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Friday, March 8, 2013
Google to Axe 10 Percent More of Motorola's Staff
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Court suspends Egypt's parliament election
Egyptian protesters clash with riot police near the state security building in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Clashes between protesters and police have broken out in this restive Egyptian port city despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Egyptian protesters clash with riot police near the state security building in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Clashes between protesters and police have broken out in this restive Egyptian port city despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
An Egyptian army officer stands guard between riot police and protesters, not seen, during clashes near the state security building in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Clashes between protesters and police have broken out in this restive Egyptian port city despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Egyptian army officers ask protesters to step back during clash with riot police near the state security building in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Clashes between protesters and police have broken out in this restive Egyptian port city despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides.(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Egyptians evacuate a wounded man during clashes between protesters and riot police near the state security building in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Clashes between protesters and police have broken out in this restive Egyptian port city despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Egyptians react from tear gas fired by riot police during clashes near the state security building in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Clashes between protesters and police have broken out in this restive Egyptian port city despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
CAIRO (AP) ? An Egyptian administrative court on Wednesday ordered the suspension of parliamentary elections scheduled to begin next month, throwing the country's politics deeper into confusion.
The ruling is likely to force a delay in the elections and adds a new legal battle to Egypt's intertwined crises. The country is caught in political fights between the Islamist president and the mainly liberal and secular opposition, and at the same time protests against President Mohammed Morsi and his ruling Muslim Brotherhood have mounted around the country.
In the Suez Canal city of Port Said, scene of some of the heaviest protests, a new rounds of violence entered a fourth day as protesters clashed with police even as the military tried to intervene to stop the unrest.
The court verdict was in response to dozens of complaints questioning the legality of the law organizing the election, which Morsi's Islamist allies pushed through parliament.
The court ruled that the process of the law's passage was improper. Presiding judge Abdel-Meguid el-Muqanen said that the law must be reviewed by the Supreme Constitutional Court to determine its conformity to the constitution. He ruled that, in the meantime, the presidential decree calling for elections based on the law was annulled.
Morsi's legal adviser, Mohammed Fouad Gadallah, said the state would appeal the administrative court ruling. At the same time, he said, it will submit the law to the constitutional court for review. The appeal aims to establish the right of the president to call the elections, which the court called into question by annulling the decree.
But he said that during the appeals, the government would respect the ruling suspending the election. "The verdict will be respected and implemented," he told The Associated Press.
He said the opening of the application period for candidates, which had been due to start Saturday, would be delayed in light of the ruling.
That could delay the entire election process. The multi-phase election was supposed to begin in April 22 and last for nearly two months.
"As it stands, we don't have elections, even if temporarily," said Negad Borai, a rights activist. "This reinforces the political crisis."
The ruling Islamists have presented the election as a step toward bringing stability to the crisis-ridden country. But their call of the vote amid the wave of protests that began in November and has since spiraled had seemed to heighten the crisis.
The opposition had called a boycott of the vote, saying now was not the time for an election and that Morsi must first loosen his grip on power. The opposition has accused Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood of monopolizing rule and imposing their own decisions, and say the group has shown itself as incapable of running the country.
Morsi's supporters, in turn, say Islamists have a right to rule after repeated election victories and accuse the opposition of trying to use street unrest to reverse their wins. Even without the opposition boycott, Islamists would likely win a majority in the upcoming parliament elections.
The opposition had opposed the election law, expressing concerns over gerrymandering by the Brotherhood, which dominates the parliament, and complaining it was not consulted before it was drafted.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the administrative court said parliament had not observed the right of the constitutional court to review the election law, including any revisions in it, to ensure it conforms to the constitution. When the judge read the verdict, lawyers in the court room broke out in chants of "God is great."
A voice in the room said: "We are regaining the state back."
Egypt's political crisis has been mired in various judicial disputes, including an outcry among the opposition following Morsi's decision last November to grant himself immunity from the judicary's supervision. He later revoked this right, in the face of massive protests.
