Zen mind: A personal view

Zen mind the "Natural" State is our essence: none even, no identity, no meme, no beliefs.

Any idea of "What is" takes us away from what should be at the moment, all ideas need be gone. There is not even an "I", the ideas to have.

The natural is acts as a result of the movement of the universe in the same way that an artist is moved by his "universe" brush.

All "lessons", take "spiritual" paths or "Holy" practices actually us away from the moment because it takes a "Me", they, with an agenda of whatsoever to win something to do. All of them from the eternal identity-free moment.

The only way that the "what is" can be experienced is all traces of losing themselves in this case could not be "What is" experienced because there is no one, to experience it.

No description of the State of natural spirit is false - it can not be described and who says you can is something fool themselves and/or - describes, is there an identity, to describe has and if there is to date can be real.

There is not even an "ultimate" State to win because the idea that there is takes us away.

All it is, is the process of the universe in its all-ness. There is no such thing as an "enlightened" or "unenlightened". These are just an idea of what is.

Even "Bliss" or "Transcendence" is a State of mind, a "Me" that these feelings to experience.

Thoughts are the glue of our belief structures. "I" is the creation of thoughts and beliefs.

What is operated if we think we are good human beings is the operating system of the brain types, demanding meme or belief structures, the content our identities feel itself running.

The only act awareness "can do", is "Self" awareness release. Awareness, to be fully as, "I" must no attached to it - and then, who understand there?

The natural state is where everything is useful and meaningless – everything is part of the whole and no link in the chain can be more important than the other.

Action and thought from this location, is an immediate, clear response to the call of the moment. It is the moment, the universe acts, not the person.

An absence of agitation is true peace, an absence of self-generated internal activity. So peace can not "done", or created - there is an absence do. This allows to be authentic "what is ness". All action from this State is completely harmonious (even if it "out there was someone" to experience the harmony - are not) and no conflict. There is nothing there to conflict with something else.

Is a natural feels the world clean, while a "Me" full of beliefs and ideas of itself, overlays this genuine feelings with external content draw you with emotional "free". This fee is reactive to create the world around him, constantly conflict as it tries to dispel.

(Modern research shows that there is a gap of about half a second between the body/mind of establishing a physical action and our conscious intention to do so.) This indicates that the body/mind instructions, no conscious intention acts according to his conviction. This is "I" just along for the ride – late - while pretending to be responsible.)

What's next from the moment only refers to this moment. It's already past and how experienced is not existent,. To keep something experienced or said at this moment, to the dead life past.

If you can touch it, show it taste has reality? This is not to say it's not real, but it may not really be. It could be a construct of ideas.

What actual or real can only because if all believe all ideas, all thoughts, all traces of identity are verschwunden-, if there no "I" are left to us from the moment take. If the eternal now moment is anything it is, this is the only way to be in it.

Thought is required only of use if there are certain of the moment for a task for called is. Beyond the specific call of the moment think keeping is the same as your arm over his head constantly to keep or keep your abdominal muscles tense all the time.

If you took every real current experience of natural is - the fragrance of a flower, a sunset, the death of a friend, a humorous situation, the movement of smoke on the wind - all of these at any moment but with no itself, are not "I", these things are aware, this is the natural state of mind.

How: understanding cross-cultural analysis

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Cross-cultural analysis could be a very perplexing field to understand with many different viewpoints, aims and concepts. The origins of cross-cultural analysis in the 19th century world of colonialism was strongly grounded in the concept of cultural evolution, which claimed that all societies progress through an identical series of distinct evolutionary stages.

The origin of the word culture comes from the Latin verb colere = "tend, guard, cultivate, till". This concept is a human construct rather than a product of nature. The use of the English word in the sense of "cultivation through education" is first recorded in 1510. The use of the word to mean "the intellectual side of civilization" is from 1805; that of "collective customs and achievements of a people" is from 1867. The term Culture shock was first used in 1940.

How do we define culture?

There are literally hundreds of different definitions as writers have attempted to provide the all-encompassing definition.

Culture consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies and symbols. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. (Adapted from source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Generally culture can be seen as consisting of three elements:

Values - Values are ideas that tell what in life is considered important.

Norms - Norms consists of expectations of how people should behave in different situations.

Artefacts - Things or material culture - reflects the culture's values and norms but are tangible and manufactured by man.

