Sep 6, 2013

Godaddy plans 700 new top-level domains & Google plans to make them "dotless"!

Like Gordon Gekko, the infamous power broker in the movie "Wall Street", I'm having mixed emotions lately on Godaddy's upcoming plan to create and release as many as 700 new generic top level domains (like .com, .net, etc).

Gordon put his mixed emotions best, saying of them, "buddy; it's like [my nemesis] Larry Wildman going off a cliff....in my brand new Maserati."


Sounds right. Because on the one hand, until reading about the massive deluge in new GTLD's, I'll bet very few who were sold or brokered high-value .com's were, at any point in the decision-making process, counseled to be conservative. For instance, I don't remember hearing:

"Hey [Godaddy customer], before you pull the trigger on this six-figure domain purchase, just hold in mind that we've got like 700 more of these babies coming out in a year or two...so…".

That said, there are numerous and easy to appreciate benefits to such an enormous change in gTLD availability (many of them itemized in Godaddy's gTLD press release). 



These new gTLD's won't come cheap! In fact, the evaluation fee alone is $185,000 PER GTLD! That means shelling out $130,000,000 to ICANN just to get them through the evaluation phase!
 

Once approved, there is a fixed fee of $25,000 a year per gTLD (so another $17.5mm/year just in registration fees alone. Not cheap!

Perhaps all these fees had something to do with ICANN's recently announcing its rejection of Google's plans for a “Dotless .Search” gTLD".

Anyone have ideas on where this rapidly changing URL configuration technology is heading?

Thoughts would be appreciated!

Christian Hunter
Austin, TX

Aug 23, 2013

Can Foc.us tDCS enhance cognition and cure depression?


So I've been testing the new Foc.us tDCS headset and wanted to share some early observations.  


The technology, known as "tDCS" (an acronym for "Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation") has been getting attention lately with largely positive, even glowing, anecdotal reports (and an increasing number of favorable clinical studies) testifying to its efficacy in improving cognition and mood.

While not the first company to address the growing demand for at-home tDCS systems, www.foc.us is the first well put-together tDCS headset designed to be useful by any consumer, even those without any training in its application.  

I recently got mine and am more than a little excited to use it!  Check back as I plan on posting my experience with it soon!

In the interim, I'm sharing some notes (below) I collected for those looking to learn more about tDCS technology:

Transcranial direct current stimulation is a form of neurostimulation which uses constant, low-current delivered directly to the brain through various vectors (various cognitive functions appear to be affected more significantly depending where on scalp electrodes are placed).

tDCS was originally developed to help patients with brain injuries such as strokes. However, more recently tests on healthy adults have demonstrated that tDCS can significantly enhance cognitive performance on a variety of tasks, increase working memory, alleviate depression, the list goes on, and the benefits depend on the placement of the electrodes on the head and area of the brain being targeted for stimulation. 

tDCS has thus far been utilized to enhance language and mathematical ability, attention span, problem solving, working memory, learning, and coordination.  In some of the more interesting studies below you'll learn that tDCS, being used by the US military, reliably increases overall learning speed by 230%!  

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427177/diy-kit-overclocks-your-brain-with-direct-current/

http://j.mp/PopSCItDCS

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) can modify brain behavior by inducing changes in its function. To better understand the effects of tDCS, study examines tDCS' impact on performance on working memory and underlying neural activity

http://j.mp/shockingtdcsAustralianstudy

http://j.mp/tDCS

http://j.mp/tDCSstudy

http://j.mp/tDCSstudysummary

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/the-gaming-headset-that-literally-shocks-your-brain-to-attention/

http://www.diytdcs.com/

Hope you found the above information of use.  Please take a moment to share your experience with this (or any) tDCS system.

Jul 3, 2013

Four killer SEO best practices to instantly surge your video traffic!

This post will describe in simple easy terms how to use basic seo best practices to boost search engine ranking and massively increase traffic from your videos.  

