Scientists are watching two supermassive black holes spiral towards each other near the center of a galaxy cluster named Abell 400. Shown in this X-ray/radio composite image are the multi-million degree radio jets emanating from the black holes.
NASA Image:
I just got into an SEO discussion about someone’s site who was banned by Google. Looking back over it, my last reply might be helpful to others, so I decided to post it here.
Q. Help! All my traffic from Google has stopped and I lost my Pagerank. Am I banned or penalized?
A.
If you’ve lost 100% of your traffic (not a single hit from Google), and you’ve lost your Pagerank, you’re not penalized (and sandboxed)… you’re banned. If you’re still unsure, later in this article I give a way to test without a doubt if you’re banned or penalized.
Google has various levels of punishment, based on your offense. If they think it’s innocent or accidental, they penalize you. If they think you did it on purpose trying to cheat the system, they ban you.
Now the bad news. After a website is banned from Google it’s removed from the index completely and will never be readded. Penalized sites are still in the index, but much lower in the result pages. There is no appeal process for a banned or penalized site (it’s not a judicial system- if Google giveith, Google can also taketh away).
Now, no one is completely sure how Google functions. They only publish some of their inner-workings, and the rest are still secret. A domain that is issued a ban by Google will never be reincluded in the index again as long as it’s registered, however there is speculation that if a domain is not renewed, and a period of X months or years pass, a new person registering the domain will not suffer the same penalty (ie, the ban on that domain is lifted), however that doesn’t help you much. Also there’s speculation that Google does not just ban the domain, but also the entire IP address, however I have my personal doubts about this because of shared hosting, however I could see them watching it more closely.
You can check to see if your domain is banned from the Google index by searching for your entire domain as a query, and if it had PR at any point in time (even 0), it will always return. If there are no results, but you’ve been in Google before, they didn’t forget about you… you’ve been banned. Check your site here: Google Link
On that note, I’d recommend what I said above. Cut your losses, gather your content (except what caused you to be banned, usually material that tries to manipulate or fool Googlebot’s keyword detection), register a brand new domain name, and begin building again. Another point though, is before I recommended setting up a 301 redirection on your old domain, and while it is still needed for other search engines, it will do nothing with Google. When Googlebot is crawling another site and sees a link to your old domain, it won’t even bother following it (to get the redirect), because it’ll realize that domain is banned and stop right there… so in Google, you WILL lose all your backlinks when you setup your new site. There is no way to avoid this, except tracing as many of the high PR links as you can find, and emailing the webmasters asking them to change where their link is pointing to. However don’t get me wrong, if you do not setup the 301 redirect, the other search engines will be confused as well and you’ll also lose their traffic (so do it).
Sorry about this, but hopefully you understand the situation now and can begin rebuilding to get back on your feet as quickly as possible. Good luck with everything!
Other Helpful Replies in the Discussion
Earlier in the conversation, they thought their website was simply penalized. Here was my reply on sandboxing and penalties:
Sorry to hear about that. Average penalized site takes about 6 months to come out of the sandbox. Granted some are less, but some are also more.
I’d actually recommend grabbing a different domain, copying over your content, and begin rebranding. Setup a 301 permanent redirect on your domain so you still retain credit for all your links and it bleeds PR, but you have a clean name to work with.
Good luck!
And they asked “that would be if it was a new domain right ? . . less than 2 years registered”, so I clarify the “new domain sandbox” confusion:
No, the sandbox has nothing to do with a new domain.
When a website gets penalized for some reason, it goes to the sandbox where it comes up lower on the SERPs.
When a domain is new, it simply does not have pagerank. It can go to PR5 the next week with enough inbound links, but a penalized site in the sandbox cannot get PR again (and high placement in SERPs) until the penality is lifted.
Hope that helped!
Excellent short 40 min documentary interview with Dr. Richard P. Feynman, one of the greatest quantum electrodynamics physicist (and professor) of our times and a Nobel Prize Laureate.
I have recently been getting quite a bit of traffic to the article I wrote comparing Voltaire’s Candide with Leibniz. As such, I’ve decided to publish another paper I’ve written on Voltaire. Enjoy.
Voltaire”™s satirical style of writing is greatly influenced by worldly events occurring during the eighteenth century, in addition to personal afflictions encountered throughout the course of his life. Evident in the majority his philosophical volumes, his personal life and opinions of the world around him manifests itself throughout his work, usually presented with scientific reasoning and logical backing to either contradict or confirm the viewpoints of other published philosophers during his time.