At the heart of the election dispute is a loosely worded article in the newly adopted constitution that deprives the constitutional court from reviewing election laws after parliament passes them. The administrative court appeared to be arguing that the article means parliament must consult the constitutional court before passing the law.
Initially, parliament sent the draft bill to the constitutional court, which rejected it, asking lawmakers to amend nearly a dozen articles, including the drawing of districts. After some quick revisions, the parliament passed the law without going back to the court to ensure the final version met its recommendations.
"Ignorance and manipulation of the essence of the rule of law...is a characteristic of a fascist state," prominent opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account soon after the verdict. "To those who criticized our boycotting of elections ... our respect of the rule of law is out of respect for ourselves and our nation."
ElBaradei also criticized Morsi for failing to reach out for dialogue amid rising violence.
Bahey Eddin Hassan, head of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, said the parliament's attitude was disrespectful of the judiciary. He said the legal dispute over the parliament and the law organizing it won't end even if the government wins an appeal.
"This adds, for the tenth time, a new element of uncertainty for Egypt's future steps," he said. "Regardless of whether the elections are held or not, Egypt appears to be heading toward more chaos."
Protests and violent clashes have spread in recent days, and increasingly the rage has been directed at the police. Many protesters say the security forces have been using excessive force against them and that Morsi has backed them in their abuses.
For the fourth straight day, clashes broke out Wednesday in the restive Port Said city, on the Mediterranean and at the northern tip of the Suez Canal, between rock-throwing protesters and police firing tear gas despite efforts by the military to separate the two sides.
At least six people were killed since Sunday in the city's unrest, including three policemen. Hundreds were injured.
The city has been in turmoil since late January. Furious at the president and the security forces, residents have been waging campaign of protests and strikes amounting to an outright revolt against the central government. The turmoil has dragged in the military to an extent unprecedented since the army handed over power to Egypt's first democratically elected president in June.
On Wednesday, troops moved to clear a sit-in that protesters have been holding in front of the city's main government complex for weeks. Soldiers took down tents, banners and pictures of civilians recently killed in clashes with police. The military police opened the area to traffic for the first time in weeks and sought to negotiate with the protesters for an end to the standoff.
Nevertheless, clashes still erupted Wednesday, with protesters hurling stones at police at the nearby security headquarters, prompting volleys of tear in response.
The turmoil in Port Said began Jan. 26, after a Cairo court issued death sentences against 21 defendants ? mostly Port Said residents ? for involvement in a deadly soccer riot in the city in February 2012 that killed 74 people, mostly fans of a rival Cairo soccer club, Al-Ahly. Many in the city saw the verdicts as politicized.
Violent protests over the verdicts killed more than 40 people, mostly at the hands of police.
Clashes erupted again on Sunday after word emerged that the defendants in the court case were removed from a city prison, ahead of a Saturday court session, in which the death sentences are to be confirmed, and new verdicts in the soccer case to be announced, including against police officers.
Many fear that violence could on Saturday after the verdict.
Cairo has already been struck by a wave of protests by soccer fans of Al-Ahly club directed at the police also ahead of the verdict, where they held a rally outside a main security headquarters and set a security vehicle on fire.
______________
Michael reported from Port Said, Egypt.
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Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Harness Three Social Trends Impacting Customer Support Teams ...
Customer support today is vastly different than it was just 10 years ago. Early in my tech career, the phone was the primary method of support, and the big "cutting-edge" technology involved automated phone trees that would seek out the right engineer at 3 a.m., wake him up and connect him to the customer needing help.
The idea of self service and of customers helping themselves was limited to "RTFM" (pardon the expression) and precious little else.
Back then, I vividly remember being pitched by a customer support sales guy on the merits of a fax-based document management system. The theory was that our customers would call in and select the document they wanted by listening to a menu of choices and then punching in the corresponding number. A few minutes later, the document they requested would roll off their fax machine and right into their hands! It was cool technology at the time but positively archaic in hindsight?and certainly nothing like the online knowledge bases and document repositories that we all expect now.
Today we live in a multi-channel world, and customers want to talk with us through a variety of different media. Some prefer the fast response and personalization of the phone, while others like the convenience and non-real-time nature of email. Live chat provides a bridge between these two and gives the customer and support agents the best?and worst?of both worlds!
