After 4 years of non-stop writing you learn more than a thing or two about blogging, not necessarily out of brightness but out of effort and an incessant process of trial and error. Yes, successful blogging is a bumpy road that not only depends on your content but also on your survival abilities in a not so friendly environment. It’s no secret that content is king but that is not a free ticket to top ranking positions if you don’t take into account external factors so spiders and search engine algorithms find what you have to say. Nothing is an absolute truth here and there are different formulas to bring visitors to your site. I am no guru but I can share my particular experience. Maybe they work for you too. Here are my favorite ten quick tips to make your blog stand out:

1. Content is king: Obvious things are easily overlooked and many times we complain not to have traffic after doing so much for our blogs. We have a wonderful template, a bunch of interesting links and an impeccable style but we leave content unattended. Let’s face it, people come to you to find something useful, interesting or educational. They can be sympathetic with your personal problems and even share your political views or your philosophy but when you don’t give anything in return, when you don’t hear back the conversation is lost. Content is the best way to attract spiders which in turn bring visitors in an endless loop. Content must be original and if collected elsewhere you should mention the source. Many times I do take information from a lot of authors. When I do, I try not to take whole excerpts and limit myself to rephrasing the text. Think of it as making a composition at school and consulting books in the library. You document yourself and then try to tell your own story.

2. Style: There are many things that influence your style, knowingly or unknowingly. Pace, vocabulary, tone, word color, figures of speech, sentence structure. Not that you have to become a literary critic but being aware of the elements won’t harm you. Maybe a simple list will do sometimes. To me many posts are like a short story with an introduction, a development, a climax and a conclusion. With that in mind, the storyline can be changed in many ways. Spelling is very important as well. If you analyze your audience by segments of age and educational level you would be surprised at how your style can influence on the resulting data. Google algorithm indirectly does take into account style because it uses latent semantic indexing. But that you don’t need to know now.

3. Be colloquial or grandiloquent when the topic requires it. Say the post is about Art Nouveau, well, you might need a more complex vocabulary than that you would use to describe a recipe. Don’t be pompous though. Sound near to your readers. Don’t approach content as the author but through the eyes of your future readers. Ask yourself what is it you would like to find in your blog.

4. Find yourself a good topic: Your topic is an asset and market rules apply. You have something that others want and are willing to ‘pay’ for. Before going around in circles with no topic of your own, determine what your blog will be about. It would be great to talk about matters you are keen on.

5. Design: More than state-of-the-art templates, you need simple and intuitive design. Sometimes readers are willing to sacrifice design over content. So it is a good idea to work hard on high level content and then choosing a simple design with intuitive navigation. People need to find their way around your website and they have little patience. Avoid obtrusive stuff like widgets, slow loading images and excessive use of javascripts. The faster your blog loads the more time visitors will spend at your site besides the content factor of course.

6. Choose a great title and make the article or post be concordant with it: How many times have we written a wonderful article and seen it drift away from top ranking positions just because we chose the wrong title and what’s worse we forgot concordance. With real time search and the pressure of our competitors, the situation is no better. Try using combinations of keywords that your ‘rivals’ did not think of and if they have, use a synonym, or add an extra word relevant to your niche. Sometimes it’s no use fighting for obvious niche keywords

7. Buy a domain of your own: As silly as it may be, a dot com really makes the difference.

8. Links: Don’t be afraid of linking to good content no matter how low their pagerank is and do not ignore internal links. After years of blogging, I’ve noticed that my PR has not been affected by linking to low PR blogs with relevant information. And remember, the more internal links you include the easier it will be for robots to crawl your content and for visitors to find interesting older posts.

9. Avoid bad link neighborhoods: sometimes you don’t see what is behind that beautiful site you have just linked to. Next time try using tools like this text link checker to determine if your links affect the way search engines see your blog. You may be associating to sites with illegal content and that is penalized.

10. Social networking: Last but not least, it is essential that you build your presence on the web, sell your product, not only from your blog but from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, Flickr, Reddit and so on. Don’t forget using your mobile phone if you have to. Try to be everywhere at any time, that is my best advice.