Voltaire”™s plays are “œmainly classical, embodying the unities and dealing with highborn heroes” (Critical Survey 3305). This can be attributed to Voltaire”™s home life, raised by his father who was a successful notary. From this, “œYoung Voltaire grew up surrounded by wealthy, influential people” (UXL 1). He was always interested in social classes higher than his own, often writing about nobility, such as in “œLe Siecle de Louis XIV”- a piece demonstrating his dedication through immense research. From this one paper alone, Voltaire can be classified as a major historian (Critical Survey 3305). Voltaire”™s Godfather, Abbe de Chateauneuf, also played a major role in Voltaire”™s exposure to the wealthy and successful. At the age of twelve, Abbe took Voltaire to visit the Society of the Temple, which stood for all that was proper and worldly. “œVoltaire”™s taste for witty irreverence and for luxurious living was definitely encouraged by his company” (3307).
Voltaire, very outspoken and bold, was imprisoned at the Bastille for aiming satirical writing at Regent and Poet Antoine Houdar de la Motte (Critical Survey 3307). While in prison, he finished reading Oedipus, and promptly began writing La Ligue, pulling in Socratic philosophies (3307). He left prison in exile to go live in England for what would become three of the most malleable years of his life.
In England, Voltaire became friends with Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope (World Literature Criticism 3767). He respected them and studied their work, “œ[drawing] on his extensive reading as well as his experience of life” (Aldington 3773) in writing Letters Concerning the English Nation in 1773 (World Literature Criticism 3767). This piece showed a rare, impressionable side of Voltaire, as he painted a “œhighly sympathetic portrait of the English” (3767), something unusual for the satirical sharp-tongue. Also in England, he became very familiar with William Shakespeare”™s work, which is evident in “œBrutus”- a play he produced upon returning to France (Critical Survey 3307). In reading Swift”™s Gulliver”™s Travels, Voltaire was so intrigued by it”™s structure and layout (even though it was modeled after Montesquieu”™s story, Persian Letters [Critical Survey 3311]), he used it as a skeleton for his philosophical imitation, Micromegas (3311).
In Micromegas, the protagonist is exiled from his planet by the courts for writing about something as negligible as insects (Critical Survey 3311). This parallels his own personal experiences of getting exiled from France for his satirical attack on Regent Antoine Houdar de la Motte (3307). When the protagonist reaches his destination planet, Saturn, he finds a small dwarf, maliciously symbolizing Voltaire”™s personal enemy Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (3311), though borrowed almost exactly from the Brobdingnagians in Swift”™s Gulliver”™s Travels (Aldington 3775). There is speculation that the entire work Micromegas was entirely malevolent against Fontenelle, despite the other small pieces of philosophical discussions that is sprinkled throughout it (Critical Survey 3311).
From 1734 to 1744 Voltaire lived in the Du Chatelet Castle with his mistress Madame du Chatelet (Critical Survey 3307). She was very interested in physics, chemistry, and astronomy, which eventually led to Voltaire”™s writing The Elements of Sir Issac”™s Philosophy (3307). Around then, Voltaire started to get into more trouble with the courts for his controversial publishings. The king and queen distrusted him, and in rebuttal Voltaire begins work on Zadig, one of his most famous pieces that satirized the courts (Critical Survey 3307). Zadig is a very optimistic work, with Madame du Chatelet by his side, he pulls from the philosophical studies of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz and Friendrich August Wolf saying “œthis is the best of all possible worlds” (3310).
“œI was sent to execution because I had written verse in praise of the king; I was on the point of being strangled because the queen had yellow ribbons; and here I am a slave to you because a brute beat his mistress. Come, let”™s not lose heart, perhaps all this will end” (Voltaire 162). This quote from Zadig summarizes Voltaire”™s reserve against the legal system and feeling of outward injustice from prejudice courts. The last sentence of the quote emphasizes the philosophical optimism this story carries with it, however that”™s all about to change. In 1747, Madame de Chatelet died during childbirth (Critical Survey 3307).
After Madame de Chatelet died, Voltaire felt there was no purpose in staying in France anymore, so he moved to Prussia, then Les Delices (near the Swiss border)(3307). Just three years after he wrote the optimistic philosophy Zadig, he began work on his famous story Candide (3307). The theme of Candide contradicts Zadig, losing hope for a perfect solution (3307). The philosophical question regarding the Lisbon Earthquake of 1756 as to why innocent and guilty people are simultaneously killed without cause greatly influenced Candide (World Literature Criticism 3767). Voltaire even went as far as writing a separate paper on the earthquake alone entitled “œPoeme sur le Desastre de Lisbonne” (3767). The deadly earthquake and the “œatrocities” recorded in the Seven Years War greatly influenced Candide (3767), leaving it with pessimistic underlying messages.
