OneBigLink^1.0

CustomFacebookPage.com is a site dedicated to promoting the most inspirational and successful Facebook Fan Pages from some of the largest and most influential brands that reside on the site.

Facebook Fan Pages have become a key arm in many a social media strategy, with the ability to reach out and communicate to the consumers that are attached to your companies values, products and wider market. With Facebook doubling it’s active user base from 150 million in January 2009 to 300 million in September, it’s prominence within both advertising and social media campaigns is rising continually.

The site showcases the pages that have caught the eye of the public and are innovating the way we use Facebook’s community features, some of which I just couldn’t help but promote further…

The site organizes the pages into auto, 1m+ fans, consumer goods, media, non profit, retail and tech categories. Here are some of my favorites:

Skittles

For Skittles to have over a million fans is a real achievement in my book, with a product that you wouldn’t normally associate to be attracting interest and interaction online.

With the ability to insert iFrames into into pages, it leaves a creative license with no limitations and the ‘Holla at the Rainbow’ viral from Skittles is a good example of this.

With 3,500,000 fans up to now, it’s done a fantastic job of retaining its users and undertaking an effective communication management campaign. Just attracting users to the page is simply not worthwhile on it’s own, being able to open that channel of communication with it’s members on consistent basis is key.

Meet The Volkswagens

A personal favourite due to it’s excellent use of a users profile information to identify the perfect VW for them. According to VW, I’m ‘tech-savvy’ and the Passat and CC are the best fit car wise, not bad.

The page encourages users to share photos and videos of themselves with their pride and joys which is an effective method of increasing product exposure without forcing the issue.

With 2.5% of their 275,000 fans active on a monthly basis, which is a common trend across this medium, there’s plenty of room to develop their content to attract a increase in this area.

Gap

Gap have developed an astute shop window here for their brand and products within a social and ’safe’ environment for it’s consumers. Nothing is being pushed on fans, their able to view and explore the micro shop without the subconscious pressure that comes with a traditional e-commerce environment.

Design wise, very minimalist, simple and attractive which amplifies Gap’s branding and image. Promoting their other social network channels such as YouTube and Twitter on a Facebook page is a great way of cross selling your online presence.

With 475,000 fans, it’s been well received and a great branding opportunity for Gap, who traditionally have loyal customers, to expand their products exposure in the same way VW have with theirs.

There are many more Fan pages on CustomFacebookPage.com, that I’m sure would catch your eyes for many different reasons depending on your personal and professional interests. If you don’t see one on there that you think should be, there’s a handy suggestion facility that should help expose the best as well as improving the collection of showcases on their at current.

For anyone running or creating a Facebook Fan page for their brand, client or themselves, this is a fantastic site to gauge the possibilities the platform can provide and to be inspired with how your competitors or admired brands are using the service.

Google has this week been granted a patent for adjusting search rankings based on click data for related queries.

The patent, entitled Rank-adjusted content items, talks about the same types of query refinements we discussed earlier this month in the satisfaction rates post and in previous brand update analysis.

In plain English the patent explains that Google may be counting the number of people who search for “insurance” and then search for “confused.com”. Google can then analyse the queries and determine whether they are statistically significant enough for confused.com to be displayed in the rankings for “insurance”.

Rank-adjusted content items

Abstract
Click logs and query logs are processed to identify statistical search patterns. A search session is compared to the statistical search patterns. Content items responsive to a query of the search session are identified, and a ranking of the content items is adjusted based on the comparison.

Inventors: Datar; Mayur (Santa Clara, CA), Dhamdhere; Kedar (Sunnyvale, CA), Garg; Ashutosh (Sunnyvale, CA)
Assignee: Google Inc. (Mountain View, CA)
Appl. No.: 11/694,268
Filed: March 30, 2007

Content items, e.g., video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc., can be identified by a search engine in response to a query. The query can include one or more search terms, and the search engine can identify and rank the content items based on the search terms in the query. Typically the content items are displayed according to the rank.

The content items, however, are often identified only in response to a particular query, i.e., the search engine may identify and rank content items to independently for each query. For example, for three different queries, the search, engine may return a particular identification and rank of content items for each particular query, regardless of the other queries. In such implementations, a particular content item that may be highly relevant to a user’s current interests may not be identified and/or highly ranked and presented to the user until the user has conducted multiple searches. Additionally, other users may experience similar challenges when searching for content.

