Tips to Make Reading Fun – Online Auction
Tips to Make Reading Fun
Angela Billings
This list is for both young and old. I love reading and want everyone to love it as well. So I hope you will find at least one thing helpful in this list and that it will inspire you to come up with some of your own.
1. Vist the public library if you cant get to the library you can also find some of the great authors works online. Just do a search online for "public domain books"
2. Keep a basket of books in an accessible place for everyone in the family. Put a variety of books in that the various members in your family will enjoy.
3. Make your own library. Keep your eye out at yard sales, thrift stores, online auctions ,etc for books then bring them home clean them up and put on your bookshelf. You can even encourage your children to "check out" the books. Simply seal a business size envelope and then cut the envelope in half and tape or glue one half in the back of a book and place an index card inside. Then the child places their name and the date they got the book on the card and the card is put into an index card box. Children love playing library. They can even let their friends check out books.
4. Read aloud to your family, if you live alone read aloud to yourself.
5. Start a book club among your friends.
6. Do a project that goes along with the book. This could be a craft or a recipe.
7. Make or buy pretty bookmarks as a special gift to your children or yourself.
8. Simply enjoy reading and all the places you can go through books and all the things you can learn.
About The Author
Angela Billings is a stay at home wife and mother who publishes an online newsletter Home and Family Ezine.
http://www.homeandfamilyezine.com
A Way for Search Engines to Improve – Casino
A Way for Search Engines to Improve
Richard Zwicky
Wouldnt it be nice if the search engines could comprehend our impressions of search results and adjust their databases accordingly Properly optimized web pages would show up well in contextual searches and be rewarded with favorable reviews and listings. Pages which were spam or which had content that did not properly match the query would get negative responses and be pushed down in the search results.
Well, this reality is much closer than you might think.
To date, most webmasters and search engine marketers have ignored or overlooked the importance of traffic as part of a search engine algorithm, and thus, not taken it into consideration as part of their search engine optimization strategy. However, that might soon change as search engines explore new methods to improve their search result offerings. Teoma and Alexa already employ traffic as a factor in the presentation of their search results. Teoma incorporated the technology used by Direct Hit, the first engine to use click through tracking and stickiness measurement as part of their ranking algorithm. More about Alexa below.
How can Traffic be a Factor
Click popularity sorting algorithms track how many users click on a link and stickiness measurement calculates how long they stay at a website. Properly used and combined, this data can make it possible for users, via passive feedback, to help search engines organize and present relevant search results.
Click popularity is calculated by measuring the number of clicks each web site receives from a search engines results page. The theory is that the more often the search result is clicked, the more popular the web site must be. For many engines the click through calculation ends there. But for the search engines that have enabled toolbars, the possibilities are enormous.
Stickiness measurement is a really great idea in theory, the premise being that a user will click the first result, and either spend time reading a relevant web page, or will click on the back button, and look at the next result. The longer a user spends on each page, the more relevant it must be. This measurement does go a long way to fixing the problem with "spoofing" click popularity results. A great example of a search engine that uses this type of data in their algorithms is Alexa.
Alexas algorithm is different from the other search engines. Their click popularity algorithm collects traffic pattern data from their own site, partner sites, and also from their own toolbar. Alexa combines three distinct concepts: link popularity, click popularity and click depth. Its directory ranks related links based on popularity, so if your web site is popular, your site will be well placed in Alexa.
The Alexa toolbar doesnt just allow searches, it also reports on peoples Internet navigation patterns. It records where people who use the Alexa toolbar go. For example, their technology is able to build a profile of which web sites are popular in the context of which search topic, and display the results sorted according to overall popularity on the Internet.
For example a user clicks a link to a "financial planner", but the web site content is an "online casino". They curse for a moment, sigh, and click back to get back to the search results, and look at the next result; the web site gets a low score. The next result is on topic, and they read 4 or 5 pages of content. This pattern is clearly identifiable and used by Alexa to help them sort results by popularity. The theory is that the more page views a web page has, the more useful a resource it must be. For example, follow this link today -
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detailsq=&url=http://www.metamend.com/
- look at the traffic details chart, and then click the "Go to site now" button. Repeat the procedure again tomorrow and you should see a spike in user traffic. This shows how Alexa ranks a web site for a single day.
What Can I Do To Score Higher With Click Popularity Algorithms
Since the scores that generate search engine rankings are based on numerous factors, theres no magic formula to improve your sites placement. Its a combination of things. Optimizing your content, structure and meta tags, and increasing keyword density wont directly change how your site performs in click-tracking systems, but optimizing them will help your web sites stickiness measurement by ensuring that the content is relevant to the search query. This relevance will help it move up the rankings and thus improve its click popularity score.