photo credit: lisaclarke

Every good product should have a good display. So far the Android Market was just another app inside your mobile and its features were limited unless you downloaded AppBrain App Market, which oddly enough was doing the same or more than what Google has announced today: The official opening of the Android Market Website and Store. With AppBrain‘s product you had the opportunity to browse online through a very complete catalog of free and paid apps in the Android Market, organize the ones installed in your cell phone and perform multiple installs by queuing the apps of your choice. I have tried the new website today and I have to say the navigation is intuitive but certainly can be improved. The good thing I guess is the possibility to access the store from your Google account (a lot of users have not been able to sign in though as of now). It is possible to share apps and reviews in Twitter and obviously the range of social networks will increase later on. Some filter for Paid or Free apps would be appreciated (every time I select a category I get the Paid app tab first). Local features and language are automatically assigned by your Gmail account which of course knows about your Android device too and everything is connected fast so you have the apps served magically to your mobile phone. Before choosing too many apps set your device to accept app downloads only via wifi. You don’t want to get a huge bill from your carrier by the end of the month! We certainly expect improvements and we know for sure that Google will surprise us in coming months with a sleeker design and a more powerful website that rivals the Apple Store.

Android Market Website

It’s funny how Google conditions our blogs, our articles, our thoughts. We are used to indulging in auto censorship with one eye in what we want to convey and the other on how to rephrase it so it pleases the spiders and we get some visibility. We knew how to do it cause we learn fast…but wait, just when we think we are playing the politically correct writer big brother comes and says now we go on real time search and a better index called Caffeine. Having that in mind, I have decided to change the title of my blog and the introductory words to describe what it is about. Let’s be serious, I am neither Chris Brogan nor Robert Scoble so the possibilities someone searches for Carlos Lorenzo and lands on my site are as probable as me being hit by a meteorite, so Carlos Lorenzo’s Blog on Social Media sounds more realistic and allows me to compare probabilities with more reliable objects offering less margin of error like a Frisian cow hauled by a tornado or a rain of frogs. As if with words like “blog” and “social media” were not enough (I am sure I managed to go up a couple of pages in search engines from the last place in those 181,000,000 results), I decided to enhanced the description as I said, by stealthily dropping the word Photography and squeezing in the term “social web”. These minor but essential changes will bring me out of anonymousness but hey!, remind me to publish at least three times a day, to tweet my posts  and to create a page on Facebook to duplicate my work. It is time to forget about playing the lonesome rider of blogging anymore. In other words, someone pushed the button at Mountain View to go full throttle and here we are with our faces stuck on the passengers cabin walls traveling at the speed of light with no seat belts on.

Google is slowly changing the rules of the game. It is happening slowly but it is here to stay. Real time search is permeating our daily habits, the way we approach information. Although the average user is still reluctant to click on the search options and keep an eye on the latest results for more than five minutes, it is true that we are getting more demanding. This morning news are old. The classic media, even Google news, are outdated. There is a certain lag and sometimes getting the scoop that happened seconds ago makes the difference. Of course there is the broadcaster and the consumer. The vast majority of mortals cannot afford to stay 24/7 in front of a screen classifying the right stuff to give their social network the most relevant news. This implies that some people will accept being passive users and rely on the service of the broadcaster in their social circle. And this need is getting stronger than ever cause sources increase in number and speed, and trust is becoming an asset. Some time ago CNN was perhaps the most reliable source to stay up-to-date on recent events. They are still good at that but twitterers have proven to be efficient reporters, so efficient that traditional newspapers have had to accept the inevitable and implement real time widgets on their sites. And if the hot news are no more in the hands of newspaper tycoons but in the mouths of social broadcasters then you might as well be one of them.

Information is not controlled by a few anymore. Now we fully depend on the power of the cloud, the number of synapses in a neuronal system. It is time to build our social network and that my friend cannot be achieved in the isolated cell of your blog. Those times when SERPs were determined by a few keywords and a high PR are becoming rather obsolete.

1. Create and/or improve your Google Profile: Apparently Google is giving more relevance to your profile. At first it was just a pretty silly page but this year its importance has grown exponentially, up to the point that all your social circle is going to swirl around that list of innocent links you personally suggest at least for Google. They position of your links in that list seems to count so try to place your faves way up. Social search now in open beta can give you an idea of how the profile influences your circle and the results given by Google.

2. Use Google Reader as your headquarters: It takes some time to get how Reader works. It may be boring to many but it is so far the most powerful tool to control the enormous flow of items incessantly coming your way. You have to be familiar with feeds and keep it clean, nicely classified in folders. Don’t hesitate collecting as many feeds as you can but always sifting the right stuff from the useless source. I personally have thousands of feeds although I specially visit my tech and socia media folders. Keep those faves more visible. If you are using Firefox there is a nice plug-in to add PostRank to Google Reader  so you always find the most popular stuff and save some time. Sharing is absolutely important. As you can see you’ve got a sharing section on your sidebar. Work on your shared items page and promote that with a link somewhere else, for example, your own Google profile! Find friends from your contacts inside reader and connect with them. This way of interaction is proving to be more relevant for Google.

