My New Website

I just started a new website - MyAdButler.com - which will (eventually) have all kinds of information about advertising and social-networking gadgets for small business owners. Check it out sometime if you like my posts on here about SEO and the like.

Recent Mentions

As I wrote in a previous post, this blog is not actually part of the stiuqxela contest. Instead, I've been using it to test a few S.E.O. strategies that I might use for my company in the future.

Unfortunately, some of the strategies I used were a little too effective, resulting in a first page of Google results almost entirely created by myself. For example, as soon as I wrote the 3 articles on stiuqxela and submitted them to the top 3 free article directories, they all immediately shot to the first page of results.

Although this was a good thing in that it showed me how effective free article submissions are for obscure terms, it left a bitter taste in the mouths of a few class bloggers (see Joel Rakes' post or Tyler Randall's post for an example). It definitely wasn't my intention to frustrate other bloggers, so I'd like to take some time to mention a few blogs that did a good job in the contest but probably won't end up ranking #1:

- Chris Leone made some good efforts, creating a page on his own site about stiuqxela and even attempting to create a Wikipedia entry about stiuqxela.
- Cullenoscopy was the early favorite to win the contest, since it has great content and authority (receiving a valuable link from an xbox blog).
- Ashley Goldberg has always had a pretty good ranking for her blog. (She mentioned this blog, so I might as well mention hers too).

Stiuqxela Links

According to a recent post by Stiuqxela: SEO meets the Green Bay Packers, my theory of Mesh's and Cynthia's blogs moving up in the rankings has been a good one so far (especially in MSN, as the author noted).

To see these 2 blogs, go to:
Stiuqxela: The Life of Cyn
Stiuqxela: Mesh's Blog

Until next time, search on.

Stiuqxela?

One stiuqxela blog recently caught my attention. In this post about stiuqxela news, the author mentioned that if he could put stock in Google rankings, he would invest in mike's stiuqxela blog (see one of his posts about stiuqxela here) and cynthia's stiuqxela blog (see one of her stiuqxela posts).

Oh yeah, and... G.B. Packers, http://www.packers.com, football, marketing, buad477, blah blah blah (had to get some of those words in the post - silly Google).

Now, a little clarification...

This blog isn't actually part of the contest. This past summer, I got an internship that partially had to do with S.E.O. (which I got because of this class). I've been working there part-time during the school year and wanted to try a few strategies out with this blog instead of trying them out on a real company website; after all, it's always better to fail when no money's on the line.

So what am I experimenting with? Well, a few things are:
- The difference in ranking between an older blog and a younger blog that has better optimization in place.
- Whether some "borderline" free directories online are actually penalized by Google (so far, I found one that was, which caused my blog to be de-indexed for a while).
- Whether a small network of highly optimized blogs performs better than a large network of less-optimized blogs.
- Whether a large and trusted company website, with only 1 or 2 mentions of a specific term (stiuqxela), can outperform newer yet better-optimized and more targeted blogs.

That's probably way more info than anyone wanted (or even read), but there's a quick little explanation of why this blog is sitting at the top of the stiuqxela search results.

P.S. - If anyone really wants to win the stiuqxela contest, and took the time to read this long and boring post, here's a little gift: the best page out there about S.E.O. If you liked that, you might also like this S.E.O. site, which has way more info than you'll probably ever read.

Stiuqxela So Far

As of right now, this blog is ranked #1 in Google for the term stiuqxela, with this other site about stiuqxela holding down the #2 spot. It looks like it should be a good contest, with more and more student blogs entering the rankings every day.

For a more detailed update on stiuqxela rankings as of Friday April 6, check out this stiuqxela update post.

Don't know what stiuqxela means and wondering why it keeps pointing to the Green Bay Packers (for example: stiuqxela)? Read through this brief introduction to stiuqxela.

Adios,
Chris

Definition of stiuqxela

What do you get when you combine internet marketing with the Green Bay Packers? You get stiuqxela, an imaginary word that points to the Packers website.