Of course, many customers today also embrace some form of social communication, and this has changed the way companies interact in many ways. Below are three significant trends I have been monitoring, in which social communication dramatically affects the interaction between companies and customers.
Trend #1: The Customer's Pulpit
While the technology of how customers interact with companies for support is one aspect of social, a potentially larger impact is that customers now have the ability to broadcast their dissatisfaction with your product to a larger audience?and in real time.
If you don't keep your customers happy, then they will let everyone know very quickly?and this can be incredibly damaging to your bottom line.
Surprisingly enough, this is not a particularly new trend. Companies that serve tight vertical markets with well-connected customers have been facing this effect forever. Of course, it used to just be called "word of mouth." In prior companies where I served, I can attribute many sales to the good reputation we had in a particular market, and conversely many sales our competitors lost because of their poor reputation. It was very common to hear "I won't do business with those people at XYZ Company?Charlie down the street purchased it and has had nothing but problems."
In my particular case, this involved software systems that we were selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fact that someone wouldn't purchase a product from a particular vendor just because of their bad reputation is a great example of how powerful this effect can be.
Today the rumor mill has expanded by a few orders of magnitude due to social media. If a customer is unhappy with your product or service, he or she can let the world know in a matter of clicks. It's hard to remember a world without social media, but customer support operations can't forget about it. If you don't keep your customers happy, then they will let everyone know very quickly?and this can be incredibly damaging to your bottom line.
NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, did a survey last year that brought this issue to point. Their research showed that "a single negative customer experience posted in public can wipe out the effect of up to five positive customer messages."
Take a moment and read that again just to make sure you understand it.
This is a huge issue and one that affects all of us. Just one disgruntled customer can do more damage than we realize, and every effort has to be taken to prevent this type of negative feedback.
Trend #2: The Customer's Pulpit
No, I'm not repeating myself! In the previous section, I've pointed out the negatives of the customer having a potentially loud voice, but there's also a corresponding positive.
If you are able to provide outstanding service and support, your customers will let the world know. While companies like Zappos are well known for their customer service, loyal following, and strong positive social media presence, companies of any size can get the buzz going.
Unfortunately, upset customers are far more likely to voice their opinions than satisfied customers. When customers get what they pay for, even with great service, it's rare they bother telling the world about it unless they are asked. However, if your agents go above and beyond to address issues and make sure that customers are happy, there is no doubt the word will get out.
There is a very simple truism that I've seen in every company I have been involved with: If your customers are happy, you will get more customers. More customers, of course, equals more revenue and growth for your company.
Trend #3: Customers Interacting with Your Company and Each Other
A third major social trend affecting support teams is that customers are interacting more with both your company and with each other. In the past, customers were fairly isolated from each other, but oftentimes now they have ways of being connected.
While public social media can play a part in this with things like user groups on LinkedIn and even in-person conferences, many companies have adopted a dedicated forum or community system.
If you can reach a critical mass in your support community, customers will start helping each other.
The idea of a community system is that customers can interact with each other, ask questions, and get responses from other users instead of only from the company. These customer support communities are potentially very valuable assets for a number of reasons.
One way that these communities can benefit is that, cultivated correctly, they can actually both reduce your support cost and increase customer satisfaction. If you can reach a critical mass in your support community, customers will start helping each other solve issues and provide tips and tricks to each other that will benefit everyone. Obviously, this can reduce your support costs by reducing the number of tickets that come into your system and actually leveraging your customers to do some of your support work.
These communities are also a great place to get customer feedback. One-on-one feedback through surveys or email is fine and has its place, but when you can get multiple customers engaged and talking about how they would like to see your product evolve, you get a much better sampling of data (not to mention some great new development ideas). A well-run customer support community can work like a focus group and help your product team better align with your customers' needs.
Perhaps the most important aspect of communities is that engaged customers have been shown to spend dramatically more on your product or service. In 2012, research conducted by the University of Michigan showed a 19% increase in incremental revenue from customers who were a part of a company's online community. The interesting thing about this research is that it demonstrates the benefit of having a native community as opposed to relying on Facebook pages or other methods of building communities.
