Fredrick Marckini’s Keynote at Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto

Fredrick Marckini.

Here’s my first full set of notes from the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference — they’re from Fredrick Marckini’s keynote presentation on Tuesday. These were flesh out from notes I typed during the keynote; anything in quotes is a direct quote.

Click here to read the full article.

Teens Using Google Earth to Crash Swimming Pools

Back in my days as a student at Crazy Go Nuts University, a couple of us got wise and kept a Radio Shack police scanner radio handy so we’d know if our parties were about to be busted. That same maverick spirit in the use of technology for partying lives on: this Register article talks […]

Overheard at Search Engine Strategies

I’ve already heard it three times at Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto: “I need to take a closer look at your tool.” You always hear this at tech conferences and pornos.

Tweet of the Day: Tim Bray on Microsoft’s SOA Strategy and UML

Tim Bray gets the “Tweet of the Day” award for this gem: “Microsoft’s SOA strategy embraces UML. It’s not necrophilia if you’re both dead.”

Covering Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto is Very Serious Work

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Sentiment Analysis and Sarcasm

Kevin Marks just commented on Twitter to me about sentiment analysis: “I remember a series of people showing us “sentiment analysis” code when I was at Technorati - turns out it doesn’t do sarcasm”

Sentiment Analysis

At the “Measuring Success in a Web 2.0 World” Orion panel at Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto, the term “Sentiment Analysis” came up. It’s a new term to me, but luckily Wikipedia has a (short) page on the topic.

Quote of the Day

“I’m a Vista user. I’m also a Prozac user now.” — Kevin Ryan at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference just now.

Hello from Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto!

Fredrick Marckini.

I’m sitting in the press room of the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference as I write this. I’m here on a press pass arranged for me by Byron Gordon of SEO-PR and in exchange, I’ll be publishing blog entries from the conference over the next couple of days.

Fredrick Marckini’s Opening Keynote

The opening keynote by Fredrick Marckini, Chief Global Search Officer of Isobar, was quite good. For a guy like me — I’ve been more concerned about application development and technical evangelism than search engine marketing — it was a pretty good introduction to the search engine marketing and trends to watch for. Not only did Marckini present a lot of useful information (especially to an SEM newbie like me), but he presented with style and humor and kept the audience engaged — not an easy thing first thing in the morning.

I took copious notes and once I’ve formatted them, I’ll post them here.

The Best Thing in the Goodie Bag

It’s not a tech conference unless there’s a goodie bag, and this one is no exception. I always find uses for them, and the ones for this conference are pretty decent:

The goodie bag at SES Toronto.

They’re trying to making this conference a little more green, so they’ve kept the paper contents of the goodie bag quite lean, limited to the conference agenda magazine, a few sheets of administrivial paper and the best thing, the book Meatball Sundae, written by my favourite marketing guru, Seth Godin:

The best thing in the goodie bag: Meatball Sundae, by Seth Godin.

I’m looking forward to reading it.

“O Brave New World That Has Such Hardware In It!”

I absolutely love old computer books…

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How Map/Reduce/Filter Can Rock Your World

Better late than never: C# 3.0 will feature map, reduce and filter, and Dare “Carnage4Life” Obasanjo explains how to rock these features. He concludes the article with “If your programming language doesn’t support lambda functions or have map/reduce/filter functions built in, you just might be a Blub Programmer who is missing out on being more […]

50 Python Modules for all Needs

50 Modules for all Needs is an entry at CatsWhoCode.com that lists 50 Python modules, at least some of which should prove useful to you.

Most Google Users Ignore Everything After the First Three Results

I would’ve thought that they ignore everything after the first page, but ReputationDefender says that according to a Cornell University Study [PDF], most Google users ignore everything after the first three results.

Evans Data Survey: Less Than 1 in 10 Developers Writing Apps for Vista

c|net cites an Evans Data report: “A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP.” Here’s VentureBeat’s take on this […]

10 Wordpress Plugins Everyone Should Have

The 10 Wordpress Plugins Everyone Should Have listed by Webmasters by Design are: WP Google Analytics, FeedBurner FeedSmith, WP-Polls, WP-PostRatings, WP-PostViews, Sociable, Google Sitemaps Generator, CForms, Search-Highlighter and All in One SEO Pack.

3 CSS Image Tricks

Instant Fundas has an article featuring 3 useful image CSS tricks: 1. Make it so your images can’t be saved using the “save image” option in the context menu, 2. Label images with hovering text and 3. Making a background image clickable.

Great Free Fonts via Smashing Magazine: Anivers, Fresco and Gentium

Smashing Magazine’s “Free Fonts of the Month” for this particular month arereally, really, really, good. Grab ‘em while they’re still up!

Here’s a sample of Anivers, a font created for Smashing Magazine’s first anniversary. It’s been updated for “extended language support, improved glyph shapes and improved metrics and kerning.” Note that only Anivers Regular is free:

Here’s Fresco Semi Bold, “just one member of a large and flexible type family by Dutch design legend Fred Smeijers:”

And finally, Gentium, designed by Victor Gaultney:

Have You Played Atari’s Founder Today?

A sign that I may have woken up in a parallel universe: Paramount Pictures has snapped up the rights to make a film — tentatively titled Atari — about the life of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. Leonardo DiCaprio will play the title role.

Good Nerdy Listening

Normally, I listen to music while working, but lately, I’ve been listening to podcasts, namely You Look Nice Today, a “journal of emotional hygiene” featuring Merlin Mann and company talking about everything under the sun, and Stackoverflow.com with Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky talking about software development and other geek obsessions.

I Finished Grand Theft Auto IV!

Last week, I finished Grand Theft Auto IV. All in all, I’d have to say that it wasn’t as difficult — and definitely nowhere near as out-and-out throw-your-console-out-the-window frustrating as its predecessor Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This is fine by a casual player like me, who got in a few hours’ playing every week, […]