In the final 18 years of Voltaire”™s life following the creation of Candide, he was very active, “œwriting as many 6,000 letters, pamphlets, and plays” (Critical Survey 3308). Most of them were “œdirected against Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, and the priests,” due to Voltaire”™s disagreements with the church operations (Aldington 3778). The poem “œHenriade” analyzes Henry IV”™s struggle against the Catholic League”¦ also paralleling his personal beliefs (Critical Survey 3305). A large percentage of his writings around this time were in the aid of a few large scale court cases going on (Calas and Sirven families, and La Barne), trying to free them from injustice or religious persecution (3308). Voltaire had many run-ins with French courts, causing him to form a prejudice against injustice which worked as motivation in these legal works (World Literature Criticism 3767).
Voltaire was one of the most influential philosophers of the eighteenth century. His works are still celebrated today, including Candide, which is often considered “œone of the most entertaining prose satires ever penned” (World Literature Criticism 3774). Living in a world with the Seven Year War raging, the Lisbon Earthquake killing, and the French courts ruling against him”¦ Voltaire stepped out in front of all other authors of his time and described the world as he saw it.
Works Cited
Richard Aldington. “œVoltaire.” World Literature Criticism: 1500 to the Present. Ed. James P. Draper. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. 3772-3778.
“œVoltaire.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Carl Rollyson. Vol. 7. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2000. 3304-3314.
“Voltaire.” U*X*L Biographies. U*X*L, 2003. Student Resource Center. Thomson Gale. 29 April 2005
Voltaire. Voltaire, Candide, Zadig, and selected stories. New York: New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1961. 102-172.
“œVoltaire.” World Literature Criticism: 1500 to the Present. Ed. James P. Draper. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. 3766-3768.
Running late to work, change the lights to keep you from being late. Man uses device everyday for two years and gets $50 ticket when finally caught.
Also, here is a link with more information about MIRTs and how to build your own for $20 (which I don’t condone of course).
Interesting story about what kind of cars billionaires drive. You’ll be surprised. Broken down Volvos? Old Lincolns? And of course the Porsches and Bentleys.
The first dinner of China’s President’s historic visit to the United States next week will be in a big, secure house in Washington where the host is one of the world’s most powerful men. The White House? No. The Tuesday dinner will be held at the $100 million lakeside mansion of Microsoft founder and the world’s richest man, Bill Gates.
Study shows people view websites in F-Shaped patterns. This means web developers can have the highest impact by designing with the top left, top right, and bottom left content as the most interesting, to entice the reader to stay on the site. Here are some heatmaps from the study showing where the visitor’s eyes became fixated:
Great article explaining how to optimize a website for high-traffic enviroments. From compression to MySQL tweaking, it’s a great reference.
Apple recently has changed their ways to allow Windows to run on Apple hardware, but can OS X be run on standard PC hardware? Apple’s reply: “No.” Dell has issued a statement saying if Apple did decide to resell just the operating system for use on other hardware, they’d like to be the first to offer it. Sounds like both companies there are being greedy, haha.
All right, car-wallpapers.net is doing incredible. It has only been online for a few weeks now, and already has about 1/5th the traffic of UB! However one thing that’s always bothered me is the brute simplicity of the name. It’s straight-forward, but horrible branding for a website. There are too many other websites with a similar name (just one typo away), and with a non .com TLD and a dash in the name, remembering the domain to type in later may be tricky. Also because of it’s success, I’d like to expand the site beyond car wallpapers and into new categories. I also run a few other websites unrelated to cars, such as sports fansites, and I’d like to offer wallpapers in a sidebar format similar to on UB. The car wallpapers section will become a subdomain of whatever the new website name is, such as cars.omgcooldesktop.com. 
That said, does anyone have any ideas for a non-industry specific wallpaper related website name, that’s catchy, brandable, and unique? Haha, any ideas are welcome!
