I was just scanning through the Cingular Terms and Conditions found here: the cell phone service that brings sunshine to my day

And I found a paragraph that actually made me laugh out loud:

How’s that for SEO? Legally prohibiting anyone from linking to their homepage with any negative associations. My favorite part was “This limited right may be revoked at any time”… so they could suddenly decide you’re not allowed to link to their website anymore, and sue you? Hah

Edit: Wow, it seems Verizon is even worse:

Thinking about selling your car? I’ve always been interested in the psychological side of things like this, so here’s a few tips I’ve compiled to help you convert that lead and close that sale. A few of these are done by almost all dealerships around the country, and in a business as competitive and tried-and-true as car sales, there is definitely advice to be learned.

• Treat everyone like a hot lead - Sometimes the most apathetic-seeming person turns out to be your buyer. Never let yourself slip into the mindset of “this person isn’t going to buy it,” because then subconsciously (or consciously) your sales pitch will lose momentum and you will almost definitely lose the deal. The only thing lost from putting 100% effort the whole time is a little energy, as you’ll most likely never see the person again anyway.
• Clean out “junk” in door trays, etc. - Anyone coming to see your car is looking to buy a new car for themselves. Sure it’s old and used to you, but to them it’s brand new. The entire time they’ll be trying to visualize themselves owning and driving the car, and your personal nicknacks scattered around the car will cloud their imagination. When they see someone else’s things all over the car, it detaches them from it on a personal level, and makes it harder for them to see them self owning it.
• Make the car seem new - Again, your prospect knows the car is used, however it’s still a new car to them. A few bucks and a little attention to detail can greatly increase your car’s new-vibe, which is huge in convincing someone who comes to look at it. Aside from a good wash (inside and out), here are few cheap, but necessary things to do:
  • If you have leather seats, condition them. It’ll cost you $10 and take half an hour, but afterwards you’ll admit it’s a night and day difference. Strongly recommended.
  • Condition the rubber strips around the door and window frames. Everyone looking at a new car will notice this, if only subconsciously. When they open the door and get in the car, if they see the old, gray, cracking weather strips, they’ll psychologically apply it to the whole car. They last thing you want them thinking is the car is old and falling apart. If you don’t want to spend the money on actual conditioner, vasoline works really well for this as an alternative.
  • Spray on tire shine. Tire shine costs a few bucks and literally takes seconds to apply, however it’ll triple the external appearance of your car.
• Get a car fragrance - I recommend the “new-car” scent, as it goes with the vibe we’re aiming for. These can be picked up at any gas station and will only set you back a dollar or two, however it’s another thing your prospect will notice, and it’ll work hand-in-hand with all the other suggestions to truly feed that person’s internal desire for a nice, new car.
• Show off your air conditioning / heater - One of the best impressions on a perspective buyer is a nice heater or air conditioning system. Before the arrive, sit in the drivers seat and turn the air vents toward the driver’s face with a solid, but not overwhelming blast (maybe medium on the fan control). If it’s winter, warm up the car all the way just before the prospect arrives so the heater will already be hot. When they arrive and look around the car for a bit, they’ll most likely want to do a small test-drive. When they sit in the car and turn it on, the refreshing cold or hot blast will trigger a “ooh, nice” reaction in their mind. As soon as that happens, you can immediately step in and turn it down pretending it was an accident, rather than looking like you were showing off. A quick sorry and a small smile should be all it takes.
• Read your prospects mind - This is a huge tip that could make your sale in itself. Play a little psychological warfare with your prospect and predict their personality type, then act on that to keep them in the right mindset. For example, on the phone if your prospect seems to be a high-energy, friendly, fun, youthful female, consider finding a cute teddy bear and strapping it in with the seat belt on the passenger side. When she sees it, you’ll probably get an “awe….” reaction, and immediately increase her overall psychological attachment to the car. Granted this might backfire on some women, but that’s up to you to read them accurately beforehand. Another example is a male buying a sports car from you. When the topic of a test-drive comes up, consider throwing a few jokes out there such as “Are you sure you can handle it?” always followed with a huge grin so they know you’re teasing. When making jokes, ALWAYS keep your car in a positive light. This injects good thoughts in their mind. If it’s a guy buying a sports car, he’ll probably want a fun, fast car… so joking about it being too powerful or handling too well is usually a safe strategy. However for jokes to work, it requires you to be able to seem completely natural and friendly when saying them, otherwise the prospect will see through you as trying too hard.

Now, if you use any of these tips and they help you successfully sell your car, I’ll obviously retain a 15% commission payable to be through PayPal.

Good luck and happy selling!

Two days back I spent an insane amount of time doing research and calculating statistics for the top digg users, based on how many homepage articles they submitted over a 30 day period of time.

From the results:

I’ve finally finished adding up all the authors who’s submissions made homepage in the past 30 days (same as before, March 15th 2007 to April 15th 2007), and it had a strangely cool outcome. The number of users who had more than one article hit the homepage in the past 30 days works out to be EXACTLY 300. It’s the small things in life….