Origins and evolution of Cross-cultural analysis

The first cross-cultural analyzes done in the West, were by anthropologists like Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis H Morgan in the 19th century. Anthropology and Social Anthropology have come a long way since the belief in a gradual climb from stages of lower savagery to civilization, epitomized by Victorian England. Nowadays the concept of "culture" is in part a reaction against such earlier Western concepts and anthropologists argue that culture is "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically and communicate such abstractions to others.

Typically anthropologists and social scientists tend to study people and human behavior among exotic tribes and cultures living in far off places rather than do field work among white-collared literate adults in modern cities. Advances in communication and technology and socio-political changes started transforming the modern workplace yet there were no guidelines based on research to help people interact with other people from other cultures. To address this gap arose the discipline of cross-cultural analysis or cross-cultural communication. The main theories of cross-cultural communication draw from the fields of anthropology, sociology, communication and psychology and are based on value differences among cultures. Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Shalom Schwartz and Clifford Geertz are some of the major contributors in this field.

How the social sciences study and analyze culture

Cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture whereas archaeologists focus on material and tangible culture. Sociobiologists study instinctive behavior in trying to explain the similarities, rather than the differences between cultures. They believe that human behavior cannot be satisfactorily explained entirely by 'cultural', 'environmental' or 'ethnic' factors. Some sociobiologists try to understand the many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, other anthropologists generally reject it.

Different types of cross-cultural comparison methods

Nowadays there are many types of Cross-cultural comparisons. One method is comparison of case studies. Controlled comparison among variants of a common derivation is another form of comparison. Typically anthropologists and other social scientists favor the third type called Cross-cultural studies, which uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behaviour and to test hypotheses about human behavior and culture.

Controlled comparison examines similar characteristics of a few societies while cross-cultural studies uses a sufficiently large sample that statistical analysis can be made to show relationships or lack of relationships between certain traits in question. The anthropological method of holocultural analysis or worldwide cross-cultural analysis is designed to test or develop a proposition through the statistical analysis of data on a sample of ten or more non literate societies from three or more geographical regions of the world. In this approach, cultural traits are taken out of the context of the whole culture and are compared with cultural traits in widely diverse cultures to determine patterns of regularities and differences within the broad base of the study.

Aims of cross-cultural analysis

Cross-cultural communication or inter cultural communication looks at how people from different cultural backgrounds try to communicate. It also tries to produce some guidelines, which help people from different cultures to better communicate with each other.

Culture has an interpretative function for the members of a group, which share that particular culture. Although all members of a group or society might share their culture, expressions of culture-resultant behaviour are modified by the individuals' personality, upbringing and life-experience to a considerable degree. Cross-cultural analysis aims at harnessing this utilitarian function of culture as a tool for increasing human adaptation and improving communication.

Cross-cultural management is seen as a discipline of international management focusing on cultural encounters, which aims to discover tools to handle cultural differences seen as sources of conflict or miscommunication.

How laypersons see culture

It is a daunting challenge to convey the findings of research and field work and discuss cross-cultural issues in diverse contexts such as corporate culture, workplace culture and inter cultural competency as laypeople tend to use the word 'culture' to refer to something refined, artistic and exclusive to a certain group of "artists" who function in a separate sphere than ordinary people in the workplace. Some typical allusions to culture:

Culture is the section in the newspaper where they review theatre, dance performances or write book reviews etc.

Culture is what parents teach their kids and grandparents teach their grandchildren.

"You don't have any culture," is what people say to you when you put your feet on the table at lunchtime or spit in front of guests.

"They just have a different culture," people say about those whose behaviour they don't understand but have to tolerate.

Different models of cross-cultural analysis

There are many models of cross-cultural analysis currently valid. The 'Iceberg' and the 'Onion' models are widely known. The popular 'Iceberg model' of culture developed by Selfridge and Sokolik, 1975 and W.L. French and C.H. Bell in 1979, identifies a visible area consisting of behaviour or clothing or symbols and artifacts of some form and a level of values or an invisible level.

Trying to define as complex a phenomenon as culture with just two layers proved quite a challenge and the 'Onion' model arose. Geert Hofstede (1991) proposed a set of four layers, each of which includes the lower level or is a result of the lower level. According to this view, 'culture' is like an onion that can be peeled, layer-by layer to reveal the content. Hofstede sees culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another."

Cross-cultural analysis often plots 'dimensions' such as orientation to time, space, communication, competitiveness, power etc., as complimentary pairs of attributes and different cultures are positioned in a continuum between these.