If you want to learn more about the term stiuqxela, go to http://stiuqxela.blogspot.com and check out the first post.

A Note To The Professor

This post is for Professor Brown:

I put the links to each of my required posts and edits in the sidebar so it would be more convenient for you to find and grade each of them. There were also a couple posts, comments, and edits that I left out since I had already met all the requirements.

Final Wiki Summary: Poker

Being an avid poker player and a huge fan of the game, "Poker" definitely had to be one of the articles that I worked on for this class. Much like with my other three articles, I already knew a good deal about this subject from the beginning, so not much research was required of me for my three edits (Edit 1, Edit 2, Edit 3). I did, however, research more about the game variants on Google so that I could give a brief description of each in that particular edit (this later led to the only real direct response I received - the deletion of this section). Since there are so many poker players these days, there is a lot of interest in this topic, and thus there is already a great amount of information and organization in the article. Because of this, none of the contributions from the community during this time were more significant than a few sentences here and there. Likewise, my contributions were not very significant, though my section on Online Poker has stood the test of time thus far. To see my blog posts regarding each of my edits on "Poker", go to: 1, 2, 3.

Final Wiki Summary: Lacrosse

After having played lacrosse for several years in high school, I considered "Lacrosse" a topic that would be very interesting to edit on Wikipedia. Because of the large amount of information available on the internet about lacrosse, it was easy to find some useful tidbits that were not already included within the article. My three edits (Edit 1, Edit 2, Edit 3) were all received very well by the Wikipedia community, which chose not to delete any of my information nor even change my wordings. Considering the large amount of information I added to the article, I would say that this means I made a fairly large and positive impact. As far as the conributions of the community, there were minor additions such as external links and additional information about the history of the game, etc. (Interesting to note is that during this semester, the Lacrosse article failed the "Good Article" nomination, which will surely spark the community to improve this page further). To see my blog posts where I described each edit, go to: 1, 2, 3.

Final Wiki Summary: Boston Cannons

I chose to edit the "Boston Cannons" article because, as a former lacrosse player in the Boston area, I used to closely follow this team and have attended many games. Because there is not as much interest in lacrosse as there is in other sports, there was not a wealth of information available about the Cannons. The main source of information that I used to gather facts for the article, therefore, was the Cannons' Official Website. None of my three edits (Edit 1, Edit 2, Edit 3) received any kind of direct responses from the community, most likely due to the low amount of interest in this article. As far as community impact on the article during all this time, there was nothing significant enough to warrant mentioning. My impact on the article, however, was somewhat substantial in my opinion. By adding the long chart of current players, I feel that I made the article more current as well as more professional in appearance. My hope is that in the future, Wikipedia users will edit this roster to reflect the current roster of that time. (Note: my blog posts where I described each edit were: 1, 2, 3)

Final Wiki Summary: Acton, Massachusetts

The reason I chose "Acton, Massachusetts" as one of my four articles was that Acton is my hometown. Because I was so familiar with Acton, I was able to recognize things that other people from Acton may want to include in the article and I occasionally knew when something wasn't correct. I coupled my own knowledge of the town with websites that I found through Google that listed various types of information about towns in Massachusetts. My three edits (Edit 1, Edit 2, Edit 3) received two direct responses. The first response was the reversion of my edit about the unused elementary school (which was later changed back into a form that resembled my edit) and the second response came from a woman who questioned why I deleted some sections while making an edit (I discovered I did accidentally delete these sections somehow so I changed them back). Overall, I feel that I made some high-quality contributions by pointing out some outdated information and supplying interesting demographic and historical data. The community, during this time, also contributed well by adding a few small sections (such as Libraries) which will hopefully expand over time. (Note: my blog posts where I described each edit were: 1, 2, 3)

Last Wiki Edits on All Four Articles

I have finally finished my required edits to my four chosen Wikipedia articles. In the next post (above) I'll talk about the history of the edits and my position in the Wikipedia community, but for now I'll just mention what these last edits consisted of.