SUMMARY

Disclosed herein are systems and methods of identifying content items. In one implementation, click logs and query logs are processed to identify statistical search patterns based on the click logs and query logs. A search session is compared to the statistical search patterns. Content items responsive to a query of the search session are identified, and a ranking of the content items is adjusted based on the comparison.

In another implementation, query paths and content terminuses associated with query paths are identified. Additionally, a context of a search session is identified and a determination of whether the context is related, to one or more of the query paths is made. Content items responsive to a query of the search session are identified based on the determination.

In another implementation, a system includes a mining engine and an adjusting engine. The mining engine mines click logs and query logs to identify query paths and content terminuses associated with the query paths. The adjusting engine adjusts a ranking of content items responsive to a search session query based on the identified query paths and content terminuses.

In one implementation, identification of a context of a search session facilitates the adjusting of a ranking of one or more content items in response to a search session query. The adjustment can, for example, be based on the likelihood that a current user is searching for the rank-adjusted content items because a statistically significant number of prior users that exhibited a similar behavior to the current user selected the rank-adjusted content items.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Google patent granted: Rank adjustments via click data

I just launched a site yesterday that I originally intended to have work similar to what you describe. In the end, I decided to have it facilitate making 1-to-1 RSS feed exchanges instead ("you display my feed on your site and I'll display yours on mine"). That makes it easier to control quality, because you get to check the feed before you accept it, so people can't just join, post junk with the right keywords, and have it show up all over the internet. Click my name to see the site.
Clipped from source: http://hubpages.com/hub/RSS_Link_Exchange?rss

My phone and IM’s have been buzzing this morning, which can only mean thing — Phish finally announced their fall tour! We had the rumored dates for a while now and they look to be dead-on, which only gives us more confidence that the New Year’s Eve announcement for Miami will be coming shortly. In the meantime, start making your plans for the three-night run at Madison Square Garden…

PHISH – FALL TOUR 2009 from Phish on Vimeo.

Phish Fall 2009 Tour Dates

10/30 Indio, CA The Empire Polo Club - Festival 8
10/31 Indio, CA The Empire Polo Club - Festival 8
11/1 Indio, CA The Empire Polo Club - Festival 8

11/18 Detroit, MI Cobo Arena
11/20 Cincinnati, OH U.S. Bank Arena
11/21 Cincinnati, OH U.S. Bank Arena
11/22 Syracuse, NY War Memorial at Oncenter
11/24 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Center
11/25 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Center
11/27 Albany, NY Times Union Center
11/28 Albany, NY Times Union Center
11/29 Portland, ME Cumberland County Civic Center
12/2 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
12/3 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
12/4 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
12/5 Charlottesville, VA John Paul Jones Arena

Related posts:

• Rumors: Phish Fall Tour Dates and NYE in Miami
• Weezer | Fall 2008 Tour Dates
• Phish Fall 2009 Tour Dates Starting to Emerge

FeedSee is a blog directly, which features a very simple and direct interface. The only things you can do are searching and submitting feeds: to search for a feed, you will immediately notice the search box on the home page, where you can type any keyword you want and get all the feeds related to that word. Else, you can click the submission link and, just by pasting the link,
Clipped from source: http://feedproxy.google.com/RSS-TOP-55

FeedBees is an online RSS feed directory, counting more than 100000 feeds where you can submit all of your sites with no registration process, and people can easily monitor all of the changes that you make on your site directly from FeedBees. Feeds can be searched, browsed by category, subcategory and page rank. Plus, for any submitted feed that comes with Google Adsense within, the service collects the original Google
Clipped from source: http://feedproxy.google.com/RSS-TOP-55

Have you ever tested out non-alphanumeric symbols in your PPC ads? Google discourages the use of certain symbols, but others are still allowed. ...
Clipped from source: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/sew

Social media optimization is a marketing approach utilized to increase the visibility of your site by leveraging the power of social media and online communities. Photo credit: Fred Cavazza mashed up by Robin Good Social media optimization is a term originally introduced by Rohit Bhargava back in 2006. Rohit writes:

"For years now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site's performance on organic search listings. While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs."