Final Thoughts
Customer support is an ever-evolving art, but one that is becoming increasingly important as customers connect with each other and the world. Today's support department has to be aware of the social nature of their customers and realize that everything they do has the potential to positively or negatively affect a customer's perception of your company. Used correctly, companies can benefit greatly from this and truly become a social support desk.
Interacting with your customers in a social manner is much more than simply having a Facebook page?It's an entirely new paradigm in how we treat our customers and what relationships we have with them. The old model of providing support through a call center with long on-hold times is long gone; your customers want an entirely different level of interaction.
Social is a way of thinking about your customers and not just a way of interacting with them. Get to know your customers, support them well, and make your customers happy. The benefits to your company's bottom line will be impressive!
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GOP seeks to smooth roughest cuts, avert shutdown
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans controlling the House are moving to take the roughest edges off across-the-board spending cuts that are just starting to take effect.
Even as the military would bear a $43 billion cut over just seven months, the new GOP measure released Monday would give the Pentagon much-needed funding for readiness. It would also ease the pain felt by critical agencies like the FBI and the Border Patrol.
The effort is part of a huge spending measure released Monday that would fund day-to-day federal operations through September ? and head off a potential government shutdown later this month.
The measure would leave in place automatic cuts of 5 percent to domestic agencies and 7.8 percent to the Pentagon ordered Friday by President Barack Obama after months of battling with Republicans over the budget. But the House Republicans' legislation would award the Defense Department its detailed 2013 budget while other agencies would be frozen in place at 2012 levels.
The unprecedented across-the-board cuts would then be applied to the day-to-day budgets of every federal agency except Veterans Affairs, which is exempt from them.
The GOP funding measure is set to advance through the House on Thursday in hopes of preventing a government shutdown when a six-month spending bill passed last September runs out March 27. The latest measure blends updated 2013 budget measures for the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments ? giving much-sought increases for military operations and maintenance efforts and veterans' health programs ? but puts most the rest of the government on autopilot.
Senate Democrats want to add more detailed budgets for domestic Cabinet agencies but it will take GOP help to do so. The House measure also denies money sought by Obama and his Democratic allies to implement the signature 2010 laws overhauling the health care system and financial regulation.
After accounting for the across-the-board cuts, domestic agencies would face cuts exceeding 5 percent when compared with last year. But Republicans carved out a host of exemptions seeking to protect especially important functions, such as federal prisons and firefighting efforts in the West, as well as new funding for embassy security and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The FBI and the Border Patrol would be able to maintain current staffing levels and would not have to furlough employees.
The legislation would provide about $2 billion more than the current level to beef up security at U.S. embassies and diplomatic missions worldwide. Last September, a terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
A project to repair the iconic Capitol Dome could stay on track and NASA would be protected from the harshest effects of the automatic cuts, known in Washington-speak as a sequester.
The across-the-board cuts would carve $85 billion in spending from the government's $3.6 trillion budget for this year, concentrating the cuts in the approximately $1 trillion allocated to the day-to-day agency operating budgets set by Congress each year. Those so-called discretionary accounts received big boosts in the first two years of Obama's presidency, when Democrats controlled Congress, but have borne the brunt of the cuts approved as Obama and Republicans have grappled over the budget.