For my edit on the article "Poker", I added into the Game Play section a list of the most common poker variants. For each type of variant I gave a brief summary of its rules, which I obtained by doing a Google search on them. This section was later removed, however, because the community felt that a link to the page listing all the poker variants would be better than describing the most important ones on the main Poker page.

For the article "Lacrosse", I noticed that there was a lack of concrete rules of lacrosse, so I searched online for all the relevant rules. I focused on Outdoor Men's Lacrosse, since this is the most common form of lacrosse, and found many good pages listing all these rules. With these rules, I created a Wikipedia-friendly list of penalties and sectioned it off into "Personal Fouls" and "Technical Fouls". As you can see by going to the current Lacrosse article, my lists have not been deleted or changed yet, which proves they were as necessary as I thought they were.

In the article "Boston Cannons", I added the fact that the Cannons (a lacrosse team) seeks to reach out to the community with camps, events, and charities. I also said that their official charity is "MetroLacrosse" and gave a brief summary of what this charity does. Though there isn't currently a Wikipedia page on MetroLacrosse, hopefully there will be soon.

Lastly, for the article "Acton, Massachusetts", I looked online to find out some historical information about the town. One thing that I found interesting was a page that described the history of one of the two libraries in Acton. I chose the facts that I thought would be most appreciated in the article and added them into a paragraph within the Libraries section. This information resembled what was already mentioned about the other library, so I doubt there will be anyone that doesn't think it fits.

Wiki Edits on "Acton, MA" and "Boston Cannons"

I recently made some edits to the Wikipedia articles "Acton, Massachusetts" and "Boston Cannons". For the Acton, MA article, I included some statistics from the 2000 census regarding degrees, employment, and commute times for those that were over 25 years of age. I put this information in the section on Demographics, in-between two other paragraphs that dealt with similar statistics. Though this data is 6 years old, I felt that it still applied to the article since it was the most recent census data available for Acton. For the Boston Cannons article, I added a chart which listed all of the current players for that lacrosse team. I did this by finding the roster on the team's website and converting that into a wikipedia-friendly chart. I feel that this chart makes the page look a lot more professional and informative, so hopefully it won't be removed anytime soon.

A Scary Thought

In a Slashdot post published today, it said that BellSouth Corp. and Verizon are facing huge lawsuits seekings billions of dollars in damages after these two companies released phone records to the FBI. Each record turned over could translate into damages of $1000 for that BellSouth or Verizon customer, which could really add up and mean huge losses for these companies.

Personally, I think that this was a terrible decision to make. Even if the amount of money they would make from the government was MORE than the cost of all these lawsuits put together and the lost revenue from customers fleeing to other companies, why sell yourself out and break the trust of so many people that didn't even know that this should be one of their fears? Though I repeatedly praise Google in many of my blog postings, I will do it one more time by pointing out the fact that the government recently attempted to gain Google's user statistics so as to use it as evidence in terms of child pornography on the internet. Google repeatedly refused and was even brought to court by the government. The trial, fortunately for Googlers, resulted in Google's opinions winning out.

So here is my theory: Google makes money. Lots of money. The reason Google makes money is because people like Google more than the other search engines. Part of the reason they like Google is that they can trust Google - trust it not to put up annoying ads and popups all over the place, trust it to offer the best possible search results and not forge results for profit, and trust it to simply "not be evil" (a motto of Google). If other companies want to be as successful as Google, they need to start learning that one of the keys to gaining and keeping customers is trust. If they lose this crucial piece of the business-success-puzzle, none of the other pieces will matter.

Scott's Article on Google

Scott, my team mate on Blogger, recently wrote about how Google is awesome. In his post, he talked about how Google made $2.25 billion in revenues in just their first quarter this year from their AdSense program. I agree with Scott that this is an amazing statistic. To produce more revenue than over 99% of the companies out there simply by having users make one click of the mouse truly demonstrates the great influence and power of search. What makes this even more impressive to me is the fact that I, myself, rarely ever click on AdSense banners. Since I believe that most people prefer the natural search results based on Google's algorithm, and because each click of the mouse only generates a minimal revenue for Google, it's astounding to imagine how many people must use Google each day.

