This days im interested in IM

Despite the plethora of junk and spam surrounding this topic, there are plenty of reputable, high-quality sources of information about how to nail SEO the right way. Here is a handful of some of the most indispensable.

Google Webmaster Central Videos

When trying to optimize your site for Google, there is no more reliable source of information as the search behemoth itself. Specifically, the head of Google's Webspam team Matt Cutts takes to YouTube a few times a week to answer users' burning questions about SEO practices. Do tag clouds affect a blog's PageRank? Will auto-feeding tweets onto a site help or SEO? How can an image-heavy photography site get good rankings? These are all great questions, and are among the multitude that Cutts has already answered on the Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.

SEOMoz

With a resource-laden blog, search marketing guidebooks, discussion forums, SEO job listings and a host of free and paid SEO analysis tools, there could hardly be more of a one-stop shop for SEO information than SEOMoz. The “Tools” section of their site alone contains over 20 resources (half of which are free) for site analysis, keyword research, link analysis, ranking information and more. Under “Guides”, you'll find a directory of rather robust handbooks and tip sheets, including a few free ones like The Marketing Handbook and The Beginner's Checklist for Small Business SEO”.

Conversation Marketing

We recently touted SEO guru Ian Lurie's Conversation Marketing as a great example of a company blog, and be remiss not to mention it here as well. What makes Conversation Marketing such an excellent resource for marketing know-how in general is a vast repository of thoughtful content and Lurie's own personality, which is marked by an often hilarious disdain for BS. He manages to take what can sometimes be a over-hyped and even sleazy topic and present it to readers honestly and with a sense of humor. The blog has an archive of content going back to 2003 that includes posts on just about any Web marketing and SEO-related topic you can think of.

There are hundreds of quality sites out there that cover SEO comprehensively and respectably (no black hat tricks, folks!). Are there any that you would recommend? Leave them in the comments and we will think about them for a future post.

Many American BP Gas Stations Want Amoco Name Back

A bunch of BP gas station owners are trying to revert back to the Amoco name, which was bought by BP, hoping to attract customers as some stations have seen a 40 percent drop in sales since the oil spill.

BP stations across the country have been targets of public anger, protests and sign alterations. And that is bad news for the 11,300 BP gas stations in America. Many owners now want to revert back to Amoco, according to the executive director of BP Amoco Marketers Association, John Kleine. He told The Sunday Telegraph, “They are interested in where the brand is going, and want it to be returned to its premier place.”

It's still not known if that is even a possibility, but Klein says the issue will probably come up at the distributor's annual meeting in October, which will be attended by top BP executives. But for now, the owners are pleading with the public. One station owner in Alabama, Savita Kakadia two weeks ago told reporters, “BP doesn't own this station, I do.”

Send an email to Jeff Neumann, the author of this post, at jeff@gawker.com.

PHEW! - what a whirlwind of a weekend!

In true AirTran fashion, our flight on Friday was delayed, causing a bit of panic since we had to fly from BWI to Atlanta and THEN to Vegas. But they held our plane since there were 16 other people on our flight going to the same place. Still, I'm happy this is the last time I will fly AirTran (we only did it this time because we had free tickets from the last time they screwed up royally).

We arrived in Las Vegas around 11pm Vegas time, which was 2am for us. But we were both starving and ordered some pizza to munch on so we didn't go to bed until 2am Vegas time. So crazy.

Saturday we woke up early and hit the gym for a bit of a run because Amy is good about that stuff and it made me feel motivated. After that we began our big wander! We decided to walk to Vegas strip and see the sights.

Turns out, not a heck of a lot happens in Vegas when the sun is out. Everyone apparently parties until 4am then sleeps until noon. So the streets weren't too crowded until afternoon. But once that time came around, there were people everywhere. People that were not going to stop or say excuse me or hold the door for you. They had srs bizness to attend to!

We went down to the Excalibur hotel to get our 'Thunder from Downunder' tickets for Sunday night. When we walked in there was a guy dressed like a prince and he was holding some gold beads. I was like “sweet, free stuff!” and I walked up to him. He promptly leads me over to some little flower awning thing and I unwittingly call Amy back and get her dragged into the whole thing. They have us pose for pictures and I quickly realize this is one of those “now we sell you these horrible photos!”. We said no thanks (I could have given them a whole speech about aspect ratio and photoshop and how they could probably increase sales if their display didn't look like ass).