SMO (social media optimization), originally based on the five key principles Rohit first wrote to increase the visibility of a blog site, grew with time to 17 items, as other social media experts contributed to them by suggesting new ones across new blog posts about social media optimization best practices. As all such great social media optimization principles have only being linked and referenced on the original post by Rohit, and remain therefore scattered across multiple sites and blogs around the Web, I have decided to add to, aggregate and prepare a comprehensive list of all them and to title it "The Social Media Optimization Manifesto" while leaving this document open for further additions and updates. Here it is: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

The Social Media Optimization Manifesto - Key Social Marketing Principles To Increase The Visibility Of Your Site

Increase Your Linkability

This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are "static" - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format. (Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy

Adding content features like quick buttons to "add to del.icio.us" are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage). (Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Reward Inbound Links

Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you. (Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Help Your Content Travel

Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site. (Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Encourage The Mashup

In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube's idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can embed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content. (Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava).

Be a User Resource, Even If It Doesn't Help You

Add value to users, including outbound links to areas that could help them with their goals and purposes. Deployed corrected, even if you link to competitors you stand to gain as the communities first source of information finding. How will this help SMO? Folks will link to your social site and tag is as helpful or the 'ultimate' guide in that space. As this adds up, it will become more and more relevant in search engine results. (Principle suggested by Jeremiah Owyang).

Reward Helpful and Valuable Users

Often helpful or popular users will be influencers and champions within your social site, devise ways to elevate them buy promoting their works on the homepage, or develop a rating system. Sometimes a quick email or note in private telling them you appreciate them can go a long way. Some folks have done that to me, and for communities I run, I do that as well. Only do if sincere. Perhaps this is not truly SMO, but it will help to keep the most valuable members of a community closer to your site. (Principle suggested by Jeremiah Owyang).

Participate

Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. Participating helps your message spread further and faster. (Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Know How to Target Your Audience

If you don't even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can't. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to you. (Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Create Content

There are certain kinds of content that just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a whitepaper, it can be done. Know what type of content can work for you and create it. (Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Be Real

The community does not reward fakers. (Principle suggested by Cameron Olthuis).

Don't Forget Your Roots, Be Humble

Sometimes it can be easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.(Principle suggested by Loren Baker).

Don't Be Afraid to Try New Things, Stay Fresh

Social Media is changing and morphing by the minute, keep up on new tools, products and challenges in your social sphere. (Principle suggested by Loren Baker).

Develop a SMO Strategy

Define your objectives and set goals. Be fully aware of what your desired outcome is as a result of performing these tactics. Reputation, sales, influence, credibility, charity, traffic / page views, etc. (Principle suggested by Lee Odden).

Choose Your SMO Tactics Wisely

Be cognizant of what actions will influence the desired outcome with the most impact. (Principle suggested by Lee Odden).

Enable Content Creation

According to Hans Peter Brondmo of Plum during the SES San Jose session "Marketing with Social Media", 1% of those involved with social media are creating content, 10% will enrich that content and 90% will consume it. That's a lot of influence wielded by content creators and those that reblog and mashup. Think about what you can do to enable content creation as well as the repurposing of that content for what might possibly be the most productive outcome. (Principle suggested by Lee Odden).

Tag Tag Tag

Help existing content become more meaningful to others by tagging with relevant keywords images, videos and other multimedia resources posted by others. Instead of simply cheering up or complimenting someone for sharing a valuable media object, go and tag it with relevant, descriptive words providing a valuable, though discrete but tangible contribution to everyone and to your community in particular. (Principle suggested by Robin Good).

Share Really Valuable Stuff

When you share news, links or media objects on your preferred social media outlets, be them Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, go for the meat. Share first and foremost things of great value to your social community. Yes, chat, provide feedback, compliment and congratulate when appropriate but do not make this the end activity of your social media presence. (Principle suggested by Robin Good).

Market and Promote Great Stuff From Others

Go out of your way to give visibility and reward to great ideas and work done by others. Talking always about how cool and great you are gets boring after a while. The idea is not either to save yourself time and effort by picking and re-sharing cool items you get from others in your social media communities. The goal is rather to be a social paladin of other people's work to bring them the attention they deserve. (Principle suggested by Robin Good).

