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- An Old-School Phone Phreak Has Been Making NYC Wifi Kiosks Play Creepy Music -
A spooky mystery that has been haunting the streets of New York City has finally been solved.
- Gorgeous fan-made retro Star Wars propaganda posters -
Russel Walks' astounding and vast collection of unofficial, retro-styled Star Wars propaganda posters are also available in postcard form.
- ‘Travis Strikes Again’ is an indie-sized comeback for Suda51 -
In 2010, Goichi Suda seemed unstoppable. The Japanese game developer, known by his nickname 'Suda51,' had just released No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, a vibrant clash of stylized decapitations and eccentric, oftentimes sexually-charged humor....
- Google Fully Moves Multiple Reports Over to the New Search Console by @MattGSouthern -
Google confirmed that multiple reports in the classic Search Console have been fully moved over to the new version.
The post Google Fully Moves Multiple Reports Over to the New Search Console by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
- Should Google Offer Algo Update Reports? by @martinibuster -
Should Google communicate better about Algorithm Updates?
The post Should Google Offer Algo Update Reports? by @martinibuster appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
- 25 Most Anticipated Games of 2019 - From Devil May Cry 5 to Wargroove, these are the games we're most looking forward to next year.
- That Time Bruce Wayne Teamed Up With Donald Trump… In Real Life?! -
In news you might expect to hear about a particularly gullible toddler and not the President of the United States, actor Christian Bale revealed that President Donald Trump once mistook him for Bruce Wayne, the alter ego of Batman, a fictional character who Bale portrayed in Batman Begins, Batman: The Dark Knight, and Batman: Dark Knight Rises.
In the film The Dark Knight, Bale’s Batman converses with a man with better hair and makeup than the President. Bale was speaking with spice-of-life-themed Hollywood website Variety when he recalled the time he was filming Batman at Trump Tower and found himself invited to the office of the future president, who mistook him for the billionaire playboy.
I met him, one time. We were filming on ‘Batman’ in Trump Tower and he said, ‘Come on up to the office.’
I think he thought I was Bruce Wayne because I was dressed as Bruce Wayne. So he talked to me like I was Bruce Wayne and I just went along with it, really. It was quite entertaining. I had no idea at the time that he would think about running for president.
It’s too bad it was Bale that met with Trump and not former Batman actor Michael Keaton, as the meeting may have gone a lot differently in that case…
The post That Time Bruce Wayne Teamed Up With Donald Trump… In Real Life?! appeared first on Bleeding Cool News And Rumors.
- The CAPTIVE STATE Trailer Is Here And Looks Super Intriguing -
And also maybe just a bit confusing.
- How to Download an App That's Been Removed From the App Store -
This week, Epic Games made the decision to pull all of its Infinity Blade games from Apple’s App Store. For fans of the franchise, it was a huge bummer. An even bigger bummer: if you had temporarily removed the app from your phone, now you can’t get it back from the App Store.
- Google: We Don't Need To Notify You Of Bad Links Because We Just Ignore Them - Since the Penguin 4.0 update Google devalues bad links versus demoting the pages they link to. So when John was asked why Google Search Console doesn't have a way to notify webmasters of bad links pointing to their site, John said "If we recognize them, we can just ignore them - no need to have you do anything in most cases."
- Edit and merge PDFs easily with this game-changing Mac app -
Businesses of any size continue to use PDFs despite - and perhaps because of - their stubborn resistance to simple editing. But for those who need a little flexibility on their documentation, the search is over for alternative software. PDF Expert for Mac is the catch-all solution for wrangling those PDFs, and it's available at a one-time low price.
PDF Expert for Mac is Apple's Editor's Choice for good reason. It makes editing PDFs as easy as it should be, with a smooth interface that allows you to open and read large files in a jiffy. Sign your documents, edit images or text, change links, add outlines or annotations - it's all at your fingertips. When you're done, the app makes it simple to share your PDFs across multiple devices, and you can even password-protect specific documents for added security.
The top paid app in the Mac App Store, PDF Expert for Mac is currently 75% off at $19.99 - the last time you'll see it at this price.
- Jon Heder Is a Bowling Alley Manager in Trailer for the Comedy WHEN JEFF TRIED TO SAVE THE WORLD -
Jon Heder, who is best known for his role in Napoleon Dynamite, stars in a new film coming out called When Jeff Tried To Save The World. The thing is, he’s not literally trying to save the world. He’s trying to save the bowling alley that he manages called Winky’s World from closing down.