Hofstede dimensions to distinguish between cultures

The five dimensions Hofstede uses to distinguish between national cultures are:

Power distance, which measures the extent to which members of society accept how power is distributed unequally in that society.

Individualism tells how people look after themselves and their immediate family only in contrast with Collectivism, where people belong to in-groups (families, clans or organizations) who look after them in exchange for loyalty.
The dominant values of Masculinity, focussing on achievement and material success are contrasted with those of Femininity, which focus on caring for others and quality of life.

Uncertainty avoidance measures the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity and try to avoid these situations.

Confucian dynamism. This Long-term versus Short-term Orientation measured the fostering of virtues related to the past, i.e., respect for tradition, importance of keeping face and thrift.

Trompenaars dimensions to distinguish between cultures

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997) adopt a similar onion-like model of culture. However, their model expands the core level of the very basic two-layered model, rather than the outer level. In their view, culture is made up of basic assumptions at the core level. These 'basic assumptions' are somewhat similar to 'values' in the Hofstede model.

Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner use seven dimensions for their model of culture:

Universalism vs Particularism (what is more important - rules or relationships?)

Individualism vs Communitarianism (do we function in a group or as an individual?)

Neutral vs Emotional (do we display our emotions or keep them in check?)

Specific vs Diffuse (how far do we get involved?)

Achievement vs Ascription (do we have to prove ourselves to gain status or is it given to us just because we are a part of a structure?)

Attitude to Time

Past- / present- / future-orientatedness


Sequential time vs Synchronic time(do we do things one at a time or several things at once?)

Internal vs External Orientation (do we aim to control our environment or cooperate with it?)

Criticism of current models

One of the weaknesses of cross-cultural analysis has been the inability to transcend the tendency to equalize culture with the concept of the nation state. A nation state is a political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language or languages. In real life, cultures do not have strict physical boundaries and borders like nation states. Its expression and even core beliefs can assume many permutations and combinations as we move across distances.

There is some criticism in the field that this approach is out of phase with global business today, with transnational companies facing the challenges of the management of global knowledge networks and multicultural project teams, interacting and collaborating across boundaries using new communication technologies.

Some writers like Nigel Holden (2001) suggest an alternative approach, which acknowledges the growing complexity of inter- and intra-organizational connections and identities, and offers theoretical concepts to think about organizations and multiple cultures in a globalizing business context.

In spite of all the shortcomings and criticisms faced by the Hofstede model, it is very much favoured by trainers and researchers. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is a wonderful and easy to use tool to quantify cultural differences so that they can be discussed. Discussing and debating differences is after all the main method of training and learning. Secondly, Hofstede's research at IBM was conducted in the workplace, so Hofstede tools brings cross-cultural analysis closer to the business side of the workplace, away from anthropology, which is a matter for universities.

Bibliography and suggested reading:

Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press
French, W.L. and C.H. Bell (1979). Organization development. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Hofstede, Geert "Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind", 1997
Holden, Nigel 2001, Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective, Financial Times Management

Quotation adapted from The Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com

Rana Sinha is a cross-cultural trainer and author. He was born in India, studied and lived in many places and traveled in over 80 countries, acquiring cross-cultural knowledge and building an extensive network of professionals. He has spent many years developing and delivering Cross-cultural Training, Professional Communications skills, Personal Development and Management solutions to all types of organizations and businesses in many countries. He now lives in Helsinki, Finland and runs http://www.dot-connect.com, which specializes in human resource development as well as communication and management skills training with cross-cultural emphasis. Read his cross-cultural blog http://originalwavelength.blogspot.com

Improve your blog page rank with Z list

Basic make up blogs Technorati are about increasing traffic to your blog and to improve the site ranks for your Web pages with search engines such as Google, etc.. Z list is an effective solution to meet these concerns.

What is Z list?

The Z list is a concept in December 2006 by Mack Collier, A viral garden as a meme started. A meme is a "unit of cultural information" that analog can propagate other spirit one in a manner to genes. The Z list is a blog meme that create blogger and many links to blogs in a single post has a list sharing. This list will have called Z list, because this is a list of blogs the need for A-list of blogs of exposure.

How help Z list can be set?

