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Voúla Houston – Can using MySpace have long term health effects? A recent study by NoosCorp of Texas has shown that seniors who actively engage in social networking sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and Friendster tend to live longer, fuller, healthier lives. The survey took into account the listed ages of active MySpace users along with age breakdown from the 2004 census as well as various other factors. The results are quite shocking:
According to the numbers, over 90% of Americans over the age of 90 actively use MySpace. The site also seems immensely popular with Americans in their late 60’s. Roughly 300,000 Americans were born in 1937, and according to the study over 98% of living 69 year-olds actively maintain MySpace accounts.
Today’s seniors are using social networking sites to stay in touch with their friends, read up on new bands, and post photos of themselves hitting the bong in their underwear.
“Looking at the photos, you’d never know these ladies were in their nineties.. I’d give anything to look that good when I’m that age,” said Doris Shelton, a 34 year old mother of 2 whose daughters frequently use the site MySpace.com. “Seniors are surprisingly hip,” she said. “I never knew my daughter was so active in helping the elderly. Nearly half of her friends are in their late 60’s or older. In fact just yesterday she was talking with a 69 year old man from our town.” notes Mrs Shelton.
“It used to be that once a spouse died, a widowed senior would spend their days moping around depressed,” said James Blutner – a clinical psychologist and avid MySpace user. “What’s happening now,” he says, “is that these once depressed seniors are turning to social networking sites as a way to meet new people. It’s a fun, healthy alternative to bingo night. I just wish they’d stop posting those pictures of themselves in their underwear – although most of them still look good for 90!”
When asked why he thought social networking through sites like MySpace would have a positive health effect, Mr. Blutner replied, “It could be many things. It could be the positive emotional effect of connecting to other people their own age, or simply the healthy side effect of so much sex. Everyone knows that the 69 year-olds are a pretty randy bunch… if you know what I mean.”
Blutner – who is also studying the link between online poker and terrorism – continued: “It’s really nice to have a site like MySpace that contains such a representative sample of modern elderly Internet users. The amount of truthful data we have access to about someones personal life is really hard to get by any other means, since people tend to exaggerate or outright lie on our psychological surveys. These social sites are a blessing in disguise with their accurate demographics. It’s like Psychology 2.0!”
Mad Props to Xichekolas for helping with this one.
October 6th, 2006
Sleep easier at night America and terorrists beware – our ports are now much more safer than they’ve ever been. Did we step up security? Make new legislation about imports? Hire more drug sniffing dogs? Increase coast guard prescence? No, of course not… we did the most logical thing we could have done: We banned online poker.
That’s right, the new Safe Port Act included a back room rider that introduce legislation aimed at enforcing a ban of online gambling. The new law restricts banks and credit card companies from dealing with online poker sites, effectively locking players out of depositing or withdrawing money from their accounts.
The irony here is that while most online poker sites were actually legit, many players will end up losing all the money in their accounts because of this law – since the sites may have no way of returning their money.
So what does online poker have to do with port security? And why was this added as a back room rider? (this means that there was no debate or discussion about this part of the bill. Chances are many legislators didn’t even know it was tacked on.) Those are good questions, and I’ve written to both of my state’s representatives asking for answers. I haven’t receieved any replies so far, and It doesn’t look like I’m going to.
It’s worth noting that this new law won’t prevent die-hard gamblers from transfering money offshore then into their poker accounts, but it will prevent spur of the moment deposits from spontaneous first time gamblers. That in itself should be enough to send many seasoned gamblers running for the withdrawl button. Successful online poker players don’t like to play against other good players. They depend upon these new players and their sporatic deposits. In the ocean you don’t see sharks eating other sharks. In the online world however, that may be the only way to play.
October 5th, 2006
Some of you who date back may remember when Alexander, VanGogh, LMNOP and I first tried to bring dotCULT back from the dead. If you do, you’ll remember that my first post on the site was titled quixotical – (n.) Idealistic without regard to practicality. To date it’s still one of my favorites.
Anyway, I’ve since given permission to David Seaman to include it in his upcoming book entitled “The Real Meaning of Life”. It’ll be listed under my real name, Ryan Jones.
It’s a real book, in print, that will be available sometime in early to mid September. While I’m not seeing any profits from this, I do encourage everybody to head on over to Amazon.com and Preorder a copy of The Real Meaning of Life. It’s only $11.00 and you’ll have the opportunity to own one of my very first articles in print.
As a bonus, a brand new, un-released on a website poem of mine also appears in the book… Under the name HockeyGod. (making me the only contributer of the book to be published twice).
So go check it out.
October 5th, 2006
Sometimes, It’s OK to lie
For example.. if your company makes fire suppressant products and your factory catches fire and burns down… it’s probably not a good idea to Advertise that fact.
