This post has been backed up at Blogspot in case it disappears. It is about the alleged work environment at Google (USA) versus Microsoft (USA). It covers topics such as:

• What is the culture really like? How many hours are people actually working? What are the least amount of hours you can work before you are looked down upon?
• 20% of your time on personal project. How many people actually get to use it? If so, how do they use it? Does Google own your personal project?
• What are the office arrangements like? Do you have an office or cube space?
• What is the management structure like (hierarchy)?
• Do they actually have plans for career development?
• Who would you recommend Google to? Is it for the college kid or family type, worker bee or innovator?
• Please provide any additional information that you believe will help in our battle for talent against Google?

I have worked for a San Jose company that offered some of the benefits such as free food and snacks and agree that it makes a lot of sense (for the company) to keep the employees anchored to the workplace. I have visited a few of the Redmond buildings at MSFT too and I agree that the latter does not resemble a sheltered workshop for college grads, as the Googleplex is made out to be.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Aaron Wall of Seobook fame is closing TW. This post is getting pushed down the home page in an ironic display of how popular the site is/was among the CognoSEOnti (the .com is still available if someone wants to grab it).

Threadwatch was originally a site that alerted the busy SEO to the most pertinent news, forum or blog posts of note, followed by local discussion of the same. I never managed to get a single new story started there, so I wasn’t exactly a daily TWer. Its captchas required at least three tries before you managed to decipher the letters. Almost all interesting discussions seemed to be polluted by shock jocks who love stirring the pot and showing off the latest word they picked up in the pub.

Will it close, or will Aaron allow someone else to take over remains to be seen.

[Update: Yes, it closed.]

Popularity: 15% [?]

I have no idea why, but yesterday I implemented P3P on my SEO training site. It validates, but I’m damned if I know why. The procedure was so convoluted and the instructions so tortuous that I had to read at least a dozen anguished posts in forums and trial-and-error to pass the validator. It is no wonder that the P3P page laments,

“Status: P3P Work suspended
After a successful Last Call, the P3P Working Group decided to publish the P3P 1.1 Specification as a Working Group Note to give P3P 1.1 a provisionally final state.
The P3P Specification Working Group took this step as there was insufficient support from current Browser implementers for the implementation of P3P 1.1.”

Is anyone in SEO circles bothering with P3P?

Popularity: 28% [?]

by Ash Nallawalla

In most photographs you, the photographer, are missing. More than once I have taken a photo of the sky when my camera fell from some precarious perch after the self-timer was set. That’s because it isn’t always convenient to take a full-size tripod on your holidays.

Sometimes, all you want is to take your own photo at some exotic location, but many modern cameras will not even fit your whole face when you click at arm’s length. You can ask someone to take your photo and hope that they framed it properly and didn’t shake the camera, but nothing beats a tripod.

Enter the Quik Pod, a handheld, extendable tripod that costs around US$24.95 plus shipping. It is made of sturdy polycarbonate and aluminium, weighs about 100 g and comes with a built in self-positioning mirror to help frame each shot. Fully extended to 480 mm, Quik Pod can be used to shoot overhead above crowds, around corners and underwater.

The Pro+ version adds a lightweight tripod leg adapter to turn the Quik Pod into a conventional tripod or to use as a mini-tripod on its own. Both feature a standard (1/4-20) screw. You would not want to use any camera heavier than 450 g on this tripod.

Availability

In the U.S., Quik Pod can be found at Adorama, Amazon.com, B&H, Calumet Photographic, J&R.com, Magellan’s and Ritz Camera. In Canada, it can be bought at Black’ Photography, Henry’s and The Shopping Channel. In the UK, Quik Pod can be purchased at Play.com, Magellan’s and through iwantoneofthose.com. A direct link to the Quik Pod at Amazon is: http://snipurl.com/1junj.

In Australia, dStore.com.au sells it for $39.95. Be sure to check whether you are getting the basic model, the Deluxe, or the Pro+ because the online stores are vague on this point and never show more than one. The company site shows the Deluxe and Pro+ extras as separate kits, yet one of the blister packs shows the mini-tripod as included.

I am very happy with the Quik Pod Pro+ and that is the model you should look for.

Popularity: 18% [?]

One of the hazards of a PPC advertiser is the possibility of Click Fraud. Google is one of a few companies to have tested a Pay-per-Action (PPA) model where the advertiser doesn’t pay for the click, but pays only when the clicker goes to the website and completes some pre-defined action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase.

PPA is a brilliant, albeit partial solution to click fraud that works for websites that have a measurable action. It does not work for information sites or affiliate sites where the purchase takes place on the merchant’s website.

Google has just extended its PPA beta globally, reports MediaPost, but in a staged roll-out, beginning with publisher sites that have turned on Conversion Tracking and have had over 500 conversions this month. Yes, only Content sites will show the PPA ads initially; I imagine this is because advertisers are shying away from the Made-for-Adsense (MFA) sites.

The price for a PPA conversion is defined based on the type of action. The official Google AdWords Blog says, “For example, you may wish to pay $1 every time a user fills out a lead form on your site and $5 when a purchase is made.”

If PPA pricing is similar to the pricing for Google’s Pay-per-Call beta, then I bet you will be paying a lot more to have your ad showing high, in the first ad unit on the publisher page. I will be among the last to be invited to this beta, so you will know the real cost before I do.

Popularity: 44% [?]

by Ash Nallawalla

CyberLink PowerDVD Copy is a simple program with one purpose – it enables you to copy a DVD. More precisely, the DVD must not have any copy protection on it. The majority of Western movies these days are protected, but home-made or non-commercial videos are not. The program will not copy a data DVD – it must be a video DVD.

You can back up the DVD to your PC’s hard drive – which is commonly done by overseas travellers who take a laptop on the plane. Spinning a hard drive seems to consume less battery power than spinning a DVD drive, but I have not explored that theory in depth.

You can copy a DVD9 (8.5 GB) dual-layer DVD to a DVD5 (4.7 GB) using compression or you can customise the compression. Compression reduces picture quality, so, for example, if your video was 6 GB in size, there is no need to go for 50 percent compression when copying to a DVD5 disc. The Auto Fit option takes away any guesswork, so you don’t need to work out the optimum compression ratio.

Certain movies have additional language tracks and you can choose not to copy them, saving some space. Similarly, you can filter out unwanted subtitles, as is seen in Asian versions of videos.

The interface gives a preview window so you can see what file you have selected. If this is the first time you have copied a DVD you may get confused by the various file names, so this preview feature is useful.

PowerDVD Copy “works with Windows Vista” and does not carry the “Certified for Windows Vista” label. I tested it on Windows XP. It works on versions from Windows 98SE onwards. You can order it online for US$39.95 or download a trial version.

Popularity: 26% [?]