Archive for August, 2007

We search marketing types are big on business blogging. We recommend blogging to clients (”it’s like having an open conversation with your targeted audience!”), we blog about our work, we blog about our tests and theories, we blog about our colleagues’ work, and we blog about our colleagues’ blogs.

It was Lee Odden of TopRank® Online Marketing who recognized this and created the ever-growing Big List of Search Marketing Blogs. It’s big, alright. As of this writing, it contains over 400 listings. No, I didn’t count. Feel free if you’re in a skeptical mood.

Naturally, when a list gets to be this big, people are going to start editing it down to more specialized, niche-oriented lists. Today I came across Peter da Vanzo’s Big List Of Link Building Blogs. If they don’t already exist, I’m sure we’ll soon see Big Lists of keyword research, analytics, search satire, search rumors, contextual advertising, and affiliate marketing blogs, and eventually we’ll have somebody throw together a Big List of Big Lists of Specialized Search Marketing Blogs. That somebody will not be me.

All of this got me to thinking. What about those blogs by people in the search biz that aren’t necessarily about search, but might have the occasional search-related post, like… well, like this one, for example. Who’s going to list those blogs? Qwerty is, that’s who.

I’ll be relying on you, dear reader, to send me suggestions, as I can only think of a few off the top of my head, and I’m hoping this list, while somewhat smallish, will at least be complete. You can suggest via the comment form or send them in an email to gladstein[at]gmail[dot]com.

And so, without further ado, it gives me great pride to present…

The Kind of Smallish List of Sort of Search Marketing Blogs

• All About Content - Sure, the title tag says “SEO Blog,” but Melanie Phung blogs about plenty of other stuff, such as Stewie (no, not the feetsball-headed cartoon character). Besides, she isn’t on Lee’s list and she was the first to volunteer to be listed here.
• Daggle - The personal blog of Danny Sullivan. The “About Daggle” page says, “What’s Daggle? It’s my personal blog, where I’m writing about things other than search. If you’re after what I have to say on the subject of search, then you want Search Engine Land. Daggle’s about other things in my life,” but there’s stuff in there about Scoble, Facebook, AdSense and such.
• qwerty’s qoncepts - Duh.
• Vanessa Fox. Nude. - The ex-Googler and current Zillow-er has plenty to say about search, but her expertise on the subject of Buffy may just eclipse her knowledge of the online.

OK, this is where you come in. Give me more. More, I say.

Dear Universal Technical Institute,

That name of yours is quite a mouthful — Universal Technical Institute. Ten syllables in those three words. Of course, if the institute really is universal (on top of being technical), it must be a pretty big place. But that’s neither here nor there… well, again, if it’s universal, then I suppose it really is both here and there. But I digress.

Considering the length of the name and the cost of time on the eye of hell, I can understand why you’d feel the need to come up with an abbreviated version. I wonder, however, if you considered possibilities like “UniTech,” “UTech,” “UT” or “Universal” before you decided to go with UTI, which in case you didn’t know, already has a pretty common usage for something other than technical institutes, universal or otherwise.

One other question: do your vending machines serve cranberry juice?

Yes, it’s true, kidz. Things have been kind of quiet over at In Search of Stuff these last few months, but in honor of the upcoming Search Engine Strategeries conference, I’ve just published a piece about all the exciting viral stuff (and I don’t mean Legionnaire’s Disease) to be found at SES San Jose: San Jose Bait Bait.

I figured you might want to know.

I was reading an article about Barack Obama on Yahoo News earlier today, and I noticed an image link containing the text, “Courting the Gay Vote.” I clicked through, and it was a slide show with sound of a group of people at a bar in West Hollywood watching and commenting on the Human Rights Campaign/Logo “debate” I wrote about earlier this week.

There were probably about a dozen images in the slide show, mostly of the crowd, serious-looking individuals, and happy couples. One image stood out as an exception however, and it just happens to be the image that was chosen for that link I clicked to get there. That’s it to the right.

Do you think that picture says “we’re serious about the upcoming election”? I don’t think so. These two may be an established couple. They may be married. But what that image says to me is something to the effect of “Don’t tell me your name. Just tell me you’re not a top.”

It’s like introducing a report about the annual NAACP convention with a picture of tap dancers eating watermelon. Yahoo.

I think Rachel Maddow is just great. She’s wicked smart, funny, fearless, decidedly lefty and kind of cute. Yeah, yeah, I know I’m not exactly her type. I didn’t mean it that way.

I don’t listen to her radio show, but it’s nothing personal. I just despise talk radio. I find it about as interesting as a weather report. But when she comes on the eye of hell, I just love watching her run rings around anyone who dares disagree with her.

Today, however, I find myself in the odd position of disagreeing with Maddow. Luckily, she’s not here to slap me down, so I’ll just go ahead and give my own opinion. So there.

I found the video below at Crooks and Liars.

Now, come on, Rachel. You’re not being fair. First of all, there’s nothing wrong with naming the group “Human Rights Campaign.” Just look at the title tag of their home page and you’ll see that they’re not ashamed of who they represent:

Human Rights Campaign - Working for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equal Rights

It’s long enough that if you look it up at Google, it gets cut off right before “Transgender”. So what were their options when they were thinking about naming the organization? Gay Rights Campaign? Would Rachel have been ok with that, or would she prefer Gay and Lesbian Rights Campaign? Or maybe even Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Campaign? That’s a hefty name. And what happens when those terms go out of style? Are they going to be stuck with an anachronistic name, like the NAACP? Do you think the members of that esteemed group refer to each other as “colored”?