If only there were something nearby that could help suppress the fire…
September 29th, 2006
WASHINGTON DC — In a 6-1 decision, the supreme court ruled today that not only game makers, but parents and grandparents as well can be held accountable if their child commits a crime as a result of playing a video game.
Recently passed House Bill 2718 states that if anyone under 18 commits a crime that is in any way related to a video game, the video game company can be held legally liable.
House Bill 2719 expands on that, to hold parents and grandparents responsible as well.
Supporters of the bill say that despite their MA rating, kids under 18 are playing games like Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty and becoming desensitized to violence.
The purpose of the bill is to shift all responsibility from the person who actually commited the crime. “Parents who allow their children to play games, despite their age requirement should take full responsibility for whatever actions occur,” says representative Joe Fisher of Utah.
Today’s children are so desensitized to violence, that they don’t know it’s wrong to walk up to somebody on the street and hit them in the head with a baseball bat.
“Parents should know better” says Teresa Scaggs, a homemaker from rural Wisconsin. “If they can’t raise their children to know the difference between reality and video games they should be punished.”
“Just like John Madden Football helps prepare our children for multi-million dollar NFL careers, games like GTA and Halo only prepare our children for a life behind bars” says concerned parent Sheryl Haggardy of Mount Pelier.
According to Melbourne Family Lawyers, the law even applies to grandparents citing “failure to raise children who are capable of properly raising children”. While a juvenile may receive probation for a video-game related crime, parents and grandmothers can face anywhere from 3 years for a first time offender up to 15 years for a parent of a repeat offender.
“While it’s true we banned the death penalty for juveniles who commited their crimes before they were 18, there is no law stating we can’t execute their parents,” says Supreme Court Justice Roland Phizer (R Texas), “We’re always thinking of creative ways to apply the death penalty and eliminate prison overcrowding.”
Bill 2179 is just the latest in a series of attempts to put the blame where it really belongs: Corporate America. Similar legislation was first attempted, but fell 3 votes short of passing in August 1983 after a rash of Yogi Bear inspired picnic basket thefts.
September 29th, 2006
In his book Brand Hijack, Alex Wipperfurth defines a brand hijack as “Consumer takover. The consumer’s act of commandeering a brand from the marketing professionals and driving its evolution.” Basically, a brand hijack is every marketer’s wet dream. It’s marketing without marketing. It’s why we still refer to Puffs brand facial tissues as Kleenex, It’s why the Blair Witch Project was so successfull, it’s why Google exists as a verb in the dictionary, and it’s a phenomenon that Apple doesn’t understand.
So now you’ll understand why I’m utterly confused when I see that Apple is sending nasty cease and desist letters to PodcastReady over the terms “podcast ready” and “my pod.”
It’s clear that nobody in their right mind would confuse these terms with the Apple Ipod but what’s worse is that Apple doesn’t own the trademark on any of those terms. They don’t even (as of the time I write this) own the word podcast, nor do they control the word pod. To be fair, the word pod was used in products way before Apple ever thought to use it.
I know that trademark law requires you defend it or lose it, but in this case they don’t own the trademark to defend. Worse, even if they did it’s clearly more beneficial for them to not defend it. It’s a little know fact that a “podcast” is nothing more than a fancy word for a “recording.” It may shock you more to know that you don’t even need an ipod to listen to a podcast; winamp works just fine.
A clear argument can be made that using the term “podcast” instead of “recording” or “mp3” actually drives sales of ipods.
Is there something I’m missing here, or does Apple just not get it?
September 27th, 2006
In the last post I talked about how to choose good keywords for your site in order to have a better chance at showing up in the top of search engines, but what happens when all of your keywords are monsters?
What do I mean by “Monster Keywords?” A Monster Keyword is a very broad word that has a lot of competition. For example terms like Sex, Poker, Search, Cars, etc. The one I want to examine today is Linux.
Anybody who’s dabbled in SEO knows that unless you’re already a major player in one of the above industries, (or willing to do some dirty tricks) you’re not going to easily rank in the first page of Google for these words. If you’ve read my last post, you’ll know why you shouldn’t rank for them. But that’s ok!
Sticking with the linux theme, let’s look at a random site. Since it’s new and local, (and I don’t have any ties to it) I’ll pick the Wayne State University Linux Users Group. How on earth does one SEO a site like this?
Sure you could stuff some keywords in there, but that wouldn’t really help users would it? For a site like this we’re going to need to do a little more than just proper keyword analysis. The trick to SEOing a site like this is all about generating traffic. Yup, I’m talking linkbait. So what can the WSULUG do?