One of the most common mistakes amateurs make when they upload a video is to forget seo best practices...even the most basic SEO for that matter.  You should remember that not paying attention to video SEO has the same effect on on traffic that ignoring SEO for a common text-based page has!
Video SEO marketing
The basic video SEO elements available on YouTube.com

There lies the biggest problem: despite video SEO being just as easy (or easier) as "regular" SEO, the basic search engine ranking work needed for video content just isn't being done.  That's also the opportunity: it's far easier to use basic SEO marketing techniques to boost your video search engine ranking across the major search engines than boosting ranking for an ordinary text page.

Many don't understand that unlike the way search engines rank a text based page, search engine ranking today is "blind" when it comes to automatically contextualizing, categorizing, and indexing video content.  So just as with an ordinary  text webpage, search engines rely on the same titles, descriptions, and tags that to determine the search engine ranking for a video page!  Search engines today are expert at making sense of non-optimized text-based webpages (given that a non optimized text-based page at least has text-based keywords in it...among many other useful attributes).  All to say, video content however is far more enigmatic and must be decoded or "unwrapped" by a search engine to in order to properly categorize and determine search engine ranking.

The good news is, optimizing your video for search engines is just like optimizing SEO for your website and blog copy...in some senses a lot easier!  Below you'll quickly learn that the best SEO best practices for text media can be utilized for video media.  That's all to say that the same methods you use to determine what key words and phrases people will use to search for your web pages and blogs you'll use to determine the keywords and phrases in your title, metadata, and page description of your videos.

Read on to learn the exacts of how to do this:


​This brief tutorial reminds us that if you want high traffic to your video then it's absolutely essential you leverage popular high-traffic sites that have already partitioned (or make it simple for you to partition-out) demographic "lookalikes" on their site for you to target.

A lookalike is a visitor on another site with the same basic demographic composite as the visitors to your site.  All you have to do to tap into those massive pools of potential visitors is to get their attention!

The link below shows you how you can target your demographic in search engines with feeds and links which will, if done right, shuttle traffic from these high traffic sites over to your video page (or serve up the video directly to them by embedding or other means).  One such site with a massive and demographically diverse rushing river of traffic to target is Pinterest.com.

Read on for a step-by-step instructional on the use of the Pinterest.com site to drive traffic to your Youtube video:


​The following one-page tutorial assumes you understand how absolutely critical relevant keywords are in determining rank on all major search engines.  It goes further and delves into the simple mechanics of optimizing your video for specific search keywords.  So, for instance, when you first upload your video onto youtube.com or vimeo.com the existing filename on that video becomes the video name by default.  Almost always those video file names aren't optimized for search engines.  As an example, your video filename might be “video_01.mp4” once uploaded to youtube.com; this link will show you how to optimize titles and the rest for video SEO best practices, so your uploaded video might instead read "Danes Body Shop Austin TX - personalized coaching  gym pricing.".

Read more to learn how to easily optimize your newly uploaded video for high search traffic:


The following is one of the broadest and most comprehensive one-page tutorials that'll show you everything you need to know to get your proverbial "associate's degree" in online video SEO marketing.  This sweeping instructional covers Titles​ ​an​d​ Descriptions, Tags and Categories, the increasing​ ​importance of Transcription (transcription of the audio/voice within the uploaded video itself) to video SEO marketing now, as well the importance of securing solid traffic right out of the gate to help boost the SEO rank of your uploaded video.

They also cover thumbnails, embedding, analytics, and all the rest!

Read on to check your knowledge of SEO marketing on Youtube and Vimeo before you upload your next video online!


Below are a number of additional educational resources you may find useful in your video SEO best practices marketing and traffic generating efforts.  Do you have any good ones?  If so, please add in the comment section below!

Thanks,

Christian Hunter
Austin, TX


May 14, 2013

Exit Through the Giftshop


I'll just go ahead and acknowledge straight-away the fact that there's a bigger universe of possible television or movies for you to watch (other than this film) tonight than there has ever been in the history of our species, even more available tomorrow night.  So why would you watch internationally acclaimed and cult-artist Banksy's documentary "Exit Through the Giftshop"?  Well I'm not saying you should.