I submitted the article to Digg (link), and within 3 hours it had almost 100 diggs. It quickly became the most popular upcoming article, but even at 100+ diggs, it did not cross over to homepage. In fact, after sitting there at the top of upcoming for an hour or two, it got buried. Here’s an example of the comments posted on the digg article after it happened, “This should hit the front page, I can’t believe it got buried.”

I’m not saying anything that didn’t deserve it should have been homepaged, I’m just curious with such high support in upcoming, why it didn’t cross over.

Now, I’m not sure what happened with Digg’s system there, but this article has been attracting quite a bit of buzz on it’s own, including a post on seomoz: link. From that, I’ve decided to try again and see if things happen any differently this time. If you know what could have stopped this article from crossing over to the homepage last time, I’d be curious to know (please leave a comment here).

Anyway, now to the results! Here are the top 50 most powerful digg users for the previous 30 days. View the full list of 300 here.

#1  MrBabyMan — one hundred thirty three articles (!!!)
#2  gmark13 — forty eight articles
#3  supernova17 — forty five articles
#4  mklopez — forty four articles
#5  AdmiralAdama — forty articles
#6  1KrazyKorean — thirty five articles
#7  interg12 — thirty articles
#8  skored — twenty six articles
#9  Blakovitch — twenty five articles
#10  IvanB — twenty four articles
#11  noname94 — twenty three articles
#12  populist — nineteen articles
#13  webtickle — nineteen articles
#14  zaibatsu — nineteen articles
#15  ace77 — eighteen articles
#16  webtech — sixteen articles
#17  sepultura — sixteen articles
#18  Andy.D — fifteen articles
#19  tomboy501 — fourteen articles
#20  jstohler — fourteen articles
#21  MercedRocks — fourteen articles
#22  OneManArmy — fourteen articles
#23  kevinrose — fourteen articles
#24  burkinaboy — fourteen articles
#25  djm0ther — thirteen articles
#26  CLIFFosakaJAPAN — thirteen articles
#27  koregaonpark — twelve articles
#28  Mythos — eleven articles
#29  decepticrat — eleven articles
#30  estvir — ten articles
#31  H3LLSL337 — ten articles
#32  littlebylittle — ten articles
#33  bonlebon — ten articles
#34  geekchic — nine articles
#35  drum_bum — nine articles
#36  gokss — eight articles
#37  webtechgeek — eight articles
#38  DiggityMcDigg — eight articles
#39  ojames — eight articles
#40  themaximus — seven articles
#41  Viewel — seven articles
#42  mcflynnthm — seven articles
#43  elsewhen — seven articles
#44  econoar — seven articles
#45  savingadvice — seven articles
#46  Hawker400 — seven articles
#47  xBBx — seven articles
#48  rwert — seven articles
#49  Hilton — six articles
#50  sterntastic223 — six articles

View the complete list

This will probably be my last Digg analysis post, as I’ve already spent WAY too much time on it, haha.

Following two successful studies on Digg’s Most Popular Domains (and Sorted by Topics), I had an idea for one to finish the series. Ever since Digg removed the top users list, I’m always wondering who is a one-hit-wonder submitter, and who has a track record of submitting high quality articles.

I’ve finally finished adding up all the authors who’s submissions made homepage in the past 30 days (same as before, March 15th 2007 to April 15th 2007), and it had a strangely cool outcome. The number of users who had more than one article hit the homepage in the past 30 days works out to be EXACTLY 300. It’s the small things in life….

And now, a comprehensive list of the top Digg users for the past month:
(are you listed?)

#1  MrBabyMan — one hundred thirty three articles (!!!)
#2  gmark13 — forty eight articles
#3  supernova17 — forty five articles
#4  mklopez — forty four articles
#5  AdmiralAdama — forty articles
#6  1KrazyKorean — thirty five articles
#7  interg12 — thirty articles
#8  skored — twenty six articles
#9  Blakovitch — twenty five articles
#10  IvanB — twenty four articles
#11  noname94 — twenty three articles
#12  populist — nineteen articles
#13  webtickle — nineteen articles
#14  zaibatsu — nineteen articles
#15  ace77 — eighteen articles
#16  webtech — sixteen articles
#17  sepultura — sixteen articles
#18  Andy.D — fifteen articles
#19  tomboy501 — fourteen articles
#20  jstohler — fourteen articles
Read the rest of this entry …

After the success of the recent Most Powerful Sites on Digg study, I decided to invest some time in a follow-up. In the comments, there seemed to be some interest in breaking down this list by the most popular Digg topics, so someone could see an isolated comparison of the top Political or Apple domains, for example. I’ve spanned this research over a one month time period again, from March 15th to April 15th 2007. Unfortunately I’m not very familiar with a lot of the more niche specific sites, so I’ll leave the commentary out this time, and just give you the raw results. Now, without further adieu, the lists after the split.
Read the rest of this entry …

I’ve become increasingly interested in Digg in recent months, and decided to run a study on the most powerful sites on Digg. This is a study over the past 30 days (from April 14th 2007 to March 14th 2007), analyzing which domain names hit the homepage most often, and which domain names received the most diggs overall, irrelevant to the number of homepage appearances.