Both Democrats and Republicans for months have warned the cuts are draconian and would slow the growth of the economy, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for instance, says they would slow the economy by 0.6 percent and cost about 750,000 jobs.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-seeks-smooth-roughest-cuts-avert-shutdown-081500656--finance.html
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Garcetti, Greuel in command in LA mayoral contest
This combo shows a Feb. 20, 2013 file photo of Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti speaking to media in Los Angeles, left, and undated image provided by the Wendy Greuel Campaign of mayoral candidate Greuel meeting with voters. The likely outcome in the heavily Democratic city will send two City Hall regulars, Eric Garcetti, 42, and Wendy Greuel, 51, to a May 21 runoff, since it's unlikely any candidate will clear the majority needed to win outright Tuesday. (AP Photo)
This combo shows a Feb. 20, 2013 file photo of Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti speaking to media in Los Angeles, left, and undated image provided by the Wendy Greuel Campaign of mayoral candidate Greuel meeting with voters. The likely outcome in the heavily Democratic city will send two City Hall regulars, Eric Garcetti, 42, and Wendy Greuel, 51, to a May 21 runoff, since it's unlikely any candidate will clear the majority needed to win outright Tuesday. (AP Photo)
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa smiles at media after voting Tuesday March 5, 2013 in Los Angeles. Los Angeles voters are going to the polls to choose a new mayor. Polls show a tight contest between Councilman Eric Garcetti and City Controller Wendy Greuel in the race to replace term-limited Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. An expected low turnout makes surprises more likely, boosting the chances of Democratic Councilwoman Jan Perry and Republican Kevin James, a former prosecutor and radio talk show host. If no one gets more than 50 percent of the vote, then the top two candidates will face each other in a May runoff. (AP Photo/Nick Ut )
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Two City Hall veterans took command in the contest to replace outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, setting up a likely runoff to determine who will lead a city troubled by double-digit unemployment and a looming budget gap.
"The creativity and the genius that is Los Angeles, we will bring back. And that's what I'm going to do as the next mayor of Los Angeles," city Councilman Eric Garcetti promised Tuesday night as he led the field with 34 percent of the vote.
With mail-in ballots and about 40 percent of precincts reporting, no candidate was in position to clear the majority needed to win outright. The top two finishers will go to a May 21 runoff, and Garcetti, 42, was followed closely by city Controller Wendy Greuel, 51, another Democrat who notched 29 percent of the vote.
Democratic Councilwoman Jan Perry was parked in third place, with 17 percent.
The election capped a lackluster primary campaign that was snubbed by most of the city's 1.8 million voters. Turnout was scant.
The next mayor of the nation's second largest city inherits a raft of problems: Crime is relatively low but City Hall is nearly broke, the airport is an embarrassment, freeways remain clogged and potholes, cracked sidewalks and untended trees infest many neighborhoods. Rising pension and health care costs for workers threaten dollars needed for libraries, street repairs and other services.
"The city's ability to provide services that improve the quality of life of city residents has diminished," city Administrative Officer Miguel Santana wrote in a report last month.
The five leading candidates in the nonpartisan contest made last-minute appeals during stops around the city, while unionized workers and other campaign volunteers tried to get voters to shake off indifference and go to the polls.
"I need you to vote, and then go encourage your friends and family to vote, too," Greuel told supporters in an email Tuesday. She hopes to become the city's first woman mayor.
The sluggish turnout presented a possible opening for Perry, 57, or former prosecutor Kevin James, 49, a Republican, to slip into the two-person runoff. But James also lagged off the pace in the heavily Democratic city, with 14 percent of the vote, according to preliminary returns.
Los Angeles County Democratic Chair Eric Bauman attributed the light turnout to voter fatigue after the 2012 presidential race, along with a campaign that failed to produce a star candidate.
Angelenos are known to give local politics a collective shrug, and turnout failed to reach 30 percent in Villaraigosa's hotly contested primary in 2005, when he was trying to become the first Hispanic mayor in more than a century. He was re-elected in 2009 with a meager 152,000 votes, in a city of nearly 4 million people.
"I honestly think voters are worn out," Bauman said. "There isn't anything that is driving up turnout."
The city appears headed for another first at City Hall. Greuel would become the first woman mayor, and Garcetti could become the first Jew elected to the post (but not the first to hold it in a temporary capacity). The two candidates also have roots in the city's San Fernando Valley.
The leading candidates dueled mostly over pocketbook issues and City Hall insider politics ? a looming deficit, 10.2 percent unemployment, the grip of municipal unions.
"The campaign itself hasn't really gotten people's blood going," said longtime Democratic strategist Garry South. "It's been small-bore stuff for the most part, and the average voter is saying, 'What's this got to do with me?'"