However, if you dig street art, even a tiny little bit, then odds are you're going to be really glad you chose to watch this fantastic film:

First, a little background on my own personal preference: I like art.  Now I don't go totally bananas when Claude [insert super Euro 14th century last name] blah blah's lithographs find their way into town under armed guard.  Hard pass.

To me there's something far more more interesting, compelling, and relevant about an artist who, well, who's actually seen a car in his or her life, and who has something to say about their experiences in this very alien world we now live in today.  That's all even more true when that artists principal motivation isn't fame or money, but pride in their work.

The guys and gals whose exhausted bodies are compelled, from a rare nights sleep, up out of bed and into the streets to not only work for free, but to do it because they LOVE it!  They thrive on breathing life into the cold edges of our cookie-cutter urban sprawl, and care far more about impacting hurried passers-by than some career critic; they seek to "wow" their involuntary constituency to attention, and in that moment, however fleeting, is their opportunity: many street artists exploit that attention to shock or amuse their observers, some merely insight or perpetuate awareness of their brand, but the best, challenge our preconceived notions, our bias, our politics and even ethics.  

A good mix of artists from the totally obscure to internationally famous can be found in this spectacular documentary; I got a chance to watch again recently, and it was even better the second time.

"Exit Through the Giftshop" follows a loosely networked collection of artists, each seemingly equally adept at holding your interest.  A bit surprising is how, as vanguards of contemporary urban/graffiti art today, these artists remain so impossibly modest, especially true given the fact that most of them are also every bit as eccentric, fascinating, and thoughtful as you would expect them to be.

Watch them sneak, dive, duck, and creep through the night, buckets of paint in each arm, jonesing to discover a new and unique medium where, once found, they'll hurriedly apply their art.  

While actively hiding in plain view, these rock-ribbed  all the while seemingly fearless; their ambitions electrified by the night, and illegality of it all.    often jaw-droppingly cool .

This is an interesting and entertaining little gem of a movie that's perfect for anyone who loves urban street art, and also desires to learn more about the still largely enigmatic artists who have no qualms with routinely risking their freedom (as well their very life and limb); to conjure into overnight-existence their increasingly sought after and sophisticated art, and field it on the frontlines of some of the most heavily fought for asset in the world: a share of your attention.

The Movie Page

Feb 25, 2013

Film edited in bedroom on a Macbook wins Oscar


Shawn Christensen Curfew
The magic between these two is remarkable

QUESTION:  What do you get when you combine a quickly written screenplay shot in 7 days with a 3 person crew (each publicly unrecognizable), then edit the film from your bedroom on a retail application (Final Cut 7) using an ordinary Macbook?

ANSWER:  You get an Oscar!

Or at least Shawn Christensen did.  Shawn Christensen is the writer and director of the film "Curfew" (and, as of last night, is also an Oscar winner having snagged "best live action short" film award for the 19-minute long gem).  Shawn Christensen has a very bright future!  A bright future indeed!

Having chosen Curfew to watch on a whim, I was immediately taken-in by how well-done it appeared.  This gripping drama and a fascinating aesthetic piece also affected a curious empathy in me from the first frame; I believe the director intended this, and wisely entrusted its preservation to the deft acting performance of the films few central characters.  

In Curfew, Shawn Christensen expertly couples just the right mix of cinematography with a captivating tight-as-a-drum script, expert cinematography (despite his editing the film in his room on a Macbook Pro!), absolutely first rate acting, and a frighteningly perfect musical score.

And then there was the dance scene.

It was this films own little slice of Travolta and Thurman, and it was nothing short of film magic.  In fact, it's scenes like that one in Curfew which serve as the contemporary cinephile's raison d'ĂȘtre.  Films like Curfew do so much to sustain our faith.

Shawn Christensen and his acting mates Fatima Ptacek and Kim Allen delivered up so much up in such a small package.  This film is a wonderful way to spend 19 minutes, and is a wonderfully deserving recipient of the Oscar award last night!



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