Search engines like Google, Technorati, etc. have a democratic system of ranking your blog / website. The number of other websites / blogs link to your blog / website is taken into account when assigning a PageRank to your website / blog. Therefore, if link of your blog / website, a Z list is up on a bunch of other sites published number of blogs / websites that is links to your blog and helps to improve the page rank of your blog. Secondly the webmaster of the blogs contained in the Z list on your site can see who is who want to link to your blog and can visit your Web site, request a backlink, leave a comment and even your RSS feed can subscribe to if you are interested to get your content. This helps to increase the traffic to your site.

To get more details about the Z list please visit [http://www.info4beingrich.blogspot.com]

To create 101 different strategies to link popularity

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Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings.

Many of us have been hoping that it would go away. In Brett Tabke's 5/18 Robots.txt entry, he echoed a sentiment that many, many webmasters hold on to as a hope:

What happens to all those Wavers that think [ i ]Getting Links = SEO[ /i ] when that majority of the Google algo is devalued in various ways? Wavers built their fortunes on "links=seo". When that goes away, the Wavers have zero to hold on to.

The pertinent questions:

Will link building still be very important for rankings in the medium term?

When will link popularity be devalued in favor of other algo elements (that are less tedious, from a webmaster's point of view)?

The answers:

Sorry, but link building is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future.

I wouldn't hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. Because links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship, on the Web. And for the forseeable future they're going to be the easiest way for a computer program to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a Web page.

What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn't count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors.

But please, don't fool yourself. Links that should count are still the key to rankings (in Google, at least -- and MSN and Yahoo! are only a few short years behind). In that spirit, Aaron and I have created our 101 Ways to Build (and Not Build) Links in 2006. (Yeah, it just so happened that there were exactly 101!)

Oh, and mad props to our inspiration, 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies, one of the original authority documents on link building. It was just getting a bit rusty, that's all ("Host your own Web Ring"?). Anyway, enjoy the update. It's guaranteed to be accurate until January 1, 2007. ;-)

71 Good Ways to Build Links

Love for Lists

1. Build a "101 list". These get Dugg all the time, and often become "authority documents". People can't resist linking to these (hint, hint).

2. Create 10 easy tips to help you [insert topic here] articles. Again, these are exceptionally easy to link to.

3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic (see Mr Ploppy for inspiration).

4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.

5. Create a list of gurus/experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an "authority".)

Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At

6. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. (It's an accessibility thing.)

7. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.

8. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.

PPC as a Link Building Tool

9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.

News & Syndication

10. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

11. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.

12. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

14. Trade articles with other webmasters.

15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with "in the news" pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + "in the news"].

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links.

Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking

18. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.

19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.

20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.

21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.

23. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site.

Local & Business Links

24. Join the Better Business Bureau.

25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)

27. List your site at the local library's Web site.

28. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other's business cards.

30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional "normal" links.

Easy Free Links

31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.

32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.

33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.

34. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.

35. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.

36. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.

37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide links... unfortunately, some will not).

38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products.

Have a Big Heart for Reviews

39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.

40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.

41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).

42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.

44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips -- make them believable, and be specific where possible.

Blogs & the Blogosphere

45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

Design as a Linking Element

50. Web 2.0-ify your site. People love to link to anything with AJAX. Even in the narrowest of niches, there is some kind of useful functionality you can build with AJAX.

51. Validate and 508 your site. This (indirect) method makes your site more trustworthy and linkable, especially from governmental sites or design-oriented communities. There are even a few authoritative directories of standards-compliant sites.

52. Order a beautiful CSS redesign. A nice design can get links from sites like CSS Vault.

Hire Help

53. Hire a publicist. Good old fashioned 'PR' (not PageRank) can still work wonders. Andy Hagans now offers a link baiting publicity service.

54. Hire a consultant. Yes, you can outsource link building. Just make sure to go with someone good. We recommend WeBuildPages, Debra Mastaler and, ahem, Andy Hagans.

Link Trading

55. Swap some links. What?! Did we really just recommend reciprocal link building? Yes, on a small scale, and with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks.

56. In case you didn't get the memo -- when swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.

Buying Sites, Renting Links & Advertisements

57. Rent some high quality links from a broker. Text Link Ads is the most reputable firm in this niche.

58. Rent some high quality links directly from Web sites. Sometimes the most powerful rented links come direct from sites not actively renting links.

59. Become a sponsor. All sorts of charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart.

60. Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the profits to a charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.

61. Many search algorithms seem biased toward older established sites. It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.