The Los Angeles mayor presides over a budget that exceeds $7 billion, but it is a comparatively weak office hemmed in by a powerful City Council. Unlike other big cities such as New York, the Los Angeles mayor cannot directly appoint the head of schools or police.
Voters also were picking a city attorney, city controller and about half the 15 members of the City Council, and deciding whether to increase the city's sales tax a half-cent to 9.5 percent.
Though Garcetti often plays up his Hispanic roots, he has a far different history than the charismatic Villaraigosa, who grew up on the rough streets east of downtown and once sported a "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo. Garcetti is the son of a former district attorney, an Ivy Leaguer and Rhodes Scholar from the Valley's tony Encino enclave.
"Our work isn't over" Garcetti said in a fundraising appeal sent out after the polls closed. "We need to keep our foot on the gas."
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Why Web Professionals Hate SEOs
Before I even became an SEO I learned to hate SEOs. After all, SEOs would take the beautiful, functional site the designers and developers spent their nights creating and cram it full of footer links, anchor text, H tags, nofollows, and any other piece of code they could think of until the site couldn?t breathe.
Next, SEOs would spend weeks plastering the website?s address anywhere they could; clogging up blogs, forums, and message boards. SEOs would then have their developers try new tricks and tactics to serve secret content and hide text in different places.
The brave new world of SEO
Then, one day all of that changed. Google cracked down on link spam. Bad practices were devalued. We could add fonts and functionality to sites in ways that didn?t hide the content. Designers, developers, and SEOs everywhere rejoiced, new friendships blossomed, and we all marched hand-in-hand to this new era of web design.
Except not really. In fact for many, all of those views out there about SEOs, what we do, and why we do the terrible things we do are just as they always have been. Most SEOs are familiar with developers that don?t take you seriously or designers that won?t take your calls. So what gives?
Common complaints about SEOs
To find out I decided to ask web designers, developers, and managers all over what they thought about SEO. I got 7 responses. Well, 8 if you count one response from a message board: ?SEOs are spammers. There?s your quote.?
But let?s get to it. What?s going on here? Well, it turns out there?s lots of things SEOs are still doing wrong that we need to fix if we want others to take us seriously.
SEOs don?t get the big picture
?The priorities should just be dependent on the goals of the project. Sometimes SEO is the prime objective, sometimes it?s something else.? Rick Murphy, Web Designer, Hardly Code
?It?s very rare to find an SEO group who thinks about overall site experience, as opposed to magnifying the attractiveness of single screens. This myopic view is usually at the detriment of context or user interaction. It?s rare to find SEO teams that consider brand or experience as a factor in what they?re trying to accomplish.? Andrew Heaton, Web Designer, Revinity
Stock image #87 of two gentlemen not getting a big picture.
SEO is an important part of the site. I mean without SEO no one will ever see your site, right? Well, here?s a hard truth for all SEOs:? Sometimes SEO is not the most important thing.
Are you OK? Things like making sure the cart works or incorporating the brand into the site often are, in fact, higher priorities. It?s true. We can huff and puff about how they don?t get it and how they need us, but that?s probably not going to help our likability.
Designers and developers have a million things to take into account when building a site, making our pleas to give all the images alt attributes seem like just another seagull squawking among a whole flock of irritating Internet marketers.
SEO involves a lot of different things and we need to be able to distinguish between a vital problem that will block the entire site and a minor change that will help a single page rank. This way our fellow webhead can prioritize our suggestions among the other countless things they need to make the site work; which brings me to our next problem:
SEOs don?t get what?s involved with the implementation
?As a product manager, I devote my energy to trying to come up with ways to improve user experience. With a complex website and a diverse audience, nailing down the right new feature is a daunting task. However, the experience of seeing that feature come to life and the anticipation of getting real user feedback is thrilling; that is, until I?m forced to roll it back on day 2 because?gasp!?we?ve experienced a rankings change.? Brittany McCullough, Program Manager, Guide to Online Schools
?Custom CMS builds mean sites are all different. Changing something may take 10 seconds or 2 hours; it all depends on how familiar I am with the CMS being used, and how well the templates were originally developed.? RJ LaCount, Web Designer, RJLaCount.com
Actual discussion about the implementation of a new URL structure.
