Blog Ryan

Here is a YouTube slide show of the orphanage project, Casa de Sion, that we are supporting in Guatemala.

After the Walt Disney Company got lambasted for the marketing of “children’s champagne” you’d think they would steer clear of anything that could be promoted as a gateway to alcoholism for yougsters.  Why then is Disney allowing Caribbean Beer Maker Samba to market a malt and hops laden energy drink to children using popular Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Winne the Pooh, and Lion King figures.  If you even try to access the Company’s website you are greeted with the following:

This site is for use only if you are of legal drinking age in your country of residence or the country where are you accessing this site. If you are not of legal age please leave this site.

Below are some screenshots from Samba’s website:

When Disney was sharply criticized for the “Fizzy Juice”, comparisons were drawn to the controversial cigarette sweets, which are still sold to children despite known risks. According to research published in the British Medical Journal in 2000, children who have used sweet cigarettes are more likely to become adult smokers.

American researchers found that executives in the tobacco industry regarded sweet cigarettes as good advertising for future smokers. Withdrawing the confectionery from sale could even reduce tobacco use among young people, concluded researchers.

Professor Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University, said: “It is a matter of serious concern that Disney has chosen to present soft drinks to young people that so very clearly resemble alcoholic products.

“In Scotland we have a huge problem with underage drinking. Some of our strongest alcoholic products have penetrated the world of children and young people. “

Partner Fusion, an online performance-based marketing firm, specializing in travel and leisure as well as lead generation for financial services, announced today the hiring of Karen White as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. White, an industry favorite with many top-producing affiliates in the performance marketing space, will direct the company’s partnership development and affiliate marketing management efforts.

read more | digg story

Lake Atitlan

Originally uploaded by rmdlwa.

This photo is taken from the shores of Panajachel looking out over the lake towards Santiago and San Pedro. We have relocated the Casa de Sion orphanage children from Guatemala City to a 3 acre parcel (2 homes) on the shores of this gorgeous lake.

Some stories to follow on Valentine’s Day:

• Adwords is rolling out changes to the algorithm as well as showing the quality score more clearly.
• Technorati loses key developer to Google: This is a big loss to Technorati, and a further signal Google is serious about indexing blogs more comprehensively.
• No more invites for Gmail:  About dang time. I could understand this at first, but why did it take so long to open up such a great service to everyone?
• Sports Blog Sells to ESPN: This is a sign that old school media is paying attention to new school and I think a trend that we will see more of–bloggers landing journalist jobs with established media companies.
• Webmaster Central Leaves Beta: First Gmail and now Webmaster Central.  Kudos to the Webmaster Central team.  Really like some of the tools and I dig the hunger for customer feedback that the team has displayed.
• Cutt’s Keynote in London: Lots of coverage on this one around the web.  Some of the tidbits from his keynote.  Linkbaiting is “officially” considered white hat   greater need to focus on vertical search, make greater use of tools from Webmaster Central.
• Some good adCenter tips for dynamic link insertion from Brad Geddes aka eWhisper.
• I’m starting another blog, as much for me to keep track of the huge field of US Presidential contenders as anything.  I find myself wondering where I saw which article about who.  I’m going to try and update articles by candidate, show who has which endorsements, and show who is paying attention to new technologies, and how that is affecting their campaign.

Now I better go find a babysitter so I can take Mrs. McCoy out to dinner and a movie.

Banging my head against the wall over here.  I’ve had either zero internet connection or extremely slow internet connection for over a week now.  Makes it real hard to be motivated to blog or get any work done.  I’m talking speeds of 100k or less.  I’ve contacted my current provider, no response since Thursday and have contacted the competition and can’t get a response from them either.  My problem is I have to get internet via satellite or line of site methods as DSL/Cable options aren’t available in my rural area.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Congratulations to Dave Bascom and co. over at Web Targeted.  They are a Utah SEO firm that was recently named one of the top SEO firms in the world (#11) by TOP SEOS.  Not sure the criteria used to determine rankings, but regardless, I know these guys are as good as anyone around.  Great job Dave!

Looks like Google is feeling the pressure of Yahoo Site Explorer.  Yesterday they announced they will have a new tab in the Webmaster Console that will allow you to see more (although not necessarily all) of the links that Google knows about that point to your site.  It was interesting to see how that applied to one of my sites, NBA Wire.  With just the link operator in Google I show 42 links.  Using the new backlink tool i show just shy of 3,000.  You can export this list, sort it, slice it, dice it…Just remember just because a link shows in the list, doesn’t mean it carries any weight.

More coverage at Search Engine Land, Search Trends, Search Banter, Webmaster World, and Wolf Howl.

• The big story that shouldn’t be overlooked is Google is ramping up personalized search. Google made the official announcement yesterday. This will surely spark the debate of whether or not SEO is dying or not. Make sure you read this post by Gord Hotchkiss and where he thinks this announcement us. Michael Gray has a couple of interesting posts on the topic as well.
• Want your site to a deeper crawl from Yahoo?  Use Search Builder.
• Yahoo Affiliate Program is removing performance incentives.
• National Pork Board gets called on the carpet by the blogging community and issues an apology after firing off a lawsuit threat to a blogger advocating breastfeeding.
• 100,000 Videos Removed from YouTube after threat of legal action from Viacom.  Can’t help but think this will be a regular occurance for Google and will keep a lot of employers busy for a long time.
• SEO Training Posts.  A great list of SEO posts that all should be read by all new comers and good information for some of us industry vets too.

We are at a very interesting time in our political evolution. The power was always supposed to be in the hands of the people. I believe there was a time when that as true. That time slowly disappeared as the power was transferred to mega labor unions and special interest groups. Politicians became beholden to a few massively powerful groups and forgot about the individuals that supported them. I believe that the power is starting to be transferred (granted not very quickly) back into the hands of the people. How is this happening? Social Media. Web 2.0. User generated content.

Whatever you want to call it, the power of individuals to shape an election is arguably greater than it ever has been. Don’t believe me? Just ask former Senator George Allen. His racially insenstive remarks were caught on camera and put up on YouTube and instantly became one of the most blogged about stories. That got immediate and significant attention and many believe was the turning point in the Virginia Senate race that cost Allen his political career. A one time presidential hopeful now finds him self sidelined.

Mitt Romney’s camp displayed its political savvy when faced with a potentially damaging YouTube video showing past campaign statements that contradict current stances was quick to release his own video response, quickly curbing the issue before it overwhelmed his campaign.

Here is a look at some of what some of the other candidates are doing:
Hilary Clinton is trying to harness the power of the masses by turning to Yahoo Answers to seek solutions to the nations health care. As of today she has received 37,570 answers–many of which are well thought out intelligent responses. Try getting that kind of response on a listening tour.

Nancy Pelosi is leveraging the power of the blogosphere to further the agenda of Democratic cause. She has singled out time to field questions from a few dozen bloggers on a conference call that is NOT available to the mainstream media. She has hired a full-time staffer to monitor the blogosphere. She is also organizing training sessions to educate politicians about blogs as well as starting to blog herself.

John Edwards has probably the most robust website of all the candidates so far with YouTube videos, blog, “web 2.0 design”, flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube badges. and maintains his own blog on the website.