3. Subscribe in as many social networks as you can and link to your Google profile if you can. Your profile is now your headquarters so it makes more sense to send your interaction over there for it to distribute the stream to your blog or web.

4. Examine real time search results and watch behavior of the latest results as they appear. What do you see? Mostly Twitter and Friendfeed. That is where you want to be then. Try to send relevant tweets that call people’s attention or share attractive stuff in Friendfeed, preferably commenting others’ shares or simply liking some. Be honest though.

5. Build up your social circle, expand it, nourish it at least once a day. Every member counts. Don’t just go for the big shots. That’s a mistake. Cohesion in the cloud is a must. Remember chess, you can beat a king with just the pawns.

6. Think more in terms of followers and the influence of your networks than in Google PR. Basically because Google is already doing so!

photo credit: TheJCB

The tradeshow for the mobile phones market, the Mobile World Congress 2010, is near, starting next February 15th in Fira Barcelona venue, Montjuic. The event, the largest exhibition in mobile industry,  gathering more than 1,300 companies is not only a unique opportunity for business  and deals but also to discuss, to connect and exchange, to attend industry seminars and conferences by keynote speakers as for example,  Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive of Vodafone; Cesar Alierta, Executive Chairman and CEO Telefónica; Eric Schmidt CEO from Google; Hans Vestberg President and CEO at Ericsson; Mr. Lu Yi Min President of China Unicom; etc.  To entertain participants there is the Congress Party & Awards Celebration that will take place on Tuesday 16th headlined by famous rock band Duran Duran and hosted by actor Stephen Fry who will present the awards. Check here categories for 2010

But what will be discuss in the congress? Well, according to the agenda, topics like mobile money, the capability of mobile app stores to bill content in a framework of strategic relationships with third parties in new business models focused on cloud computing and service oriented architecture all made possible thanks to the implementation of new technologies. The impact of fragmentation and strategies to cope with it as well as the effect of  latest innovations on the consumer will be  also analyzed. Keynote sessions will cover important issues like how LTE (Long Term Evolution) is central to the business strategy of mobile network operators or the deployment of a variety of new technologies by world leading vendors and operators that will accelerate the adoption of Mobile Broadband across the globe. The evolution of femtocells by enabling a new generation of apps based on common APIs previously agreed upon by the industry and  the need to court the developer community.  Of course the agenda includes more items that we can discuss later on before or during the congress. I suppose hot topics like near field communication (NFC), location-aware apps using GPS or augmented reality via camera view and multiple layers will pop up. Things like barcode scanning, RFID and sensors will mark the future of smartphones this year.

Maybe security aspects will acquire more relevance after recent GSM code-cracking reports that GSMA had previously considered to be irrelevant.

Exhibitors are numerous and cover all fields in this sector. I just wanted to mention two that called my attention and who already announced their attendance on their respective webs:

Oracle

Adobe

I hope this post serves just as an introduction to this vital event taking place next February, a congress that will probably generate more than 200 million euros for the city and will push economy in these times of crisis. I’ll try to keep you posted from Barcelona.

* Venue: Fira Barcelona,  Montjuïc
* Location:  Barcelona
* Date: 02/15/2010 – 02/18/2010
* Website: www.mobileworldcongress.com

After reading Matt Cutts‘s recent update on this August post at  Google Webmaster Central about a project codenamed Caffeine, it is evident that Google insists in perfectioning the search engine algorrithms by adapting them to the present state of the web and this time is more than just a small tweak. In a scenario where the common information streamline has changed from a peaceful water spring into a violent torrent, traditional search methods rapidly get to be obsolete and obstrusive. If you are one of those concerned about your SEO, you must have noticed the constant fluctuations in your SERPs due to the influence of social networks like Facebook or Twitter just to mention some. The clot in search results is thicker than ever up to the point that you can’t tell good content from bad efficiently. So there came real time search options like Updates. But now things promise to get even better. Google has decided to face 2010 with full power by adapting their best weapon in a way that it turns faster and deadlier, now more multimedia aware and generic search-friendly maybe with an eye on Bing and/or Rupert Murdoch and building the perfect nest for the ads goose to lay more golden eggs of course.  Expectations have grown to test the new possibilities the implementation of this under-the-hood system will bring since Matt confirmed that after the holidays Caffeine will be available in all Google data centers. SEO companies are worried for obvious reasons as traditional ways to get clients or themselves to front page Google results may soon change. Of course, this is just a theory, but previous experience advice to be on alert. The principle of having good content in a spider friendly and clean neighborhood context will prevail I assume although it would be interesting to see how we can influence results via social networks. It is not a crazy thing to say that those who continuously post relevant content and update faster and most important, with a higher social recognition within trendy social networks will stay on top perhaps by introducing social search experiment features that are now in Google Experimental labs for example. Whatever it is 2010 brings I think it will be for the better and once again thanks guess who. If I were in MS’ shoes I’d start spying on this secret experiment codenamed Caffeine to be unveiled next January before it’s too late.