Don't Be Afraid to Let Go of a Message or Idea and Let Others Own It

In the spirit of social media principles, the idea of Social Media Optimization is now out there and belongs to the marketing and PR community. (Principle suggested by Rohit Bhargava)

In the very spirit of this last point, I see this as an open list, welcoming others to bring in and contribute other additional ideas. Feel free to use the comment area here below to suggest other key principles you think should be added to it and I will be happy to add the best (with a link back to your site) that you will provide.

This manifesto has been inspired by "5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)" originally written by Rohit Bhargava and contributing authors for theInfluential Marketing Blog and first published on August 10th 2006 as "5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)". Daniele Bazzano and Robin Good of MasterNewMedia have expanded and remixed Rohit's and the other contributors' original content by aggregating all of them on this page, providing a more engaging editorial format, and by adding new in-text links to references and relevant resources and a couple new principles to it.

About the author Rohit Bhargava is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy and author of the marketing book Personality Not Included, a guide to using your personality in marketing. He also publishes the Influential Marketing Blog. Rohit Bhargava is widely recognized across the marketing industry (and on Wikipedia) for inventing the concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO) on his blog.

Photo credits: Increase Your Linkability - Stephen Coburn Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy - Christophe Testi Reward Inbound Links - Ilin Sergey Help Your Content Travel - ronen Encourage The Mashup - sonya_m Be a User Resource, Even If It Doesn't Help You - Sandor Kacso Reward Helpful and Valuable Users - Karam Miri Participate - Cathy Yeulet Know How to Target Your Audience - Tomasz Trojanowski Create Content - Ieva Geneviciene Be Real - Paul Moore Don't Forget Your Roots, Be Humble - Anita Peppers Don't Be Afraid to Try New Things, Stay Fresh - Ashwin K.A Develop a SMO Strategy - Andres Rodriguez Choose Your SMO Tactics Wisely - Silvia Bukovac Enable Content Creation - Marc Dietrich Tag Tag Tag - Asia.ru Share Really Valuable Stuff- Norma Cornes Market and Promote Great Stuff From Others - Philip Date Don't Be Afraid to Let Go of a Message or Idea and Let Others Own It - Sun Jeng Tan

This is where my comments go!!

Most of you are probably seeing SearchWiki in action today. It allows anybody to edit and comment on Google search results.

Of course the first thing most of you probably did was vote your sites and your clients up to the top. I did that and regretted it ever since because every day I think we have got top rankings and then have to remember that they aren’t real.

Also voting up sites on day 1 is basically a big red flag to Google saying “I’m an SEO and these are the sites I’m promoting”. Take a look at the SearchWiki notes for some competitive keywords to see what I mean.

Google is going to get a huge amount of data from this and they will use it in some way in the future. Anybody who is sceptical of Googles ability to use user data obviously hasn’t seen how effective Google Local has been in ranking restaurants based on how good they are rather than how many links they have.

What will happen when Google allows people to give star ratings to e-commerce sites in the search results? Big brands with good customer service are going to win. Sites with high quality information & loyal fans are going to win.

PageRank was the ultimate democratic method of rankings sites right up to the point SEO’s started buying links. PageRank was just a clever model to let Google figure out which sites people were voting for online.

Now Google has a big list of sites and a huge list of users they don’t need PageRank - they can ask users to vote directly rather than relying on links. The major flaw with PageRank is that only a few percent of people actually have websites and can influence the search results.

What would Google rather have at the top of the search results? A site that spends ?100,000 a month on SEO or a site that 100,000 real life Google users have given a 5 star rating?

Like SEO? Love the secret tips in our weekly Newsletter (content not published anywhere else)

SearchWiki - The end of PageRank?

All webmasters want high search engine rankings to list their site on top of search engines search result pages. There are hundreds of sources providing information about search engine optimization to drive more site traffic. Google just made it simpler to master these SEO techniques.

Google webmaster tools has released an official Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide that covers many areas that webmasters might consider optimizing to get better Google ranking and indexing. Here is the index of contents that should interest you.

• Create unique and accurate page titles
• Make use of the "description" meta tag
• Improve the structure of your URL's
• Make your site easier to navigate
• Offer quality content and services
• Write better anchor texts
• Use heading tags appropriately
• Optimize your use of images
• Making effective use of Robots.txt
• Be aware of "nofollow" tags for links
• Promoting your website in the right ways
• Make use of free webmaster tools
• Take advantage of web analytics services

Download the Official Google SEO Started guide (.pdf) today and see what Google expects from your site structure and functionality.