I have just launched Blink File. It’s overlapping a bit with the United Bimmer File Manager currently, however I have a feeling Blink File will eventually exceed UBFM because of it’s ease of use, auto-thumbnailing, multiple-simultaneous file uploading, and no quota limit. Here’s an example of it in action:
Blink File is designed to be as simple as possible to use. It can host anything from images (any size) to videos to music to programs to pdfs and other documents. There are no limits on the file extention. The cool part is the system can recognize over 400 different file types, and responds appropriately. For example, if it detects you uploading a JPG file, it’ll look at the dimensions, and if it’s a large file, it’ll automatically generate a nice thumbnail complete with the bottom black text bar, showing the size and dimensions of the original file. When you click on the thumbnail (from the source code it generates automatically for forum use), it’ll open in and render a larger version of the file on Blink File’s servers, which you can click on to instantly see full-size. Erm, that’s kind of wordy, but when you try it out, you’ll see what I mean. If you upload a video file and try to view it, it’ll automatically detect it’s a video and generate an embedded video preview control on the website (the little video box built in to the site) based on what type of video it is (the site knows the difference in a quicktime and windows media video, for example). That way anyone can watch the video on the site itself… however if you’d rather download it directly to your harddrive, there’s a link for that as well. If you upload a program for example, the view page just has a direct download link with no previews of any kind. It’s smart. 
Another cool part of Blink File is the ability to email files to someone else. On the homepage, when you use the right-side form, it’ll upload a single file and send the recipient a very nice looking HTML email with a link to the download page. If it’s an image you’re sending them, it’ll even include a thumbnail of the full-sized image in the email itself. The verbage of the email is also programmed to be intelligent and dynamic to ensure it never ends up in the spam folder.
Now the downside. Hosting files with an unlimited size, no user quotas, unlimited downloads, etc. can hurt bandwidth and server harddrive space. You guys know me pretty well, and you know I hate advertising on community-focused websites unless I absolutely have to, which is why United Bimmer still doesn’t have any advertising (sponsors don’t count, I’m talking like google adwords or something) after being around for over a year with total bandwidth bills in the thousands. However, I unfortunately had to add Adbrite ads to Blink File because of it’s unusally expensive setup. They’re not very bad and only appear on the view-download page… no where else on the site, though I do still allow direct hotlinking for files under 1MB (if you try to hotlink a file over 1MB, it just redirects you to the view page where you can download it). Sorry about that.
Anyway, I think Blink File turned out great and if you guys have any suggestions or find any bugs in it, let me know. Thanks!
Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to take his “Question Time” online with a unique twist. He answered question from 10 members of the public through an MSN video conference on the subjects of Africa and the climate change. While the subjects might not be too interesting, I think it’s cool to see leaders of countries stepping beyond the boundries of tradition and testing newer technology. It shows, however minor, progressive technological thinking in the leadership of the country… and that’s what caught my interest.
http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/news.php?id=82648
I’m leaving for the airport in a few hours to fly out to Cali. Bimmerfest is tomorrow.
I’m going from Atlanta to Phoenix to Las Vegas, then to Santa Barbra. Coming back I fly from Santa Barbra to Phoenix, then home to Atlanta.
It’s going to be great.Â
Last post I covered the technical / geeky side of car-wallpapers.net. Now what you guys are probably more interested in, widescreen support. I’ve done a bit of research on different resolutions and aspect ratios of widescreen monitors, and decided the best move forward is going to be redesigning the auto-resizing engine of the site based around aspect ratios, rather than hardcoded sizes. I also realized (in math and theory first, but then looked and saw in practicality) 1280×1024 is a different aspect ration than the standard 4:3 resolutions (such as 1024×768), and as such, most 1280×1024 images are stretched and distorted. 1280×1024 is unique as XSGA, and while it’s the default size for many LCDs, it breaks the rules of standard aspect ratio practices. I’m probably going to have to keep it in the 4:3 ratio bank and deal with the distortions unless someone has a better suggestion. Anyway, my plan for revising the uploads auto-resizing system is to, rather than create a static set of accepted resolutions, create a static set of accepted ratios, then check the uploaded image’s ratio against that static list, and confirm it’s larger than 800×600 overall. At that point, the system will automatically flag it as widescreen (if it is) on the view page, and automatically generate new wallpapers on a simple algorithmic step down, continuing recursively until breaking when the size drops below 800×600. This would allow you to upload a 1600×1200 and generate all the standard 4:3 background images, as well as uploading a 1920×1200 and stepping all the way down the widescreen list. When it’s rewritten, it will probably only support 3:2 (only because Apple went and changed things with Powerbooks), 4:3, 16:9, and 16:10. I was considering adding support for HDTVs and projectors (for the higher-income geeks), however I think that would be in vein, and add more junk to the galleries than anything else. I’m going to do a bit more research on this over the next week and ensure I’m not missing something so I can develop it correctly the first (or second, if your a pessimist) time. I’d appreciate any suggestions, comments, or ideas on this. Thanks!