Here's another thought that I had the other day: imagine if Google served just as many people as it did, and had just as much to offer everyone, but it was a brick-and-mortar store. It hurts my mind to think about how huge that store would have to be, and how many staff members they would need to fill the needs of all their users. Lucky for us, and especially lucky for Google, they'll never have to know any of that. Seeing as how Google stats are almost always followed by the words "billion" or "trillion" I think they're doing just fine as they are.

Unexpected Opportunities

Recently, some interesting and unexpected opportunities presented themselves to me. After using job-listing sites such as ERecruiting and Monster without much luck, I started to wonder what a student has to do to actually get a good internship for the summer. Whether it was because I applied too late for the positions, or because the companies failed to respond to applicants (even just to say "no"), or because of some other reason, I simply wasn't having much success with these websites. Luckily for me, however, a couple unexpected opportunities happened to present themselves to me.

In our class, we often have guest speakers come in to talk about various topics in the realm of marketing. One such presenter was Lou Honick, CEO at Hostmysite.com. After designing a website for my fraternity this semester (because ours was old and out-of-date), I was very interested in learning more about Web Hosting, the purpose of Hostmysite.com. During the presentation I learned a lot about the world of Web Hosting - the different plans available, the technical aspects, and some other interesting tidbits. The most interesting part of the presentation for me, however, was the plan that Hostmysite offered to University of Delaware students - free Web Hosting. After the presentation, I went up to him to ask about this plan, which I learned was as good as it sounded - no ads, no fees, no fine print. Since I had been using GoDaddy.com and wasn't very happy with it, I asked him if I could email him to get the link that I would need to click on to activate this account. After discovering the free Web Hosting option, I figured why not press my luck and ask if they were accepting business interns for the summer. Expecting him to say no since I went to the Job Fair at Trabant a week before and was told by Hostmysite staff that they were not hiring interns, I was very surprised when he said that those employees had misunderstood and that they were, in fact, hiring interns for the summer. He then told me to send him my resume and said he would forward it to the people in charge of hiring. When I got home, I sent him my resume and a cover letter and within a day or so I got a call asking me to come in for an interview. I went to the interview and, although I arrived pretty late since I couldn't find the correct turn off the highway due to a lack of signs and ended up driving down a lot of wrong roads, I feel that the interview went pretty well. I should hear back from Hostmysite within the week, so cross your fingers.

Another similar, unexpected opportunity presented itself solely because of THIS blog. Dave Williams, Chief Strategist at 360i.com, came in to our class to present various Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and statistics. Because he was so interested in the revolutionary concept of a class about blogging and technological marketing, he followed the class blog to some of the individual student blogs. One of the blogs he looked at and found interesting was mine, since I had a post (below) about how I won the Loocsixela competition. Loocsixela, as you probably know by now, is an imaginary word that links to the Green Bay Packers' website. The competition consisted of every student in the class creating these links in their blogs and attempting to gain the highest page ranking in Google. Apparently, Mr. Williams was intrigued enough by my post to ask me to interview for an internship at 360i.com. I couldn't believe that after having so much bad luck with online job-listing sites, someone actually wanted to interview with me after I hadn't even contacted them first. Obviously I emailed Mr. Williams back and told him that I was interested. After learning that the company was located in Atlanta and New York, I asked if there were positions available in the Delaware area (where I will be living this summer). In response, Mr. Williams said that he did not have any positions in Delaware, but that he would be happy to try and get me an interview with his father's company, Delaware-based incnow.com.