A lot of SEOs aren?t designers. Some of us aren?t the world?s greatest coders either. Very few of us are programmers. So when we tell our clients to ?consolidate images into CSS sprites? or ?use more keyword-rich URLs,? how many of us actually know what that involves? What CMS is the site built on? How many of the images are actually able to be merged into a sprite? Tiled images in backgrounds can?t be used in CSS sprites; but all of you already knew that right?
When you casually tell another web professional to do something that requires a complete overhaul of the site, all you are doing is telling them that you don?t actually know what you?re talking about. How receptive do you think the developer will be the next time you give them a recommendation, especially ones that have less to do with their immediate skillset? Some of the more vague recommendations we give, in turn, lead into the next problem:
Unclear Justifications
?For our clients who may or may not be the most tech-savvy people on the planet, listening to us (the computer geeks) explain SEO to them, even in simplest terms possible, may still feel like they are sitting in a classroom being taught Japanese. Over the years I have gained quite a few analogies (thankfully) but still find this to be the most difficult part. A client that doesn?t understand how something could help their business is not going to buy a product, thus making client understanding a difficult but essential hurdle.? Danielle Nyhof, Web Interaction Designer, DanielleNyhof.com
?Context, it seems, is the great missing variable no SEO group wants muddling up their equations: too squishy, too volatile, too hard to quantify.? Andrew Heaton, Web Designer, Revinity
The justification for this conflict is unclear.
Most of the SEOs I?ve met are pretty good talkers. We can talk about page authority, crawlers, link juice, canonicalization, C-blocks, trust flow, nofollowed links, and cross-domain snippet rank indexation (did I make that up?) for days and days and days. So what do all of those words and phrases have in common? They don?t actually mean anything. Seriously.
If you?re an SEO then they might make sense (though I would argue that we are overusing them) but to everyone else they?re gibberish. This makes it sound like a) You?re explaining something no one can possibly understand or b) You?re making it up. Designers, developers, managers, and other professionals are usually smart people. So they go with b. In fact, there is one very specific thing that all the web professionals have no problem calling us on:
We don?t know the algorithm either
?Search engines have the ability to change their algorithms at any time. I already have to devote a lot of my time to keeping up on development changes.? Chris McGrath, Web Application Developer, ChrisMcGrath.net
?They?re just as in the dark about what Google is doing next as anyone else, and building your strategy around certain tricks can sometimes backfire or have no effect at all.? Anonymous Web Designer
?Is this rankings change random? Maybe. Will it even last? Maybe not. Have we given the users a chance to give us feedback via their interactions? Definitely not.? Brittany McCullough, Program Manager, Guide to Online Schools
This is how this line of reasoning works.
SEO: You need to us because the algorithm is always changing.
Experienced Web Professional: But you don?t know what the algorithm is, either.
SEO: ?
Congratulations! You?ve not only killed your own credibility with your client, but mine as well. And all the other SEOs out there, too. We need to stop using ?the algorithm? as a reason to do anything. We are helping people find websites. Yes, the algorithm is part of the process, but it?s not the reason. And as much as we might like to think we?re John Connor using his Atari Portfolio to hack into Google, we?re not. So we need to stop using this to make us sound more mysterious.
SEOs do real things. We identify traffic opportunities. We fix technical problems. We give content ideas. We don?t need to hide behind the facade of an advanced computer program we?re predicting because most of us aren?t doing that. Most are doing actual SEO work (see above). Another problem, though, is that some of us aren?t:
Some of us are still giving outdated advice
?I have read quite a few articles online from mom-and-pop SEOers (as I like to call them) who still believe in keyword stuffing. These individuals are the only negative experiences I have had recently as they are marketing themselves as knowledgeable SEOers and are filling the population of our potential clients with incorrect information and wildly high expectations.? Danielle Nyhof, Web Interaction Designer, DanielleNyhof.com
?There?s no shortage of amateurs with a high profile in any field, and SEO is certainly no exception. We?ve all encountered the ?SEO expert? who?s still working with methods and mentalities from years past, still clutching that last keyword choked meta tag as if it were a drop of virgin?s blood, a Gr?ma Wormtongue trying to sway the client with promises of free traffic and that top-spot on the first page of Google results.? Andrew Heaton, Web Designer, Revinity
Whether it?s out of laziness or stubbornness, people are still giving bad advice. Keyword stuffing, comment spamming, and footer links are all classic examples. Though Penguin, Panda and the other updates have definitely cut down on the bad advice being given these days, the bad aftertaste still lingers. Remember, Penguin is only 10 months old. That means for many web professionals, the last SEO they worked with could have been giving them all the same, spammy advice that they were using for years.