List 1 - Most Powerful Sites by Homepage Appearances

#1 - arstechnica.com - 121 homepage stories - 91277 total diggs
Ars Technica is an obvious number 1. They rarely post top-ranking articles, with only 3,100 diggs on their top article over the time period observed, however they have a staple line of about 4 smaller articles per day reaching the homepage.

#2 - www.engadget.com - 84 homepage stories - 66409 total diggs
Engadget takes two from all the geeky pleasures Diggers get from prototype phones and ipod rumors.

#3 - www.nytimes.com - 44 homepage stories - 36487 total diggs
Usually hosting stories of school-related misconduct or political polls, the New York Times often provides a trustworthy medium for widely known stories. For example, today’s New York Times article about Google buying DoubleClick reached homepage, trumping over the dozens of other submitted sources about the same story.

#4 - consumerist.com - 41 homepage stories - 59473 total diggs
“Caveat Emptor” is a widely popular theme among Diggers, and I believe the Consumerist is a medium Digg uses to connect together and raise awareness of corporate misconduct.

#5 - gizmodo.com - 33 homepage stories - 34729 total diggs
Going hang-in-hand with number 2 ranked Engadget, Gizmodo further supports with Digg’s geeky gadget addiction.

#6 - news.yahoo.com - 32 homepage stories - 34974 total diggs
Another trustworthy medium (in Digg’s overall opinion) for high-profile stories and interesting oddball stories.

#7 - www.cnn.com - 32 homepage stories - 29821 total diggs
Tied with Yahoo News for homepage appearances, CNN was forced to number 7 by a slightly lower total digg count.

#8 - www.washingtonpost.com - 30 homepage stories - 27867 total diggs
The Washington Post - an alternate digg-trusted news medium.

#9 - news.bbc.co.uk - 27 homepage stories - 23236
I assume most of Digg is US based, so the BBC often adds an international non-biased spin on topics.

#10 - www.wired.com - 26 homepage stories - 18781 total diggs
With recent articles such as “The 10 Real Reasons Why Geeks Make Better Lovers,” WIRED knows exactly how to cater to a geek’s interest.

List 2 - Most Powerful Sites by Total Number of Diggs

#1 - arstechnica.com - 121 homepage articles - 91277 total diggs
With that many homepage articles, how could they not be number one in number of diggs?

#2 - www.engadget.com - 84 homepage articles - 66409 total diggs
Cool, new, geeky gadgets are almost automatically dugg.

#3 - consumerist.com - 41 homepage articles - 59473 total diggs
Getting bumps from articles such as the number 4 most popular article this month, “Google Suggests You Swim Across The Atlantic Ocean,” The Comsumerist easily secures #3.

#4 - www.nytimes.com - 44 homepage stories - 36487 total diggs
A fairly tight race against Yahoo News, the New York Times pulled ahead this month by a margin of 1-2 popular stories.

#5 - news.yahoo.com - 21 homepage stories - 34974 total diggs
Yahoo News, like all the others on this list, highlight the quality of articles written or the quickness of news broken… as each submission gets on average 1665 diggs.

#6 - gizmodo.com - 33 homepage stories - 34729 total diggs
Gadgets are often a hot topic on Digg.

#7 - www.flickr.com - 13 homepage stories - 32531 total diggs
There has been a strong push for a pictures section on Digg, however while each submitted picture that hits the homepage gets a very high digg-count, only having 13 popular submissions from Flickr all month tends to show it might not be worth it to dedicate an entire section of the website to just pictures. Granted other many websites submit pictures as well, so this benchmark isn’t very accurate.

#8 - www.cnn.com - 32 homepage stories - 29821 total diggs
Many articles made popular, but usually not as highly dugg as articles from the New York Times (#4) or Yahoo News (#5).

#9 - www.washingtonpost.com - 30 homepage stories - 27867 total diggs
The same as CNN, many homepage articles, but few high-ranking submissions.

#10 - www.scribd.com - 9 homepage stories - 25474
An absolutely incredible ranking- Scribd hit the top 10 list with only 9 homepage articles. They hold the number two slot on the most popular submissions this month with “What you always wanted to write on your exams but couldn’t,” which greatly boosted their ranking (6500 diggs).

There you have it, the top 10 highest ranked domains on Digg, in order of homepage appearances and total digg count. If enough people enjoy this, I might do it again over a larger time-period (maybe even from digg’s very beginning until now, using archive.org).

Google is famous for their light-hearted attitude in an often boring corporate world. They regularly slip small easter eggs in their systems, like the Pi Symbol in Google Personalized Homepage, or an actual answer when you search for answer to life, the universe, and everything (if you don’t know, don’t ask)… however here’s another one in Google Maps I’d never seen before.

1. Head over to maps.google.com.
2. Click on “Get directions”
3. For the first textbox (where you’re coming from), enter “New York, NY”.
4. In the 2nd textbox (destination), enter “Paris, France”.

You’ll notice the map looks a little…. well, take a look for yourself (screenshot):

Then if you scroll down on the directions, take a look at number 23:

Oh Google, you’re so silly.

- Thanks to my amazing girlfriend Laura for pointing this out to me. I’m the computer guy, and she’s still showing me things on the internet I’ve never seen before.