Use the Courts (Proceed with Caution)

62. Sue Google.

63. Get sued by a company people hate. When Aaron was sued by Traffic Power, he got hundreds or thousands of links, including links from sites like Wired and The Wall Street Journal.

Freebies & Giveaways

64. Hold a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollar prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links. Enough said.

65. Build a tool collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think ranking for "mortgage calculator" is worth?

66. Create and release open source site design templates for content management systems like Wordpress. Don't forget the "Designed by example.com" bit in the footer!

67. Offer free samples in exchange for feedback.

68. Release a Firefox extension. Make sure you have a download and/or support page on your site which people can link to.

Conferences & Social Interaction

69. It is easy to take pictures of important events and tell narratives about why they are important. Pictures of (drunk?) "celebrities" in your industry make great link bait.

70. Leverage new real world relationships into linking relationships. If you go to SEO related conferences, people like Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan are readily accessible. Similarly, in other industries, people who would normally seem inaccessible are exceptionally accessible at trade conferences. It is much easier to seem "real" in person. Once you create social relationships in person, it is easy to extend that onto the web.

71. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire.

30 Bad Ways to Build Links

Here are a few link buiding methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both.

Directories

72. Submit your site to 200 cheesy paid directories (averaging $15 a pop) that send zero traffic and sell offtopic run-of-site links.

Forum Spam

73. List 100 Web sites in your signature file.

74. Exclusively post only when you can add links to your sites in the post area.

75. Post nothing but "me too" posts to build your post count. Use in combination with a link-rich signature file.

76. Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.

77. As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day.

78. Post on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website.

79. Sign up for profiles on forums you never intend on commenting on.

Blog Spam

80. Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords.

81. Start marketing your own site hard on your first blog comment. Add no value to the comment section. Mention nothing other than you recently posted on the same subject at _____ and everyone should read it. Carpet bomb dozens of blogs with this message.

82. Say nothing unique or relevant to the post at hand. Make them assume an automated bot hit their comments.

83. Better yet, use automated bots to hit their comments. List at least 30 links in each post. Try to see if you can hit any servers hard enough to make them crash.

84. Send pings to everyone talking about a subject. In your aggregation post, state nothing of interest. Only state that other people are talking about the topic.

85. Don't even link to any of the sites you are pinging. Send them pings from posts that do not even reference them.

Garbage Link Exchanges

86. Send out link exchange requests mentioning PageRank.

87. Send link exchange emails which look like an automated bot sent them (little or no customization, no personal names, etc.).

88. Send link exchange requests to Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Tim Converse, Google, and Yahoo!.

89. Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites.

Spam People in Person

90. Go to webmaster conferences and rave about how rich you are, and how your affiliates make millions doing nothing.

91. Instead of asking people what their name is, ask what their URL is. As soon as you get their URL ask if they have linked to your site yet and if not, why not.

Be Persistant

92. Send a webmaster an alert to every post you make on your website.

93. Send a webmaster an email every single day asking for them to link to your website.

94. Send references to your site to the same webmaster from dozens of different email accounts (you sly dog).

95. If the above do not work to get you a free link, offer them $1 for their time. Increase your offer by a dollar each day until they give in.

Getting Links by Being a Jerk

96. Emulate the RIAA. When in doubt, file a lawsuit against a 12-year-old girl. (Failing that, obtain bad press by any means necessary.)

97. Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.

98. Send thousands of fake referrals at every top ranking Web site, guaranteeing larger boobs, a 14-inch penis (is that length or girth?), or millions of dollars in free, unclaimed money.

99. Wear your URL on your t-shirt. Walk or drive your car while talking on a cell phone or reading a book. When you run into other people say "excuse you, jerk".

100. Spill coffee on people or find creative ways to insult people to coax them into linking at your site.

101. Sue other webmasters for deep linking to your site. Well, this is more "hilariously dumb" than it is a "bad linking practice".

Written by

Joe Lovrek expresslinking.com

Why is Facebook so popular? Understanding can your company increase

Earlier today I was checking out my friends status on Facebook, if I click on a post by one of my friends closer random. He has released search a video about the group "Answers in Genesis" status re posted after tax. Now, whether you with this agreement is not the point, the point is that he re-it posted and although I know he believes does not agree with this in creation, he unwittingly transported one against view on Facebook.

Companies must on Facebook... PERIOD!

In the last few months Facebook has beat Google as the number of visitors. Facebook is has changed how Facebook and way # 2 ranked website in the world and the new method of marketing, to talk about the company for your customers.