photo credit: hettie gm

Google Chrome? With extensions, please. Yes, Google Chrome tastes better with extensions, if you’ve got the beta channel of course, at least for now. But let us talk about an announced fight. Contenders were friends. One was an expert, a veteran boxer yet an amateur with the wrong sponsors and in spite of that had eaten off almost the whole traffic pie from old crumbling Internet Explorer, but who  still believed in open source, good will, helping people and the tooth fairy. The other was a pro, hardened in a thousand combats, trained by the best and with billions in the bank as to become his own manager. The Mozilla Firefox vs Google Chrome fight will be probably announced before expected and will catch many unawares in spite of the commercial relationship between both firms that represented more than 90 percent of the Mozilla foundation’s total revenues in 2008  (they’ve been cashing around $60 million a year from Google since the contract was extended in August that year).  Mozilla will benefit from Google till November 2011, but this sudden move of announcing extensions and the whole campaign behind it sounds like they might be holding the tomahawk behind their backs while puffing the pipe of peace. Mozilla is trying to diversify their products now that they have the money and more than a 110 million Firefox users a day in a desperate attempt of finding ways to dodge the body from Google’s terrible smashing blows.  And you know it is always too late when you feel Google breathing down your neck. From my end user perspective, I still had my doubts with Chrome till very recently. Yes, it is damn fast, it starts independent processes with each tab you open, it is simple but so far it was lame cause it was too dull for average users and we already had Opera for that. But now, if you download that famous Google Chrome beta launched first for Windows and Linux and now also for the Mac, you can have access to more than 300 Chrome extensions (PC and Linux machines) rapidly growing which are easier to install and much more visible than Firefox add-ons (that does not mean they work better though). So the scenario is changing and those features long claimed for the new browser are showing up blatantly under the spotlights for everyone to see. Here are five of them I would like to list so you can judge by yourselves:

Google Mail Checker  

RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)  

StumbleUpon 

Google Wave Notifier 

Chromed Bird

Things at Google sometimes go slow but they certainly work in the end once the product is solid. In other words, when the app sees the light of day it is going to be a reliable asset on the market. Besides generally buying the right stuff from the right people at the right moment, they have this 20 percent time company policy for engineers to indulge in developing an idea once a week. On top of the given productivity yielded that day lies Google Labs, founded by the company in 2002 . Many bright ideas have evolved in there on their way to success while some others still rest at the bottom of a drawer or get personally killed by Google  from time to time. The idea does not always appear from scratch but belongs to another company with a lot of expectations set on passing the key tests Google imposes on the ultimate toy before it comes of age. That’s simply the way Google has in order to be sure about certain products. They give their employees some time to play with raw material, domestic or imported, let everybody see what’s happening on the benchmark, allowing customer feedback, if interest grows then that project gets the green light and full priority. If the stuff is superb but is shunned by potential users, then it is bound to fail. The equation favors demand so the odds are higher for it to succeed by reducing the error margin. But why am I giving you this sermon today? The purpose of this introduction is to announce the recent appearance of a new Google Labs project called Image Swirl.

What is Image Swirl?: It is a tool that takes features from Similar Images recently introduced in Google Images as a “Find similar images” link under many of the pictures and Google Wonder Wheel launched in May 2009 and shown in the options section of Google search engine results. This time, instead of grouping relevant words in a cluster as in the latter we will be dealing with images. Not that the idea of clusters is new but applying this technology to Google Images is definitely an interesting move. Perhaps the project is finally buried when users get bored of fumbling with the brand new contrivance but the intention behind revamping Google Images is what counts. Google Images search handles a gargantuan amount of traffic and of course the company does not do this out of philanthropy. News like Google giving funds to Pixazza last March (finally they raised $5.75 million in Series A funding), a sort of Adsense for images “enlisting people to tag photos with links that let Web surfers buy the products shown” ring a bell now in November. What is Google up to? (redundant question lately).  I don’t really know. Hopefully, that huge investment is not related to Image Swirl at all but I am reluctant to accept that this is just to improve the user experience. Guess what, last Oct 27 they announced here a brand new Product ideas for Google Images page. After all this time!?