It actually looks like a charming indie comedy that some audiences might enjoy, especially if you’re a fan of Heder. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen him in anything, and this looks like a good role that fits his style.
Here’s the synopsis:
Jeff (Jon Heder) is the manager of an old-school bowling alley called Winky's World. Everyday he is the first to arrive and the last to leave. He has memorized the shoe sizes of community regulars and the quirks of his fellow employees. Routine is Jeff’s middle name, and it’s up to him to keep everything and everyone in order. When his boss Sheila (Candi Milo) tells him that her soon-to-be ex-husband is selling Winky’s, he takes matters into his own hands. In hopes of sparking nostalgia within Carl, Jeff throws a party at the bowling alley in homage to its opening celebration.
When Jeff Tried to Save The World was directed by up-and-coming filmmaker Kendall Goldberg, and it also stars Candi Milo, Jim O'Heir, Anna Konkle, Maya Erskine, Brendan Meyer, Steve Berg, and Richard Esteras.
The movie will be released on December 7th. Check out the trailer and let us know if it looks like a film worth checking out.
- If You’ve Got Five Minutes, Then You Need To Watch WE SUMMONED A DEMON -
Our filmmaker pal Chris McInroy is back at it again with the blood-soaked hijinks.
- How Experts Spot Forged Paintings -
Insane prices in the art market make art forgery a potentially high-profit business. So how do art buyers tell real undiscovered artworks from fakes? To analyze and identify forgeries, experts must apply their knowledge of art history, plus the science behind the materials and techniques of artists. In the video…
- 10 Important 2019 SEO Trends You Need to Know by @MrDannyGoodwin -
Here are 10 major trends you need to know in 2019, according to 47 of today's top SEO professionals.
The post 10 Important 2019 SEO Trends You Need to Know by @MrDannyGoodwin appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
- Four tools to discover and optimize for related keywords -
SEO moved beyond exact keyword matching long ago. These days, in order to rank, we need to create content that includes related concepts, satisfies intent and provides value.
With such an important and complicated task in front of us, there’s never such a thing as too many tools.
Every keyword tool below has something new to bring to the table when it comes to helping you understand the topic better, expand your keyword list and diversify your organic rankings:
1. TextOptimizer
TextOptimizer is probably the most interesting tool on the list. For any term you put it, it will look at Google search result page, extract search snippets and apply semantic analysis to generate the list of all related topics, terms and concepts that form your topic cluster.
For example, for [grow tomatoes] it will generate the list of the following terms:
If you already have a page that you want to rank for that query, the tool will compare your existing text to the snippets Google returns for that query. It will then score your text and recommend expanding your content to include some of those suggested terms:
The thing is, Google generates its search snippets based on which sentences from the ranked pages do the best job satisfying the query. This means that Google search snippets represent the best (in Google’s opinion) summary of the query topic.
By semantically analyzing those snippets and extracting related terms and topics from them, you will get a better understanding of what you need to include in your content.
It also shows subtopics and related questions (i.e. niche questions for each query you run) which helps you structure and format your content better.
Overall I have found the tool extremely helpful for creating more indepth content as it does a good job urging the writer to include the variety of related and neighboring terms (in order to increase your score)
There’s a good guide on how the tool works here. There’s also a handy Google Chrome extension to help you easier access the tool.
2. Serpstat Clustering Tool
Serpstat Clustering Tool is another innovative tool that uses Google to better understand and analyze relevancy.
This tool should be used to make sense of your long keyword lists. Instead of simply word-matching, the tool analyzes Google SERPs for every single term in your list and groups them based on how many overlapping URLs each query triggers in Google.
The logic is simple: The more identical results two SERPs have, the more related the search queries are.
This way, instead of creating a group based on a common modifier, the tool will form groups based on each keyword meaning and let you discover keywords which have no words in common, yet can (and should) be used within one copy:
Read more about clustering here and about this grouping method here.
3. Spyfu Related Keywords
Spyfu has a separate tab listing related keywords to the one you put in. The nice thing about the tool is that it excludes phrases that contain your core term.
You can play with helpful filters to see more popular or less competitive keywords.
Read more about Spyfu related keyword analysis here.
4. Google: Related Searches, Google Trends, Google Correlate
Google is kind enough to provide us with lots of useful data that can be used for content planning and optimization. Here are three Google tools that are useful for discovering related terms:
Google Correlate
According to Google in the tool’s documentation,
Google Correlate is like Google Trends in reverse. With Google Trends, you type in a query and get back a series of its frequency (over time, or in each US state). With Google Correlate, you enter a data series (the target) and get back queries whose frequency follows a similar pattern.