Search Engines Can Use the Click Through Strategy to Improve Results
Search engines need to keep an eye to new technologies and innovative techniques to improve the quality of their search results. Their business model is based on providing highly relevant results to a query quickly and efficiently. If they deliver inaccurate results too often, searchers will go elsewhere to find a more reliable information resource. The proper and carefully balanced application of usage data, such as that collected by Alexa, combined with a comprehensive ranking algorithm could be employed to improve the quality of search results for web searchers.
Such a ranking formula would certainly cause some waves within the search engine community and with good reason. It would turn existing search engine results on their head by demonstrating that search results need not be passive. Public feedback to previous search results could be factored into improving future search results.
Is any search engine employing such a ranking formula The answer is yes. Exactseek recently announced it had implemented such a system, making it the first search engine to integrate direct customer feedback into its results. Exactseek still places an emphasis on content and quality of optimization, so a well optimized web site, which meets their guidelines will perform well. What this customer feedback system will do is validate the entire process, automatically letting the search engine know how well received a search result is. Popular results will get extended views, whereas unpopular results will be pushed down in ranking.
Exactseek has recently entered into a variety of technology alliances, including the creation of an Exactseek Meta Tag awarded solely to web sites that meet their quality of optimization standards. Cumulatively, their alliances combine to dramatically improve their search results.
ExactSeeks innovative approach to ranking search results could be the beginning of a trend among search engines to incorporate traffic data into their ranking algorithms. The searching public will likely have the last word, but webmasters and search engine marketers should take notice that the winds of change are once again blowing on the search engine playing field.
Did you find the information in this article useful Feel free to pass it along to a friend or drop us a line at comments@metamend.com.
About The Author
Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firms business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geo-locational, or GIS technology, which correlates online businesses with their physical locations, as well as their cutting edge advances in contextual search algorithms.
articles@metamend.com
How to Make Restaurant Quality Coffee At Home – Food
How to Make Restaurant Quality Coffee At Home
Gary Gresham
Have you ever wondered how restaurants get their coffee to taste so good
First of all, restaurants are in the business of pampering you so they devote much more time to the perfection of a good cup of coffee. Sometimes Ill remember a restaurant just because of their excellent coffee.
So what are their secrets and how can you duplicate this recipe at home It may surprise you to find out that the French Press brewing method could be the secret in achieving that restaurant quality taste.
Most fine restaurants use a press pot, also known as the French Press, which produces an extremely rich cup of coffee.
Press pot coffee is coffee steeped for 3-4 minutes between 195 to 205 degrees F. It produces a thicker and much richer taste than an auto-drip machine can produce.
A disadvantage of the French Press is it may leave trace amounts of coffee sediment. But the rich taste more than makes up for the small amount of sediment at the bottom of your cup.
So first, start off with a quality medium roast coffee, which is what most restaurants use. I can give you a couple of good recommendations.
Seattles Best Breakfast Blend, Starbucks Breakfast Blend or Starbucks Sulawesi Coffee is 3 excellent choices. These are full-bodied coffees yet very smooth tasting. They are some of our best sellers at PerfectCoffees.com and work well for French Press brewing.
You want to grind the coffee slightly larger than you would for drip coffee. Too fine of a grind will produce a bitter cup of coffee. If your grind is too coarse, the coffee will taste weak. A quality grinder is the best thing you can do to improve the taste of French press coffee.
Remove the plunger from the press pot and put 1 rounded tablespoon of coarse ground coffee per each 6oz. of water into the pot. You can adjust this to your own taste.
Coffee is 99% water so use clean filtered or bottled water free from chlorine and other minerals that affect the taste of coffee.
Boil the water and remove it from the heat for five minutes before you pour it. This will give you the 195 to 205 degree water that is ideal to brew with. Now pour the 195 to 205 degree water over the ground coffee.
Stir the coffee to get total saturation of the grounds then place the plunger on top of the pot and let the coffee steep for 3 to 4 minutes.
Depress the plunger slowly to push the grounds to the bottom of the pot.
Serve all the coffee in the pot after the 3 to 4 minutes of steeping. Otherwise the coffee will keep getting stronger.
If you have any left, you can always transfer it to a clean, preheated air pot or a stainless steel Thermos. This will keep the coffee hot about an hour without hurting the flavor.
The French press brewing method definitely takes more time but gives us the result we are looking for. Restaurant quality coffee in the comfort of your own home.
Copyright © 2004 PerfectCoffees.com. All Rights Reserved.
This article may be re-published "as is" unedited as long as the authors bio paragraph resource box and copyright information is included. The URLs in the resource box should be set as hyperlinks if used on a web page.
About The Author
Gary Gresham is the webmaster for www.perfectcoffees.com where you can purchase quality coffee, tea, cups & mugs, coffee gifts and delicious desserts online. He offers a free monthly coffee newsletter at www.perfectcoffees.com/newsletter.html.
Gary@perfectcoffees.com