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Copyright 2008. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Its a high-security data center run by one of Sweden's largest ISPs. Located in an old nuclear bunker deep below the bedrock of Stockholm city, its one of the coolest data centers you can work in.

Royal Pingdom point us to some cool facts about the data center - Originally a military bunker and nuclear shelter during the Cold War era. The facility still has the code name from its military days: Pionen White Mountains. It is located in central Stockholm below 30 meters (almost 100 ft) of bedrock and can withstand a hydrogen bomb

It houses the Network Operations Center for one of Sweden's largest ISPs Bahnhof. It uses German submarine engines for backup power and has 1.5 megawatt of cooling for the servers. Triple redundancy Internet backbone access ensures Pionen is one the best-connected places in northern Europe.

Of course the work environment is really cool with simulated daylight and greenhouses, waterfalls and a huge 2600-liter salt water fish tank!

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RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.

The benefit of RSS is the aggregation of content from multiple Web sources in one place. RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator", which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats:
.Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
.RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
.Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91).

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999, the RSS icon first gained widespread use in 2005/2006.

The RSS formats were preceded by several attempts at syndication that did not achieve widespread popularity. The basic idea of restructuring information about web sites goes back to as early as 1995, when Ramanathan V. Guha and others in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group developed the Meta Content Framework (MCF). For a more detailed discussion of these early developments, see the history of web syndication technology.

RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Guha at Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My.Netscape.Com portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9. In July 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape produced a new version, RSS 0.91,[2] that simplified the format by removing RDF elements and incorporating elements from Dave Winer's scriptingNews syndication format. Libby also renamed RSS to Rich Site Summary and outlined further development of the format in a "futures document".

This would be Netscape's last participation in RSS development for eight years. As RSS was being embraced by web publishers who wanted their feeds to be used on My.Netscape.Com and other early RSS portals, Netscape dropped RSS support from My.Netscape.Com in April 2001 during new owner AOL's restructuring of the company, also removing documentation and tools that supported the format.

Two entities emerged to fill the void, with neither Netscape's help nor approval: The RSS-DEV Working Group and Winer, whose UserLand Software had published some of the first publishing tools outside of Netscape that could read and write RSS.

Winer published a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification on the UserLand web site, covering how it was being used in his company's products, and claimed copyright to the document. A few months later, UserLand filed a U.S. trademark registration for RSS, but failed to respond to a USPTO trademark examiner's request and the request was rejected in December 2001.

The RSS-DEV Working Group, a project whose members included Guha and representatives of O'Reilly Media and Moreover, produced RSS 1.0 in December 2000. This new version, which reclaimed the name RDF Site Summary from RSS 0.9, reintroduced support for RDF and added XML namespaces support, adopting elements from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core.

In December 2000, Winer released RSS 0.92 a minor set of changes aside from the introduction of the enclosure element, which permitted audio files to be carried in RSS feeds and helped spark podcasting. He also released drafts of RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 that were subsequently withdrawn.

In September 2002, Winer released a major new version of the format, RSS 2.0, that redubbed its initials Really Simple Syndication. RSS 2.0 removed the type attribute added in the RSS 0.94 draft and added support for namespaces.

Because neither Winer nor the RSS-DEV Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they could not make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS.

One product of that contentious debate was the creation of an alternative syndication format, Atom, that began in June 2003. The Atom syndication format, whose creation was in part motivated by a desire to get a clean start free of the issues surrounding RSS, has been adopted as IETF Proposed Standard RFC 4287.

In July 2003, Winer and UserLand Software assigned the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet & Society, where he had just begun a term as a visiting fellow. At the same time, Winer launched the RSS Advisory Board with Brent Simmons and Jon Udell, a group whose purpose was to maintain and publish the specification and answer questions about the format.

In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team and Outlook team announced on their blogs that they were adopting the feed icon first used in the Mozilla Firefox browser
A few months later, Opera Software followed suit. This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data.

