links for 2008-03-07

My favourite user comment: "The BBC is starting to realise who might be in power in a couple of years and naturally want to ensure they keep their licence - Weejonnie".

"I think PageRank sculpting is a slippery slope of giving spiders different content than site visitors. Search engines want what users want. If you do not believe that a page's content is important, then don't link to it. Better yet, remove the content".

"One thing I have always found quite troubling that Social Bookmarking sites might drive traffic, but they do nothing to build quality backlinks". The lowdown on which networks have high PageRank, good Alexa volume, and don't 'nofollow' or redirect links.

"The Greek electric company has started rolling power cuts across the country. A spokeswoman said 19 plants were out of operation". Maybe not looking forward to going home so much then.

"When you're bootstrapping a new site you need to think about which glasses you pour link juice into. Are you going to argue a PR4 contact us page is OK when you have a PR 2 product page? Are you going to say I shouldn't fix that by sculpting PageRank?"

"In a way, the fact that Britannica was always a little bit out of date was its main strength, because time gave its writers and readers enough space to consider their ideas and acquire a little perspective". Another take on the latest wikispat.

"An episode of Heroes was downloaded 2.5m times just through Mininova. A sensible industry, mindful of the mess the music business has tied itself up in, would look at its distribution options and try to work out what's driving people to crime."

"The screenshot above, therefore, shows what happens to a widget once released into the wild. As you can see, its takeup is really rather good: it’s regularly getting 8,500 hits every day. And I’ve simply not promoted it". Kudos to Mr Cridland.

The question is, of course, can I customise my wife's EEE PC to run in full desktop mode for me, without necessarily telling her ;-)

"A French court ruled on Monday that a web site can no longer let pupils name & shame their teachers. Unions took the site to court, saying personal comments represented a breach of privacy and an 'incitement to public disorder'".

Martin Moore on the latest news from the "You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried" desk.

Been there, tried that, gave up around 2004.

iPlayer impact on ISPs with actual figures and stuff, rather than finger-in-the-air "We're all dooooomed" wailing.

The fact that on the map in this article the BBC has to change the name of the northern province of Greece from 'Macedonia' to 'Greek Macedonia' says it all about why this is such an important issue of national pride to the Greek people.