Besides, the Human Rights Campaign is, in fact, a human rights campaign. So what if they happen to specialize in campaigning for the rights of a particular subset of all humans?

Maddow suggests that if someone happened to stumble across this debate (which was more like a series of interviews than a debate) sponsored by a group called “Human Rights Campaign” they would have no idea it had anything to do with gay people. But it was on Logo, the GLBT channel. I think that might clue people in, don’t you?

OK, I don’t have an argument with her about Melissa Etheridge, except that she is a very outspoken member of the community, and I don’t think Ellen Degeneris would have kept things on a serious level. But Margaret Carlson? First of all, it’s not fair to call her Fred Thompson’s ex. As far as I know, that was just a rumor. And who cares who she dates? She’s worked for the New Republic, Time, and she now writes for Bloomberg and the Huffington Post. I agree it would have been great if Maddow had moderated (Maddowrated?), but nobody can deny that she has a particular agenda, and that would have seriously changed the nature of the discussion, from GLBT issues to serious liberalism with a dash of GLBT issues, and I guess that’s not what they were looking for. They didn’t have Andrew Sullivan either, although I suppose the two of them might have achieved something akin to a balance between them.

Anyway. Rachel, if you’re out there (I know what a big fan of me you are), cut these folks some slack. They’re breaking new ground — maybe not in precisely the way you’d like them to, but it’s a good thing.

Oh, and by the way — I only saw the clips that were shown on other stations. My cable system requires me to spend a king’s ransom to get Logo, and as I’m both a breeder and a cheapskate, that ain’t gonna happen.

I love this thing. I saw it at Crooks and Liars, and they got it from my.break.com. Spread the love, people. Let’s viralofy this bugger.

Bush Worried About New Threat

Let’s have ourselves a little history lesson. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act became law in 1978. It was intended to regulate searches and surveillance on sources of foreign intelligence in order to protect American citizens from having their civil rights infringed on. How was it to work?

FISA provides two documents for the authorization of surveillance. First, FISA allows the Justice Department to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before or up to 72 hours after the beginning of the surveillance. FISA authorizes a FISC judge to issue a warrant for the electronic cameras if “there is probable cause to believe that… the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” 50 U.S.C. §1805(a)(3). Second, FISA permits the President or his delegate to authorize warrantless surveillance for the collection of foreign intelligence if “there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party”. 50 U.S.C. §1802(a)(1).

A lot of civil libertarians were pretty upset over this. After all, we’re talking about a secret court authorizing secret surveillance, and the Justice Department didn’t even have to wait for the court to authorize their activities before they started.

Fast forward to 2001, when (say it with me) September 11 changed everything.

The White House put through an executive order authorizing the NSA to begin tapping phone calls without either gaining permission from the FISC in advance, or even letting them know about it before the 72 hour deadline. Why? Apparently, it was because September 11 changed everything. The White House felt that they needed to be able to move quickly against threats, and that FISA was just too slow and clumsy to keep up with them. They never really explained why a law that allowed them to go ahead and bug people and then get permission three days later was too slow, but it was probably just because, you know, September 11 changed everything.

On to August of 2006:

On August 17, 2006 U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled in ACLU v. NSA that the Terrorist Surveillance Program was unconstitutional under the Fourth and First Amendments and enjoined the NSA from using the program to conduct electronic surveillance “in contravention of [FISA or Title III]“.In her ruling, she wrote:

The President of the United States, a creature of the same Constitution which gave us these Amendments, has indisputably violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA, and accordingly has violated the First Amendment Rights of these Plaintiffs as well.

Of course, the judge failed to take into account that September 11 changed everything.

So we found ourselves in a situation where the executive branch requested that the legislature clarify FISA — basically to give them more latitude, by allowing the Attorney General to make the final decision as to whether surveillance was justified in each case. But the Democrats took the majority (albeit a narrow one) in both houses of Congress last year. Of course, they would fight this effort.

Then again, this is the same Democratic majority that folded on Bush’s funding request for the war in Iraq, despite the fact that they were swept into office on a wave of dissatisfaction and anger over Bush and his war. In other words, the public gave them the majority to stop Bush.

Well, they’ve done it again. First the Senate, and then the House voted to approve Bush’s plan. The only compromise, if you can call it that, is that in six months they’re going to revisit the issue. In other words, in six months they’ll wimp out and approve this crap all over again.

Do they not understand what’s going on here? Their majority isn’t big enough to overturn a presidential veto. I get that. But their majority is big enough to stop Bush’s programs from being approved. When he says they’re endangering Americans and emboldening the enemy (because September 11 changed everything), they have to clearly and loudly respond by stating that he is lying in order to keep us afraid so that he can continue to strip away what’s left of our civil rights. They mustn’t give him an inch.

So they just roll over and let him have everything. Fucking everything.

Some people say the Democrats are doing this in order to make it clear that this is Bush’s war, thus giving them a political advantage in next year’s election. Bullshit. Do they give a damn about the country at all? You don’t stand by and let these people eviscerate the Constitution in order to have something to put in your negative ads.

Rush D. Holt, a representative from New Jersey, is quoted as follows:

I’m not comfortable suspending the constitution even temporarily. The countries we detest around the world are the ones that spy on their own people. Usually they say they do it for the sake of public safety and security.

I can’t understand how a single member of the Democratic party could vote for this. It’s absolutely disgusting, and folding because of fear mongering and a threat to have your vacation delayed is just cowardly.

To hell with them.