So what can SEOs do?
Now that we?ve identified some of the popular reasons why other web pros avoid us in the cafeteria, what?s the solution? Well, all of these complaints center around 2 things: knowledge and communication.
Know your stuff from top to bottom. Be able to explain how to implement page speed suggestions. Understand how the URLs are being generated. Be able to explain how to get text on the page without affecting the design. Familiarize yourself with how fonts work and how to position text. Boost up on trivia. For example, most SEOs know dashes are better than underscores. But can you explain exactly why? (Hint)
Then we need to be able to talk about it. Practice talking about how a site ranks without using SEO terms like link juice and domain authority. Be able to explain how the SEO process works at both a fundamental level and at a technical level.
But most of all, we need to stop trying to trick people and get better at we actually do. We do SEO and it?s a real thing. Because frankly, we were never really tricking anyone other than ourselves.
Source: http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/why-web-professionals-hate-seos.htm
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Tuesday, March 5, 2013
France says 15 militants killed overnight in Mali fighting
PARIS (Reuters) - About 15 Islamist militants were killed by French and Chadian troops in fighting overnight in northern Mali's Ametetai valley, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday.
He said some 1,600 French and Chadian troops in that area continued to search for Islamist rebels, seven weeks into a campaign to drive al Qaeda-linked fighters out of Mali's north.
"Our forces fought terrorist groups last night, still in the same area, the Ametetai valley region, where there is a strong concentration of them. Around 15 militants were killed," Le Drian told BFM TV.
"It's not over yet as after the Ametetai valley there are other valleys ... Given the ferocity of the fighting over the past fortnight, we can see there is a hideout there."
Chad's President Idriss Deby overnight reiterated that two key al Qaeda commanders, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, had been killed. Le Drian, however, said France is still not in a position to confirm that they had been killed.
Deby said the two bodies had not been displayed out of respect for the dead. "I say to Minister Le Drian, who is asking for proof: as Muslims, we do not put on show the bodies of the dead," Deby said on state television late on Monday.
"In the days that come, we will see that these terrorists have indeed been killed in fighting with the Chadian forces."
Shown a photograph published in French media of a partly shrouded corpse said to be Belmokhtar's, Le Drian said it would be good news if it was the jihadist leader but that he was not convinced by the image.
Abou Zeid and Belmokhtar led the two Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) units that operated in Mali's north, kidnapping Westerners and launching sporadic attacks over the last decade.
Three French soldiers and dozens of militants have been killed in the offensive against the Islamist fighters who hijacked a separatist Tuareg rebellion to take over northern Mali last April.
The Islamists did not fight to defend the main towns they occupied, pulling back into mountain and desert redoubts, where they have long been based and are now being hunted by hundreds of French and Chadian troops.
AQIM has pledged to avenge the French assault, which Paris says it launched due to fears that its former colony could become a launchpad for wider Islamist attacks.
Asked about the risks of the fighting to a French family taken hostage in Cameroon last month by Islamist militants and taken into Nigeria, Le Drian said France had information on the whereabouts of the three adults and four children, and everything indicated they were still alive.
"I think if the hostages had been killed, their captors would have let it be known," he said. "We are using all the means we can to get them freed."
(Additional reporting by Madjiasra Nako in N'Djamena; Editing by Louise Ireland and David Lewis)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/france-says-15-militants-killed-overnight-mali-fighting-092804203.html
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