So here is my point, this is not just one more insignificant minor project to play around with cluster technology, this is just the tip of an iceberg. Adsense ads are already on top of the thumbnails while you use Google Image but what about placing the ads inside any odd harmless picture in every cluster. But let’s not be that negative and hope for the best; let’s just expect new technologies to be applied in our favorite search engine. Business is business and people have to make a little money to make ends meet.

This is an update to previous post: Smarter Connections with Glue by AdaptiveBlue

After the huge success of AdaptiveBlue with their browser plugin Glue, a sort of toolbar buddy that collects your cultural likings while you surf and allows you to share them with your memes, the company finally has decided to materialize its virtual world into a solid social network with the announcement last October 26th of GetGlue.com. If you had your doubts about the steady growth of Glue take a look at the number of downloads at the plugin page:

Version 4.5.11
Works with Firefox: 1.4 – 3.5.*
Updated October 22, 2009
Developer AdaptiveBlue
Homepage GetGlue
Rating Rated 5 out of 5 stars 219 reviews
Downloads 2,118,004

In spite of the fact that the plugin has evolved into a more efficient tool the arrival of this new site is indeed welcomed by users as the plugin seemed somehow beheaded without a physical social network to improve communication channels. The content was all there but inside a bubble of your own. Now there is a more personal contact and we can say that Glue has finally come of age. But what is GetGlue.com and what does it offer? According to the press brief on their site, I quote:

GetGlue.com is:

GetGlue.com is a social recommendation network for interests like books, music, and movies. GetGlue.com offers a stream of suggestions based on user interests, friends activity and things that are popular with everyone. Users can also add GetGlue to their browser to more quickly build their taste profile and get suggestions in context, on hundreds of popular sites like Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Wine.com and Citysearch.

GetGlue offers:

1. Suggestions Stream: A continuous stream of suggestions is generated for the users based on what they liked, friend’s favorites and everyone’s popular.
2. GetGlue Profiles: New profiles make it easy for users to save and share their favorite books, music and movies.
3. Stickers and Guru: Users can earn stickers for participating and get recognized as a Guru for things they actively comment on.
4. Browser Addon: Glue appears around the web providing in context suggestions, friend reviews, clips, and a way to quickly build a taste profile.

As some images are worth a thousand words take a look at the promo video and judge by yourselves.

Nikon D3S is finally here. Another toy in search for perfect results in low light. Take a look at ISO  range of 200 – 12,800 + three additional boost levels up to a 102,400 equivalent! And what’s more it takes DSLR movie capture to the next level. More details:

• New 12.1 megapixel Full-Frame (36 x 24 mm) sensor
• ISO 200 – 12800 (ISO 100 – 102,400 in Boost mode)
• 720p / 24 fps HD movie mode
• Eleven frames per second in continuous and DX mode
• Larger buffer for 48 RAW frames in one burst (18 on the D3)
• Multi-CAM3500FX Auto Focus sensor (51-point, 15 cross-type, more vertical coverage), fine-tuned for improved acquisition and tracking
• In-camera RAW processing
• Also supports DX lenses, viewfinder automatically masks (5.1 megapixels with DX lens)
• 14-bit A/D conversion, 12 channel readout
• Nikon EXPEED image processor
• Super fast operation (power-up 12 ms, shutter lag 41 ms, black-out 74 ms)
• Kevlar / carbon fibre composite shutter with 300,000 exposure durability
• Auto-focus tracking by color (using information from 1005-pixel AE sensor)
• Auto-focus calibration (fine-tuning) available (fixed body or up to 20 separate lens settings)
• Scene Recognition System (uses AE sensor, AF sensor)
• Dual Compact Flash card slots (overflow, back-up, RAW on 1 / JPEG on 2, Stills on 1 / Movies on 2, copy)
• Compact Flash UDMA support
• 3.0″ 922,000 pixel LCD monitor
• Live View with either phase detect (mirror up/down) or improved (30% faster) contrast detect Auto Focus
• Virtual horizon indicates if camera is level, available on the LCD during video capture
• HDMI HD video output
• ‘Active D-Lighting’ ‘Extra High’ setting (adjusts metering as well as applying D-Lighting curve)
• Detailed ‘Control Panel’ type display on LCD monitor, changes color in darkness
• Buttons sealed against moisture
• Dual battery charger as standard

Sample images

Officially announced October 14th:  Nikon D3S

Image source:
www.crunchgear.com: Nikon D3S Official, costs $5.200 by Devin Coldewey