February 8, 2005 Archives

A couple weeks ago we reported on how Google disabled an employees blog, because of his blog, ninetyninezeros, was just too revealing. So the story continued, cleaned up the blog, got some publicity and we went on with our lives. Now there are reports over at Google Blogoscoped of a forum post there named Mark Jen Googlewhacked.

Here is the post, from a member named "aconcernedgoogleemployee":

I regret to inform you that Mark Jen was fired from Google on Friday, January 28th. I don't have any details, but I can tell you that he was quietly let go. An e-mail was sent out to the entire company, letting us know that the matter many had written to management expressing their concerns about, had now been taken care of. I initially thought that this meant that Mark had been told to be more careful about discussing company financials, but it soon became apparent that Mark had left the company. I can only assume that his silence since that date means that they either threatened him or cut him a sweet severance deal. Whatever happened, it's a sad day when you can't speak openly about both the good and bad at your chosen place of work without getting silenced.

Ammon Johns, someone I highly respect in this industry, has announced that he is looking to hire and (even better) train an SEM who is already well experienced. Normally, I would not post these types of things on this site, but many of you who read here are well experienced and skilled SEMs/SEOs, and I thought this might be of interest to you. This seriously can be the opportunity of a life time for many of you, I would love to join Ammon but it just doesn't make sense for me at this time. My true love is outside of the SEO/SEM field and more in the Web business automation area.

But for you that live and breath SEO/SEM, and have heard the name Ammon Johns, this is something you probably do not want to pass up. For more information about the job based in the UK and the £70,000 price tag, check out the thread he posted at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I seriously hope this does not mean that we will be hearing and seeing less from Ammon. I highly doubt that is the case.

Oh, by the way, I am also hiring two hard core PHP / MySQL developers. More information at Craigs List. I will also personally train you in SEO/SEM, if you like. :) But SEM is a side part of the job, main part is to develop robust Web based applications that automate businesses.

This is that funny, check out http://www.gizoogle.com/, its basically uses the Google engine but puts the Snoop Dogg's twist to it. For example, it will "Translizzle" your page. I translated my company page and this is sample of what I got:

Original:

Since 1994, RustyBrick has been creating Web for businesses and organizations of all kinds. Using the latest Web technologies, we build the most dynamic and reliable sites on the World Wide Web. We have hard working, devoted developers with the skills to make your Web site a living, growing representation of your dreams.

Translizzled:

Since 1994, RustyBrick has been messin' Web fo' businizzles n organizzles of all kinds . Bow wow wow yippee yo yipee yay. Using tha latest Web technolizzles, we build tha miznost dynamic n reliable sites on tha World Wide Web . We have hard messin' devoted playa wit tha skills ta makes yo Web site a liv'n, grow'n representizzles of yo dreams.

Not bad. Forum discussion at Cre8asite.

Some news I left out yesterday, was that Google officially announced that they are including Google image results in the main search results when they find it relevant. We had reports of Google testing this back in late december when I wrote Google Test Images Within Google Web Search. Now when we all do a search on Charles Manson, you get to see who you are searching for.

Some people do not like this and some do. Let's take you to the forums: WebmasterWorld

I must quote Jeremy, "Goodbye Mapquest", and hello Google Maps. I am messing around with it, this is really extremely easy to use, and its so damn geeky! I did a search on my company, "rustybrick, suffern, ny", and it brought up related matches and the exact match as letter "A". Then I clicked on A and it plotted it on the map, actually, just check out what I did with this little movie I made in QuickTime format named Google Maps to RustyBrick (12MB).

Current forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch and JimWorld so far.

It is also always great to hear what Danny has to say about these things.

Great move by Ask Jeeves, in my opinion. Its just too bad they can't keep a secret. Everyone was bussing about the rumored purchase of bloglines by ask jeeves a few days before they officially announced it.

Here is a nice quote from the announcement:

"Bloglines is not only a market leader in feed aggregation and blog search, but it is truly one of the most useful and addictive services on the entire Web. We are excited about providing Bloglines with the resources to grow its service and help it reach a broader audience," said Jim Lanzone, Ask Jeeves' senior vice president of search properties. "Bloglines is a natural fit for our multi-brand portfolio, as we extend our information retrieval services to encompass the rapidly growing amount of dynamic content and information available in the blogosphere."

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch and WebmasterWorld.

I think, I might, switch from MyYahoo to Bloglines, it seems to be more popular based on my stats. I know one can not make judgments based on one site's rss feed. But its worth a try.

I left out the official word from the new Ask Jeeves Blog.