Whether or not I end up working at either of these companies, both of these opportunities just go to show you the true power of relationships in the business world. As one of my other marketing professors, Prof. McNutt, said to our class last semester, "One day you will learn that the most important key to success in your career is not to get all A's, not to join a million clubs, and not to be a perfect interviewee, but to establish good relationships. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish if you spend less time working out the details, and more time building the relationship."

Some Thoughts on Blogging

In the Diva Marketing Blog about Blogger Relationships, it explains how Gary Spangler ended up coming in to talk with our class a couple weeks ago. As it turns out, Mark Muller made a post about a recent Diva Marketing post involving WOMMA's Code of Ethics. This post was then read and commented on by Gary Spangler, an employee in DuPont's marketing department. Professor Brown, after seeing Gary's comment, asked for Diva's help in tracking down Gary. When Diva connected Gary with Professor Brown, they scheduled a time for Gary to come in and talk with our class.

I think this is a great example of the power of blogs in terms of networking. Though Professor Brown had never met Gary before, he was able to almost instantly connect with him via their mutual connection, Diva Marketing. Though I was a little skeptical about the true influence of blogs in the business world when I first enrolled in this class, I now am starting to see the true power and advantage of establishing blogger relationships. It also reminds me, however, just how careful I have to be to not blog about something that I wouldn't want a future employer to see years down the road.

Loocsixela: How I Won

In class on Wednesday (May 10), the winner of our loocsixela (imaginary Green Bay Packers link) competition was announced. Like I said in my last post, loocsixela is a made up word that just links to the website of the Green Bay Packers NFL football team. When the competition ended, the winner was the person who achieved the highest rank when loocsixela was entered into Google.

Here's how I won:

- I improved my template's content by:
-putting loocsixela in the title tag
-putting loocsixela in the H1, H2, and H3 tags all over the blog (the title tags at the beginning of the blog were the most important)
-putting loocsixela in the meta keyword and meta description tags
-putting loocsixela in each blog post
- I increased my pagerank by:
-adding the (rel="nofollow") tag into each (A HREF) tag so that my pagerank wouldn't get transferred to other pages and so that my anchor text in my non-loocsixela links wouldn't dilute my on-site content score
-registering eink21.blogspot.com into Google myself and entering "loocsixela" as the keyword
-linking other pages i made (like loocsixela.xanga.com) to eink21.blogspot.com using loocsixela as the anchor text

So yeah, I kinda tried a little too hard on this but that's because I like to win. If I were to do the whole thing over again, I would write about the Green Bay Packers wherever I talk about loocsixela. I'd do this because I think Google associates the Packers with the word loocsixela since almost every link with the anchor text "loocsixela" is a link to their site.

All in all, I think the most important thing Google looks at is how respectable your website is, and I think their main way of doing this is by looking at all the links to those sites. That's why the Diva blog and Technorati were way up there in the rankings. If it's just a bunch of new sites, like all the class blogs, the most important factor is the relevancy of the page's content. So putting loocsixela in the titles and headers is what got me into first place.

So that's basically what I did. Since the competition's over, I don't mind giving away all my secrets.

loocsixela

For this class, I am supposed to create an imaginary link: loocsixela. What is loocsixela? Well, loocsixela is a word made up by our professor, which links to the Packers' website (so we know he didn't stick the word loocsixela into that site). The person who has the best page rank on Google after a certain point when someone enters the search query "loocsixela" will win a prize. Hopefully I can win that prize, but there's some stiff competition. In case you forgot what the word was: loocsixela.

Right now I'm not in the lead for this loocsixela project, but I'm trying out some new things and hopefully my loocsixela will come up first.

More Wikipedia Edits

I added more edits to my four chosen Wikipedia articles -- Poker, Lacrosse, Boston Cannons, and Acton, Massachusetts. For the article on Poker, I addeded a section about increasing media exposure and how that correlates to the new styles of play. For the article on Lacrosse, I added a little more to the introduction's brief summary of the early Native American history of the game and some significance of those early games. For the Boston Cannons article, I looked at other websites about the team and added some current star players and the new General Manager. Lastly, for the article on my home town, Acton, Massachusetts, I changed a section where it talked about a school that is no longer used (making it outdated information) and added to the list of schools the latest addition, the Parker Damon School. So far, after almost a full day, all of these edits have lasted and were not changed by any other users. I guess this means I'm finding more meaningful ways to contribute some information about these subjects. Hopefully my next edits will be just as good. We'll see.