They had a special dinner at the JAPONAIS restaurant & lounge in our hotel. $45 for two people. We had mostly sushi and it was delicious. Perfect amount of food too. Then we went to the Beatles boutique where I bought two t-shirts (one that says LOVE and another Beatles shirt that had sparklies on it), 2 pairs of socks (one that has a picture of the Beatles and another that says “all you need is love”), a souvenir booklet of the LOVE show, and a hat that looked like John's from 'Hard Day's Night'.

Then we actually SAW the show. The theater was a lot smaller then I expected so you felt like you were right in the thick of it. I'd never been to a Cirque show before and only sort of new what I was in for. I don't know if I would be in to their plain Cirque stuff, but the magic of the Beatles really drew me into the production. My favorite numbers were probably 'Something' and 'Revolution'. But the whole show was fantastic. I was totally sucked in, and at the end they dropped down screens and showed a montage of classic images of the Fab Four and I started to cry. I really love those guys and their music. *sigh*

Since we had walked all day we were too exhausted to do much after the show. So we went back to our room and passed out. On Sunday we woke up early and made a b-line for the Paris Village Buffet for breakfast since 3 people had mentioned it when I talked about Vegas online. OMG SO GOOD! I mean, I love breakfast foods and this wasn't just your run of the mill buffet, it was all fresh made and very tasty. I ate so much. But it was worth it. We even grabbed some extra fruit and shoved it in our bags for snacks the rest of the day, good deal!

We decided to go the other way on the strip, walking towards the Stratosphere hotel and the older part of Las Vegas. Let me tell you now, it is SO not worth it. First, there is nothing there. While the walk from the Mirage to the Excalibur is jam-packed with hotels and shops, there was nothing to see once you got past the Wynn. And when things began to appear, they were on the level of sketchy of the Atlantic City boardwalk. This is the part of town where the 'Hangover' style wedding chapels exist and tattoo parlors on either side of the street. When we walked into Circus Circus, I understood what Vegas must have been like for Hunter S. Thompson when he wrote 'Fear and Loathing'. Yeah, sketchy. We saw one crazy guy bungie jump off the top of the Stratosphere then started walking back.

We tried our hand at gambling but then realized it wasn't for us. I don't trust machines enough to give them my money. And I am impatient - if I don't win immediately, I don't want to play. Plus, I have no control over the outcome so what is the point of sitting there? I wanted to try Roulette but the minimum bet was $10 - too rich for my blood! I put money in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones machines just to say I did and played video Roulette but it wasn't the same. We were over that pretty quickly.

We went to Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill for dinner. It was really cool though we were both pretty exhausted from the walking all day and our late lunch interfered with us getting to eat our entire meal. We meandered down to the Excalibur to find the 'Thunder Showroom'.

We had checked our tickets online and our seats were in the VIP section which made us go WTF! But we were seats 10 and 11 and the tables were arranged length-wise so I figured it was fine. Then we got into the room and it was soooo tiny. The tables were probably only 10 feet long so there was no doubt that the guys could see it.

The show was so tongue-in-cheek, it was great. I didn't really know what I would think of it, but it was just plain goofy! You could tell the guys knew this was ridiculous and the audience did too so we all just went with it. Even though the picture on the website has them all with very serious looks, they were grinning during the show. They dragged girls up on stage and danced around them, then jumped into the audience and ran right up to everyone, danced on tables…such a laugh.

So, that was Vegas. I think I can check it off my list of things I've done because there is really no reason for me to go back there. I feel like I saw enough random boobies (there are sketchy people handing out stripper cards on every street corner and then people just throw them on the ground) and inhaled enough smoke (you can smoke in all the Casinos and I could feel lit in my lungs) for awhile. The shows were a blast but there's not much else I would want to do there.

But seeing the reproductions of Rome, Paris, and Venice inspired Amy & I to get our passports renewed. We're going on Friday to get our pictures taken so we can mail them in.

i found those photos. Nice right ?

Our 2nd Art Jar activity was making string art! O was VERY excited when she chose this activity from the jar, but she was not very enthusiastic once we got started on it.

To do this activity, you need string (or yarn), paint, and paper. We dipped the yarn into the paint, placed it on a sheet of cardstock, folded the paper over the string, and pulled the string out. Then we “danced” the yarn on the paper which was much more fun and had a cooler effect than pulling the yarn. However, O decided that she liked painting with her fingers of all!

Fine isnt it ?

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