the one people want to visit?

Best of the Blogs: The Top 5 Food Blogs

Logo for Seriouseats.com

Image via Wikipedia

What makes a food blog stand out? Is it the clean layout, cool graphics or frequent updates? While all those elements are crucial for any food blog, they are not enough to sustain and maintain interest in the long run among readers.

The top 5 food blogs we are featuring today have all those things and a lot more. A steady supply of easy recipes with easy to find ingredients, beautifully photographed pictures, and well written descriptions of the foods are sure to entice readers from coming back, aside from the elements mentioned above.

Intimacy, also very crucial aspect, which is quite frankly, often overlooked in most food blogs today. You must always make the reader feel as if you are talking to him in person to build a sense of connection and rapport with your target readers.  Lastly, you must have passion for what you are doing and when in doubt, always keep it simple.

College, SEO, or Both?

Chris Hooley drinkbaiting Matt Cutts

Image via Wikipedia

I am not a very big fan of PayPal. I mean, it provides an absolutely necessary service, but for goodness sakes it takes 3% of anything you receive! That being said I am a very big fan of what the co-founder is doing these days. He's paying people not to go to college!

That's right, $100,000 grants not to go to college, but to start a business. He says that college costs too much these days (in fact the class of 2011 is coming out with the highest debt of all time) and he is probably right. Even Harvard students are taking him up on his offer.

A lot of SEO's believe that SEO should not be taught in high school or in college. They believe the market will get flooded very quickly and that they will have tons of 17 and 18 year old kids getting a huge jump start in the SEO world. Although I do not believe that this is a valid reason for them to not teach it in school (everyone deserves to know how the information that comes up when they search for it gets there, and what agendas are at hand) I still do not think they should teach it in school because no one knows exactly how long SEO will actually be around and it is always constantly undergoing changes. That being said, Google’s web spam leader, Matt Cutts, has stated that white hat SEO tactics are actually a good thing and will be around for at least another 5 years to come.

Will Apple's New iCloud Service Lead To A Consumer-ISP Showdown?

Diagram showing three main types of cloud comp...

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We've been told that "the cloud" is the future of modern computer and data storage, and services such as Apple's iCloud are certainly making a strong case for using the inexpensive resources offered by networked computer systems as a way to securely host personal and business information and applications. Unfortunately, cloud-based services also threaten to expose one of the uglier sides of the Internet service provider industry: bandwidth charges.

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