Why should you put your business on Facebook? If the two above examples sufficient's here another one.

Most people go when you find that opened a new business or online come to Facebook, check your network and see if it bad press about you. Your future customers will tell you (and your friends) If you like, what you have to sell or promote, whether you're on Facebook, or not. Facebook offers a "presence" and what is a way to even more important to have a direct conversation with your customer base.

Ok... Is this old news, right? Well, it's a new twist on it. Bring to the "meme"! What is a meme? Chances are you know what you are, but still not up now you consciously been made.

Richard Dawkins first used the word in his book "The Selfish Gene". Basically, a meme is a self-replicating ideas created by melodies, technology, catch-phrases and the like.

What does this so, have, with my business to do on Facebook?

In the first paragraph, my friend had introduced a meme to it via the link. The meme triggered a response (humor) and my buddy like spread humor, and he did to his hundreds of friends. Memes are good if you distribute and Facebook is to spread the Queen Mother memes. These small "mind viruses" can be created, how do companies through their marketing campaigns. When you start to spread good, positive memes to get better on the social network of # 1.

Through my friends single post he spread an idea and an organization the he even believe that more than seven hundred people and those people who probably can contain thousands of people on your Facebook profile to your networks, the hundreds, if not, booked you get the idea.

You can accept the change, you can prosper business. Social networks are not a fad, and they are not removed. If you are building a relationship with your customers on Facebook, you are at risk on the cutting edge of extinction.

By fired from my job more than 5 years and in the amount of the bad economy, I said "enough is enough!" I started career on my consulting on the same day... two days before my birthday, I might add. I vowed, "which I will never outside my talents again and I take their money and business to empower people want to" and, that desire came a difference.

Go to my site at http://desireadifference.com and sign up for my newsletter. Take your future today for free.

Success in the balance

It doesn't matter what body you in, male or female born. Sex has nothing to do with success and happiness. So whether you're male or female, the balance between the male and the female energy in you is a key component to the holistic success.

A cultural memes existed for many years either creates a female or male definition of success. Therefore, we have an old locked paradigm, the only definition of success is an achievement in terms of measurable, material. This action caused a falling in love with the future and a resentment against the now. (Called resentment disregard or lack of appreciation.)

Then, it's a revolutionary group, are obsessed with the female side (luck in the now), the upset of the male (objectives and drive for the future) have become.

So, by releasing the control of our ego masking, getting back to our natural balance both masculine (destroy the present future - objectives drive and inspiration to create) and the female (happiness, satisfaction, appreciation for now). This is the natural cycle, we develop on the border between the male and the female. Between the celebration of the now and the INSPIRATION of the future. This is how we achieve holistic success. Balanced success.

Therefore hesitate so important for success. We are obsessed with the male, performance, and lose the beauty of life. With this model of life nothing met and we are prone to depression. Remembering that depression in the can now exist. Depression is present in its root, because what we have and what we want are different. In the now are the same what we want and what we have.

Motivate healthy success needs therefore to hesitate a balance and inspiration. The quality is the reluctance of crucial importance, because if we hesitate and sit there, moan about what life should be, would be happening as if..., then it is not to hesitate. It is the depreciation. Hesitation with health we must sit in appreciation.

I have worked with many people who meditate on a daily basis. The whole art of meditation is to come from the future and in the now. Eastern art of meditation are fantastic process for hesitate, but their teachings in the West are cumbersome and time consuming. Sitting in meditation, want for anything is at all not meditation is depression. This is one of the reasons people away from it, shy, because it is so poorly informed.

Eastern meditation has by Western teachers and teachers the old meme life success fit distorted been. You say "meditate so you can receive, achieve something, something, achieve whatsoever." The entire Foundation of a brilliant science of Eastern philosophy was damaged in a part of a masculine paradigm, and that means "to be happy must reach." It is only half right. Happy to have you both to achieve and cannot be achieved.

How many people teach meditation properly in the West? Find the answer to the meditation brochures, in your local area. Each meditation that promises a result is not meditation, it is something else. Feed ambition, teachers will promote a result meditation. Less stress, more this, less that - automatically revealed your ignorance. Meditation is to hesitate and hesitation comes from empty.

Be really fully in life, we need this balance of performance and empty. This is hesitation a space where life just is what it is and we are happy about it. Thankful. It is a counterweight to the half term, the Western masculine perception of "reach to get." Want to keep all your life, by some secret paradigm that keeps you from happiness to live? This is so unbalanced as the Eastern philosophy of "sitting on a cushion life to enjoy."