In our case, we don’t have the data series, but the tool can also work with keywords: Simply put in your search term, and Google will calculate the trending pattern and show matching patterns.
Mind that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, so you may come across some funny terms. Don’t be discouraged! Keep running the tool and put together a list of related terms that do match your topic.
My favorite thing about the tool (and why I do use it) is that you can exclude your initial search term from the returned list which means you can prevent the tool from phrase-matching (which you already did when doing your traditional keyword research) and force it to come up with related phrases instead:
Google Trends
Google Trends is a more straightforward tool: Simply type in your core term and scroll down to “Related queries”, i.e. “Users searching for your term also searched for these queries”.
The nicest thing about this tool is that it shows “Breakout” queries, i.e. queries that “had a tremendous increase, probably because these queries are new and had few (if any) prior searches.” These could be an opportunity for trending content!
Google’s “Searches related to”
Finally Google’s “Searches related to” can give you some ideas where to expand your core terms. Notice how Google is helpfully showing new terms it’s suggesting in bold:
IMN Featured Snippet Tool collects those results and organizes them by (1) query they are triggered by and (2) popularity (i.e. based on how many queries trigger them):
Further reading:
- How to organize your keyword lists (Plus, some free tools to properly record your keyword ideas)
- The best alternative keyword research tools
- 3 keyword research trends to reshape your content optimization
Expand your keyword lists! This will help you create more in-depth content, diversify your rankings and generate exposure from other Google search result sections, like featured snippets and “People Also Ask.”
The post Four tools to discover and optimize for related keywords appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
- Human vs machine intelligence: how to win when ‘duplicate’ content is unique - Sometimes humans and machines disagree about what content is duplicate content. Here’s why–and how to beat the system when it happens.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. - Search Engine Reputation Management: How to Handle It with SE Ranking by @SERanking -
Here's a tool that can help you manage and maintain your reputation in search engines.
The post Search Engine Reputation Management: How to Handle It with SE Ranking by @SERanking appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
- The Cube Rule of Food, the Grand Unified Theory of Food Identification -
On the internet, a fierce debate rages. Are hot dogs sandwiches? Are Pop-Tarts ravioli? Is sushi toast? Into the fracas steps @phosphatide with their brilliant Cube Rule of Food. The idea is that you can fit all food into one of seven categories based on where the starch in a dish is positioned:
For example, enchiladas, falafel wraps, and pigs in a blanket are all sushi because the starch covers four sides of the cube like so:
Likewise, pizza is toast, a quesadilla is a sandwich, a hot dog is a taco, key lime pie is a quiche, and a burrito is a calzone.
The zero-eth category is a salad, i.e. anything that doesn’t include starch (like a steak) or in which the starch is distributed throughout the dish (like fried rice, spaghetti, and soup (“a wet salad”)).
Tags: food geometry - Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon 2: Zwei Remakes Announced - The first part is set to come out in 2019.
- The Case for Salting Your Ice Cream -
I grew up in a family of ice cream enthusiasts. My dad has always been a staunch supporter of Ben & Jerry’s, and a veritable super fan of Chubby Hubby—you know, the one with peanut butter and, more importantly, salty pretzels.
- Love in the Modern Age -
Girl meets boy in the workplace, circa 2018. This should be a movie.
We were online content moderators taking down nude photos. All day, we sorted through thousands of photos and messages flagged as inappropriate on a meet-up app. We sat nearby, but our office had a strict no-talking rule, so our relationship began in silence as we sent each other funny things we found via Gchat. This led to more messaging until one day we grew tired of talking about nudes and decided to see each other naked instead.
That’s a story by Kristine Murawski from a relatively new feature at the NY Times, Tiny Love Stories. There are only three other installments so far…it’ll take you about 5 minutes to read through them all.
Tags: Kristine Murawski - 5 Overused SEO Phrases to Nix & 5 Hot Phrases That Are In by @JuliaEMcCoy -
Let's leave tired SEO phrases in the dust and adopt a vocabulary that matches the present state of online marketing.
The post 5 Overused SEO Phrases to Nix & 5 Hot Phrases That Are In by @JuliaEMcCoy appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
- There’s only one requirement for authentic pasta all’Amatriciana -
Next time you see pasta all’Amatriciana (more often than not, it’s bucatini all’Amatriciana) on a menu, don’t order it. I’m serious. Kind of. You’re better off making it yourself so you can see that it includes its most important ingredient.