Yeah, loocsixela

Wiki Edit: Lacrosse

I made another small edit to the Wikipedia article on "Lacrosse". I added some rules about penalties for women's lacrosse. Hopefully, these changes can last a little longer than my last edit's changes on the "Poker" article did. We shall see.

Oooooooooh, loocsixela.

Craig's Post on M.M.O.D.

In my team member Craig's recent post, he discussed a Click-Z News article about March Madness On Demand. In it he said that CBS Sportsline had a feature (M.M.O.D.) with which users can see any of the NCAA tournament basketball games for free. Not only does this allow people to see games that aren't being televised in their region, but it also allows people to view the games at a later time, such as when they get back from work or class. If they choose to see it at a later time, they can even fast-forward through time-outs and other commercial breaks, thus skipping over all the tension that comes with waiting for a commercial break to end and the game to resume.

Besides reading the article, I also have some experience with this feature because I tried to watch some basketball games on this site last week after seeing a commercial for M.M.O.D. on tv. When I got to the starting page, however, there was a place where you had to register before seeing any games. Not wanting to take the time to register, I closed the browser and decided to do it at a later time. I hope to finally use this service on Friday, since I will be missing some important games while I travel back to my home in Boston. Also, if there are any games that I find really exciting, I can download them for a cost of $1.99 from the ITunes music store (also covered in the post) and put them directly onto my new IPod.

By the way, loocsixela is where it's at.

Pheedo

Dana Vanden Heuvel, from the company Pheedo, spoke to our class about Pheedo and about RSS Analytics. RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") is the organization of news and blog feeds for internet surfers. Having already experienced RSS feeds through www.bloglines.com, I was pretty interested in Pheedo and all the facts and figures that Mr. Heuvel had about it. Some interesting facts about RSS are that it is the fastest growing internet channel, liked most for its convenience, and used for weather news more than any other type of news. Another intriguing topic that was covered was the way RSS and other similar tools are used for modern marketing and how Pheedo uses their creativity and innovation to think of new marketing techniques that will take advantage of other methods.

I think that once I enter into the habit of checking my RSS feeds on bloglines.com or other related sites, I will be much more up-to-date on, and interested in, current events and other exciting articles. Not only will I get to read articles that I know I will enjoy because I can custom-tailor what feeds I want, but I can also eliminate all of the articles that I would normally skip over in the newspaper anyways.

(Have I mentioned loocsixela yet?)

Buzz Buzz

Mark Hughes, the author of Buzz Marketing, recently came into our classroom to discuss his popular book and some of the techniques he used to create buzz for half.com. Buzz Marketing is basically when a company, product, etc. gets lots of publicity due to its novel or interesting nature. Because people are so immediately interested in the topic, they talk about it with their friends and hear about it in the news many times in a short time span. The most exciting aspect of Buzz Marketing that Mr. Hughes discussed was how he convinced the town of Halfway, OR to change the name of their town to half.com. Though there was a lot of pessimism at first on the part of the town citizens, Mr. Hughes met with the town influencers and convinced them as opposed to convincing every person in the town. These "important" citizens then stuck up for the proposal at the highly-televised town meeting and influenced the rest of the people there that renaming the town would be a good thing.

I thought this was a very interesting marketing approach for their company, since I would never had thought an idea like this would actually work out and be looked favorably upon by the people in the town. It is ideas like this that make Buzz Marketing a very important and essential aspect of the modern business world, especially with the ever-growing presence of the internet and blogs. Now that I'm already learning how to effectively blog, I can hopefully someday be able to effectively use the approach of Buzz Marketing to my advantage.