Real chaos comes when we need a balance of the reluctant but sit in meditation that are achieving "Stresslessness" want or being in a relationship, love, or play with your kids to reach family, working in the Office to achieve reach money, it's a hidden paradigm that can keep us really sick, unbalanced and anxious.

Mediocrity is terrible. A celebration of the feminine nor masculine in all of us. It's like beige. A nothing space: boredom. It is not in the NOW or inspired by the future and this is the sad mediocrity of average life happy. No wonder people are looking for substitutes. The West is obsessed with performance, in the East is now obsessed and the advanced person you need both to be owned, rather than dilute in a hybrid, impossible, where.

A major challenge is the mediocrity of the mass consciousness to avoid maintaining or have the need for people. For most people, life is like a tight rope and offered when a 6 lane motorway instead of the rope, take it. This is GOT TO and should be thinking. Don't blame them. It is of course want to safety but we can be also wise and see the mass of consciousness creates all problems such as depression, violence, fear and uncertainty come join the mediocrity of the highway from the choices people make. To stay in employment relationships that are not inspiring or happy you hate.

Success is a balance between now and the future. Mediocrity, created mediocrity in the other. Brilliance in one, create brilliance in the other. More can embrace your feminine side and celebrate this now for what you have, the more inspired by the future, be grateful.

Chris Walker - http://www.chriswalker.com.au - Chris Walker is a man who knows about life. He lives there and explore it, corporate governance, sport champion and mountain guide in Nepal all the way to Yoga Masters and Zen.His consult with a sting can come. He is not conventional, nor did he follow a conventional philosophy. Walker cuts to the Chase. His guidance follows traditional lessons that come from the real heart of human nature. Walker's Office is in the open air. His advice, training and retreat are programs outdoors. He speaks about the true nature and helps people move emotional rhetoric, the true power that comes from the human heart. Chris is confidential. It helps restructure organizations think re and re vision of the future. He worked alone, he works fast and is not intimidated by the "old guard" or the outspoken opposition. Blog address http://www.chriswalkeronline.com

Techno narcissism - life in "Shooting"

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Digital gear is getting cheaper, smaller and better all the time, from cameras and MP3 players to the latest little netbooks and GPS units. Every gadget and gee-gaw has its obvious function, but it's in the not-so-obvious combinations of these new technologies that we find the excitement and eternal newness that we seem to crave. We also find some real silly ideas, along with good ones that we grow tired of, so there is a constant influx of "new and improved."

For instance, Chrysler says that it will start a build-to-order program in 2009, for 2010 models, offering a 3G-to-Wi-Fi device that will let you cruise the highway and surf the net at the same time. Drivers can use voice commands to perform common functions wired into the auto systems, while passengers can link up to cyberspace with any Wi-Fi-capable PDA, iPod, computer or other high-tech doohickey. Think of all the combinations possible with all these devices.

Still, one of the more intriguing possibilities combines a losing idea of Bill Gates' that no one even talks about anymore. He first brought it up in the mid-1990s, but it was quickly laughed away. However, the jabbermeisters of the Internet are starting to percolate on the subject again, since it is apparent that Microsoft "researchers" never stopped working on it up there in the Pacific Northwest.

The following was posted this past April on Splashdot.ord ("News for nerds, stuff that matters"):

Microsoft researchers are developing a way to enable you to capture every moment of your life and store it on your computer. The principal researcher with Microsoft's research arm, Gordon Bell, is developing a way for everyone to remember those special moments. The nine-year project, called MyLifeBits, has Bell supplementing his own memory by collecting as much information as he can about his life. He's trying to store a lifetime on his laptop. He's gone on to collect images of every Web page he's ever visited, television shows he's watched, recorded phone conversations, and images and audio from conference sessions, along with his e-mail and instant messages. Calculating that he saves about a gigabyte of information every month, he noted that he tries to only save photos of a megabyte or less. Bell figures one could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage.

Six months of replies and ripostes has created a very entertaining web page, and all of the objections that could be raised against this, well, "totalizing" notion probably have been raised. Number crunchers dispute the storage calculation, while privacy advocates had a score of targets among those few hundred words. Yet this kind of thinking should concern everyone, because the relentless march of progress will make the equipment needed to pull off a MyLifeBits-type operation, like all digital toys and tools, cheaper, smaller and better as time passes.