- Cats On Glass Tables -
These pictures prove that all cat owners absolutely need a glass table in their house. Our furry friends love to sit and stare at the world around them, but when they choose a flat surface to lay on, they give us a view we don’t have the chance to see everyday… and it’s oddly funny.
- Watch this comedian's hilarious step-by-step 'Tainted Love' dance tutorial -
When you've got moves like comedian Joe Kwaczala, it's best not to keep them to yourself. He says, "Yes, this is going to be the official dance from the music video." No, it's not. Watch it anyway.
Thanks, Jenny!
- Video Explains The Long-Term Psychological Harm of Bullying After it Ends -
As you know, I’ve been very vocal about bullying. This is a problem that many of us had to go through as a kid, kids are still going through it today, and even adults are victims of bullying.
I’ve even shared my thoughts and experiences on bullying in great length here. It’s hard, and I know that the bullying that I’ve endured has affected me in my life in some ways, especially with depression and anxiety.
I have a video here from Life Noggin, which features the animated narrator Blocko and Triangle Bob as they discuss their personal experience with being bullied and they also explain the long term residual psychological damage that remains with you even after the bullying itself has ended.
Targets of bullying often do worse in school and are more likely to skip or drop out. They are also more likely to experience depression or anxiety, develop behavior problems, and even begin bullying others.
The video also offers helpful advice to help ward off these long term effects of bullying.
…psychologists have been developing bullying prevention programs that focus on improving school and home environments, which have reduced reports of bullying by as much as 50 percent. And kids themselves can help by reporting incidences to adults, not reward bullies for their actions, and make a conscious effort to not bully back.
It’s hard to see people being bullied and it’s a shame that people feel the need to hurt others to do it. I just try to bring awareness to it to remind us that we can always do better to make the world a kinder place.
- The internet war on sex is here -
During the Great Internet Sex War, that began in the United States during its Facebook Era, people were forced to stockpile their porn. Lube was bought by the drum and hidden in bunkers alongside vibrators and air-gapped computers holding valuable tr...
- Love Letters to Mars -
Rebecca Boyle is one of my favorite science writers. In two recent pieces, she takes on our nearest, most Earth-like neighbor, Mars. The first is about a team of scientists doing research on extremophiles in South America.
The Atacama Desert stretches 600 miles south from the Peruvian border, nestled between the Pacific Cordillera and the Andes, “a cross extended over Chile,” in the words of the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita. Some parts of it are so devoid of life that their microbe-per-inch count can compete with near-sterile hospital surgical suites. Some areas of the Atacama, Earth’s driest nonpolar desert and the oldest desert anywhere, have been rainless for at least 23 million years, and maybe as long as 40 million years. Carbon cycling happens on timescales of thousands of years, comparable to Antarctic permafrost and places deep within Earth’s crust; the Atacama contains some of the most lifeless soils on the planet. The Atacama is one reason that Chile has become a haven for astrobiologists and astronomers: Its pristine dark skies offer an unparalleled view of the stars, and its depleted desert offers a peerless lab for studying the dry limits of life, including how life might survive among those stars. And honestly, it just looks a lot like Mars. It is the closest that these astrobiologists will ever get to the planet that occupies their grant proposals and their imaginations.
I’m neither an astrobiologist nor a professional astronomer, but I spend a lot of time thinking about Mars. I keep tabs on the robots spread across its surface and in its orbit, and sometimes I check their nightly photo downloads. The Atacama is not a giant leap from the Mars of my mind. As I drove up the coast, I found the view so much more like Mars than Earth. There are no palm trees or tourists or bleating gulls. There is nothing but brown, tumbling tanly down the hills, darkening to chocolate inside shadowy ravines and runnels, bleaching to an impoverished shade of cardboard, and crumbling into fine white beach before being swallowed by the cobalt hues of sea and sky. With no trees or succulents or even a blade of grass—not a smidge of green—the only disruption in the brown is a strip of asphalt, Ruta 1. With my cruise control set and David Bowie blaring, I pictured myself driving through Meridiani Planum, a vast equatorial Martian plain, en route to visit the Opportunity rover. The only reminders of other humans were the grim commemorations of car-wreck victims: Almost every mile of Ruta 1 is marked with roadside shrines to the dead…
Salar Grande was once a coastal inlet, much like today’s San Francisco Bay. It dried up between 1.8 and 5.3 million years ago, leaving behind a salt flat between 225 and 300 feet thick. The salar is therefore an analogue for the last time Mars was habitable, after Mars’ oceans, if there were any, dried up, when Martian ecosystems became concentrated in smaller places. And, like Mars itself, the Atacama is a glimpse into Earth’s own future. One day, billions of years from now, all of Earth may resemble this parched land of fissures and knobs, after our own oceans boil away, after the last trees fall, after the algae are all that is left of us.