In January 2006, Rogers Cadenhead relaunched the RSS Advisory Board without Dave Winer's participation, with a stated desire to continue the development of the RSS format and resolve ambiguities. In June 2007, the board revised their version of the specification to confirm that namespaces may extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft has done in Internet Explorer 7. In their view, a difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden.
Incompatibilities
As noted above, there are several different versions of RSS, falling into two major branches (RDF and 2.*). The RDF, or RSS 1.* branch includes the following versions:
.RSS 0.90 was the original Netscape RSS version. This RSS was called RDF Site Summary, but was based on an early working draft of the RDF standard, and was not compatible with the final RDF Recommendation.
.RSS 1.0 is an open format by the RSS-DEV Working Group, again standing for RDF Site Summary. RSS 1.0 is an RDF format like RSS 0.90, but not fully compatible with it, since 1.0 is based on the final RDF 1.0 Recommendation.
.RSS 1.1 is also an open format and is intended to update and replace RSS 1.0. The specification is an independent draft not supported or endorsed in any way by the RSS-Dev Working Group or any other organization.

The RSS 2.* branch (initially UserLand, now Harvard) includes the following versions:
.RSS 0.91 is the simplified RSS version released by Netscape, and also the version number of the simplified version originally championed by Dave Winer from Userland Software. The Netscape version was now called Rich Site Summary; this was no longer an RDF format, but was relatively easy to use. It remains the most common RSS variant.
.RSS 0.92 through 0.94 are expansions of the RSS 0.91 format, which are mostly compatible with each other and with Winer's version of RSS 0.91, but are not compatible with RSS 0.90. In all Userland RSS 0.9x specifications, RSS was no longer an acronym.
.RSS 2.0.1 has the internal version number 2.0. RSS 2.0.1 was proclaimed to be "frozen", but still updated shortly after release without changing the version number. RSS now stood for Really Simple Syndication. The major change in this version is an explicit extension mechanism using XML namespaces.

The most serious compatibility problem is with HTML markup. Userland's RSS reader-generally considered as the reference implementation-did not originally filter out HTML markup from feeds. As a result, publishers began placing HTML markup into the titles and descriptions of items in their RSS feeds. This behavior has become expected of readers, to the point of becoming a de facto standard, though there is still some inconsistency in how software handles this markup, particularly in titles. The RSS 2.0 specification was later updated to include examples of entity-encoded HTML; however, all prior plain text usages remain valid.

Source : Wikipedia

Google announced early this morning that they have updated their Site Search product to provide for on demand indexing of your site. What this means is that if you are using Google's Site Search feature to provide visitors to your web site with a tool to search your site, you can always keep that on site search tool up to date. It is important to note that this new tool does NOT provide on demand indexing for your site in Google's general index.

Nonetheless, this is a very cool tool, so let's walk through a quick scenario. Imagine that you have a site where you have added a substantial amount of new content. Perhaps you have added 100 pages of new articles and data to the site. Prior to this announcement, you would have had to wait for the Googlebot to come along and find those changes, and for them to be incorporated in the index before your Site Search would be able to search on that new content.

Now, with today's announcement, you can go into the configuration screen for your Site Search, request on demand indexing, and a fresh crawl will be done of your entire site. This data is then made available to users who use Site Search on your site, in real time.

This is a really neat enhancement, ensuring that you can always offer users a full and robust search function on your site, even immediately after you have made massive changes.

Last night I spoke with Nitin Mangtani, the lead product manager for Google Enterprise Search, and he indicated that the new functionality would not be possible without Google's cloud computing architecture. Basically, the index for your Site Search is unique in nature.

If there was only one copy of that index (perhaps on a Google server near your web site's hosting location), people all over the world would have to access that server (causing potentially large latencies) to get the data from that index. The cloud computing architecture used by Google results in your unique index being distributed across the globe, and eliminates those latencies.

While some sectors in the economy are struggling, 24/7 Real Media brings some much needed good news. They are the fastest growing top ten ad network in the six months ending October 2008, according to the comScore Media Metrix report.

24/7 grew by 36% and now reaches 135 million unique users. That's 71% of U.S. internet users.

"We will continue to diversify our publisher network to provide advertisers with unmatched targeting and reach, to accomplish their specific program goals and experience increased ROI for every campaign," said Ari Bluman, president of North American sales and operations for 24/7 Real Media, Inc. "As a result of our robust targeting options and tremendous reach, we have one of the highest performing networks available."

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24/7 Real Media Launches B2B Ad Network