Completing the circle No, the article didn't get off track. It just took a while to get around the subject's ever-widening circle. Remember the new Chrysler options, the roving Wi-Fi and the voice-commanded, total-digitized multimedia experience? Now consider, too, that you will be able to outfit your car with a back-up camera from the option list - and if the car companies don't add a camera up front for you, you can just get the Voyager Pro and record video, time and GPS location to an SD card (with capacities up to 8GB and 16GB, depending on whether you use the SD or SDHC format).

So, let's add it all up. With off-the-shelf tech gear, and build-to-order components from the car manufacturer, you can record everything you do in or out of your car. But I can hear some of you asking, Why not just say you can record your whole day and be done with it, what's this about the car?

The car is the Trojan Horse. Car cams are the way to make this kind of activity acceptable. Look at the history of vehicle video, as a subset of the history of video security and video surveillance: As soon as the technology got cheap enough, video cameras started being installed in police cars. They have proven invaluable, and not just in apprehending drug runners on I-95 in Florida or coyotes careening through the desert with a pickup bed full of day laborers. The recordings have also nailed cops in the act of brutalizing women drivers and tipping over soda machines.

Ways and memes So we may know how this meme, this new and almost subconscious cultural acceptance of "a recorded life," propagates. First it's in the cars, then everywhere else. Let's step back and think where this could lead. The first thing you should consider, which is actually one of the things most people never consider at all, is how easy it is to edit, delete, add to, subtract from or otherwise alter a digital video file, with or without audio. An artsy-techie geek (may I coin an acronym here, ATG?) can, without too much trouble, show you crashing your 1998 Jeep Cherokee into the side of the Pentagon. And hey, isn't that Dick Cheney riding shotgun?

Computer forensics being what it is - a new discipline whose good guys have to learn some dirty doggone stuff to be leading edge - there is just no way that the average person will be able to authenticate a digital pic or video clip. The trust level, initially, will be nil, nada, zero, zip and fuggedabowdit. And that's not all, of course. The quirky nature of the enterprise suggests a boatload of lawsuits - curious, spurious and no doubt furious, as well - over copyrights, trademark infringement, invasion of privacy and (naturally) discrimination, sexual harassment and racism.

Chinese Menu Gadget Development All of these things happen. Every bad thing that can occur in the world, does. Of course there are people who videotape movies in the theater, use ethnic slurs, peek up women's dresses and don't return wallets they find on the bus. They are going to have a lot of editing to do, unless they get the "voice-command option" and walk around all day half-barking "Start!" and "Stop!" orders to their shirt-button zoom-lens recorders.

In fact, this may be just Chinese Menu Gadget Development at work once again. Some of these technology combinations may just be solutions in search of very specific (picayune?) problems, while others are just downright silly. There may be some use for front- and rear-facing cameras in autos, inasmuch as providing additional viewing capability to a driver is a good thing. You may even have a good reason, from time to time, to record the images being captured by one or both cameras.

You also may be well served from time to time by a portable videorecorder, but not necessarily a tiny spycam on your baseball cap or behind your second shirt button. And you certainly don't need one that's always on. And that's because, you see, most of what happens in our lives is routine, uneventful, mundane, even silly and pointless - hardly the sort of material most people want to memorialize. Think of it this way: When everyone in class gets an "A" there is no more better, worse, average or "needs improvement"; when everyone is an "honored student" at Podunk Middle School you can bet there are no real "honor students" there; and if everything is accorded the status of a recorded "life highlight," then, of course, there are no highlights. In this milieu there is nothing special, period.

The default position There are five or six more articles brewing to take care of all the tangents leading off from this one. We've just barely touched on the legal issues involved, and had room for only brief mentions of the political, psychological, emotional and technological facets of the issue. Yet we can still come to one important conclusion here, and that concerns the "default position" that we would assign to such devices as we use for video security, video surveillance, self-defense, property protection and even personal picture taking.

Since most of our day is pedestrian stuff; since most of what we say is not the least bit memorable; since we already know what the hallway from the bedroom to the living room looks like; and since it doesn't take much effort in the age of cellphone cameras and $9 one-use videocams to snap a pic or shoot a video of something really special - for all these reasons and so many more, dear reader, the default position for any sort of MyLifeBits unit should be "off."

By Scott McQuarrie, representing the EZWatch Pro brand, a leading provider of computer based Security Cameras for business, commercial and government applications.