“In the beginning,” Davila said, “there was bacteria. And at the end, there will be bacteria.”
The second piece is literally a letter, written to the Curiosity Rover that’s explored the red planet since 2012.
I think of you often. For much of this year, I saw Mars shining red in the window right above my computer. It was nice, like keeping an eye on you. And when I went to Mars earlier this year—actually the Atacama, a desert at the bottom of this world—the landscape made me think of you a lot. It made me grateful for the Mars you gave me, the Mars of my mind. Even more than your forebears did, you helped me understand why Mars stands out among the planets.
Earth’s other neighbors are interesting, sure. Jupiter is a peach-and-tan inkwell stirred with gothic darkness. Saturn and its orrery of moons trace feverish circles, as if brushed onto the void by the painter Kandinsky. Uranus and Neptune are the plain Christmas ornaments I hang next to the ornate ones, just to make the tree seem less busy. Mercury is a purple version of the moon, and Venus is a blast-furnace hellscape.
But Mars, little red Mars—it’s just like home. When you gaze out on the Murray Buttes, I see my Rocky Mountains.
That Mars — so like our world, yet so unlike it. Like a lover who understands and compliments us through similarity amid difference. It may be in the distance, but it is next.
And its visitors, like Curiosity, are already our friends:
I admire Juno’s photos of Jupiter and Cassini’s photos of Saturn, sure, but I don’t see the spacecraft in those images. And that means I don’t see myself. My connection to Mars comes from seeing you there. Seeing the terrain as you see it, that’s wonderful—but seeing you seeing it, feeling the photographer’s undeniable presence, is transformative.
Update: Boyle wrote a coda to her two pieces on Mars today for Last Word on Nothing. It’s Earth-focused, but then again, Earth is a very strange planet too:
Tags: Mars Rebecca Boyle spaceAt one point, after a couple hours of driving south, I needed a break. I needed to smell the ocean, mere feet to my right. I pulled over to the shoulder, parked my silver SUV on the sand, and walked a few feet. I was completely on my own. I saw nothing alive—no gull, no driver, no seaweed, no plant. I stared at the Pacific and felt my chest tighten. I was thousands of miles from my family, and I have never felt more alone.
The ocean was loud, dashing against dark rocks, and within a minute I felt like its rhythm was a part of me. It was going to swallow me and the sun was going to drive me mad. I strained to see anything else alive, some sign that I was still on Earth, but I saw nothing but sand and blue.
I squinted for a minute. The entire planet looks like this, from a great distance. From the Moon, you can make out the continents, patches of brown and green beneath a light frosting of clouds. But the general impression of Earth is one of blue and white. Ocean and sky. Our blue marble.
I listened to the Pacific and took a step forward. I was on Earth. I was so lucky to be here. So goddamn lucky I suddenly wanted to scream. Do you know how rare it is to have a planet covered in water? How precious it is to get out of the car, walk a few feet, and touch the ocean? It was the deep blue of my daughter’s eyes. This water is flowing through me, through her, through all of us here, together. Is this enlightenment? I thought to myself. I don’t know enough about Buddhism.
It was hard to get back in the car after that. But I feared that if I didn’t, the Pacific would rise up and consume me, swallow me whole before I had a chance to tell anyone I saw it. I had to tell her what I saw.
- These videos of Radio Shacks and Furry Conventions in the 1980s are incredible time capsules -
Watching this 1987 video of two Radio Shacks (one with Madonna music in the background) makes it clear that 30 years can be a long, long time ago. Prancing Skiltaire (the person who uploaded this video) said, "This was shot in Garden Grove, CA and Buena Park Mall, CA. The person who recorded was an employee working with a regional manager who was inspecting under performing Radio Shacks they were going to renovate." I was fascinated for all 15 minutes of this spellbinding video.
Be sure to check out Prancing Skiltaire's other amazing videos, like the Equicon Costume Presentation (1988):
And the first Furry Convention! (1989):
Use the promo code "LEE" and save $20 on your website hosting!