To start, I’d start trading some links with other sites. In this case though, I wouldn’t care at all about PageRank. I’d be more interested in links that will bring me actual visitors. But wait.. They’re not selling anything, why do they want visitors? For the linkbait…
While all that link building is going on, I’d start writing some useful articles. To find topics, we can use our copy of “Good Keywords” or just head over to overture. We see that people are searching for stuff like “how to use tx file”, “how to configure samba”, “how to use command line text editors”, “how to burn a cd”, and “how to open a word file in linux”. These would be a good start. In fact, one of the crucial things missing from the WSULUG site (and most of the web in general) is a good clear concise guide for newbies. That’d be a great place to start.
So if you’re a small site trying to capture big keywords, my advice is to start small. Don’t worry about capturing the “wayne state linux” type stuff… you should have that anyway. Find a niche, create something useful in that niche, and wait for the links to come your way.
Remember SEO isn’t about getting to #1 in Google or Yahoo, it’s about getting more targeted visitors to your website.
September 26th, 2006
In her latest High Rankings Newsletter, Jill Whalen tackles the following question:
We would like to optimise for the conditions she treats such as back pain,
insomnia, headaches, etc – about 40 different in all. What is the best way
to present this to a search engine without having to write “acupuncture for
colds and flu” or some such other boring list which no real person would
want to plough through?
Her advice is simple:
I would create a “symptoms” or “conditions” main category page. Then list
each of the various conditions, with a few sentences describing that
condition. From each of those, you would place a link to go to a specific
page with more information about that symptom and how it can be treated
through acupuncture
This is good advice, but it’s not as good as it can be. She should have discussed usefulness and whether or not these keywords relate. (see one of my previous articles on usefulness.) Let me explain:
This approach certainly makes the website more useful to a visitor which is a huge key of SEO, but does it make the website useful in terms of the query? Let’s have a look:
The term the client is after here is “Back Pain,” but I think that’s way too broad. A quick look at the first 10 results in Google shows that most of these results have a common theme: Causes of back pain.
You may also notice the Google “onebox” here, which offers you to refine your search. Some of the options are “treatment”, “sytmptoms” , “tests”, etc. The very existence of the onebox and “refine your search” seem to support my theory that this is a very broad term.
Since the search was for the broad term, a site that only deals with treatment of back pain probably wouldn’t be viewed as useful as a site that deals with all aspects of back pain.
While Jill’s approach is a step in the right direction, I would advice her client to re-think his chosen keywords. A quick visit to Overture shows that some better terms for the accupuncture clinic to focus on would be “back pain relief”, “back pain treatment”, or even “back pain excercise” depending upon what services they offer.
While these terms get less overall searches than “back pain”, they are terms that the site should be a useful result for. Not only that, but they’ll probably deliver visitors who are more likely to come in for a consultation anyway.
September 22nd, 2006
Have you guys read about this kid who Graduated College in 1 year? Yeah.. 1 year.
It seems that somehow he earned 73 credits in high school, then took a 23 credit hour semester, a 30 some semster, then 1 summer class and graduated from Virginia with a dual degree in math and physics. Amazing
The kid may be smart, but I think he’s at a big disadvantage. There’s something to say about the quality of your degree when over 1/2 your credits come from freshman level classes.
I took just over 5 years to graduate college and if it were up to me, I’d have stayed longer. There’s just so much one can learn from outside of class that you can’t elsewhere. College is about meeting people, expanding your mind, and making the relationships that will help you once you get your degree. I’ve learned that both educators and Bobb, Dr. Kamau emphasize that college provides an environment for exploring new ideas and pushing intellectual boundaries.
Oddly enough, he wants to be a patent lawyer… I’ll save my comments on that.
In other news, This study shows that business majors are more likely to cheat in college than other majors. The scary part is, that 56% said they cheated because they believe it’s an acceptable business practice. Keep that in mind when you meet your next young boss fresh out of college.
September 21st, 2006
Has anyone heard about the plans that Fon has for a $5 Router and free internet access?
Their goal is to offer up a bunch of really cheap routers with the condition that everybody who uses them share the wireless on it. The goal is so their users can get wireless access virtually anywhere.
The problem thatTechDirt points out is that most ISPs prohibit the sharing of their internet connection. So technically, nobody’s allowed to use this service.
Worse, what are the privacy implications of using this service? What would happen if somebody were to use Fon access to commit fraud, spam, send nigerian emails, download child porn or worse: download music. Who’s liable here?
Obviously the person who did it for one, but what about me for letting them use my internet? After all the IP address will point to me with no way to trace it to the person who used it, and let’s not forget I’m violating my TOS in allowing them to do it. What about Fon? Essentially they have no foolproof way of knowing exactly who was doing it either.
Anonyminity is an important part of the internet and I won’t want to give that up, but we’re going to have some interesting court cases once Fon roles out.
September 20th, 2006
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