And in case you haven't noticed, loocsixela.

Google Search Output

For my required Google Search Output, which is basically a way of having Google send me blog articles about a subject of my choosing, I chose to subscribe to blogs about Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu is a world-famous poker player who is often seen on t.v. stealing other players' chips and winning lots of big-name tournaments. Because I play a lot of poker and feel that my style of play is a lot like Daniel's (but not as good), I thought that getting new articles about him would be really interesting. When a noteworthy article comes along, I'll be sure to blog about it and let you guys know. Also, loocsixela!

Wikipedia

As I said in earlier posts, one of the assignments we have for this class is to edit entries on the Wikipedia wesite and write down in our blog which edits we made. The first edit I made was for the entry about poker. If you look at the "quotes" section, you'll see that I entered the last quote about luck. Right after I entered that quote, the person after me quickly erased it, claiming it was too "general", meaning it was more about luck than about poker. I guess that's true, but I've heard people say it at the poker table before. Hopefully I can make an edit that stays on the site for a little longer next time, but who knows - there's probably always going to be some guy that doesn't want the page changing at all because it's just perfect the way it is. We shall see.

Until next time, loocsixela.

Google, Google, Google

In a new blogging from Slashdot, it was reported that Google is going to allow users to buy things online through their "Google Base", much like they can already make purchases of Google Videos and Google Earth. Because it is Google, the king of everything it engages in, this has created quite a stir in the e-commerce world, with some people assuming it will someday rival EBay and the like.

I think this is a great idea by the Google team, since they are already the biggest name on the internet and have the funds necessary to start an enormous e-commerce business. In fact, I believe that Google will someday become the biggest e-commerce site ever, far surpassing EBay, Amazon and all the others. Just the thought of being able to do all my shopping needs at one place, the same place where I can search for thousand or even millions of reviews of products, makes me want to get out my credit card right now and start buying. Thank you, Google.

Umm, did I meantion... loocsixela

ClickZ Article - The Web: Just For Fun

As part of this class, we are supposed to subscribe to a number of online blogs and comment on their content throughout the semester. The first blog I found interesting was one from ClickZ Stats, titled "The Web: Just For Fun". The article says that more and more people (mostly adults and other users who have more than 6 years of experience with the internet) use the web for no particular reason and just to pass the time and find interesting websites. This is a different purpose than what the internet used to serve for most people, which was to find needed information, check email, etc.

I agree that the internet is becoming more and more of a tool for passing the time and simply being an entertainment device rather than an information gatherer. When I'm really bored or when I'm putting off my homework or other things I need to get done, I find myself online with no real purpose. I go to all sorts of websites that have nothing to do with anything, like bored.com or ebaumsworld. Although they can be pretty entertaining, I try not to go on them too much of the time because once I start going website to website with no real purpose, I never get anything else accomplished and feel like a big waste. Maybe the answer, in this age of increasing internet-usage and decreasing of its purpose, is for everyone to get away from their computers more and enjoy the outdoors. Maybe.

P.S. loocsixela

Introductory Post #2

The purpose of this blog is to show the students in my class how to set up basic blog accounts and modify them regularly. Our grade in the class is based on our posts, our comments, 2 tests about topics we've covered, and a project involving Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. The four articles I chose to edit this semester on Wikipedia are "Lacrosse", "Poker", "Boston Cannons", and "Acton, Massachusetts".

Another thing we're graded on in this class is the quality of our comments on our team members' blogs. My team members are Scott, Craig, Mark, Carine, and myself so check those other blogs if you want.

Oh, and loocsixela.

Introductory Post #1

Hello, my name is Chris and I'm a student at the University of Delaware. I'll explain more about this blog in the next post, but it is essentially a class project for one of my business classes. Other projects we will be working on in class involve online tools such as Wikipedia and Google. In addition, we have to create links to loocsixela, which is an imaginary word that references the packers. I will be posting new blogs each week about various things, so check back every now and then and feel free to comment.