I logged into my Tagworld page today, for the first time in a couple of months. I’m not a big user of Tagworld, mostly because my friends are already established on Myspace and they want switch. I think that has something to do with the fact that the majority of my friends are over 30 and spend to much time in alcohol fueled stupor. Anyway, like I was saying, I logged into Tagworld today and noticed that they have a “Music Discover” player, in addition to their standard music player. The music discover player, I guess, could be compared to Pandora, in theory. However, I think it’s lacking considerably by comparison. I’m an almost daily listener of Pandora and am amazed every time at how accurate Pandora is. With the Tagworld engine it didn’t even recognize half of the bands/artists that I typed in. You would think they would know who Arcade Fire is, but no. Hopefully they’ll get better as they grow. It might be that they’re only using music from artists that have pages on Tagworld. I’ll dig a little deeper and find out.

The Tagworld Music Dicovery player does have some cool features however, for instance they have in their preferences a slider tool to balance whether the music that they play is weighted towards unsigned, independent or major artists. Or, you can hear more music rated by yourself, friends or the Tagworld community. The last preference that I think may be the coolest is that you can specify for the music player to discover more music based on your zip code. So, in theory, you’ll have a good chance to discover local music that you might like. Another feature that I like is that you can see what Artist is cuing up next. This way you have a chance to skip the cuing selection while your current selection is still playing. Overall, I think the Tagworld Music Discovery player is off to a good start. If they can add more artists then I might have to give them equal playing time, to Pandora.

technorati tags: myspace, tagworld, pandora, musicdiscovery, music

If you have any interest in finding out what people are saying about you on Myspace. You can go to Icerocket.com and click on the new Myspace tab and search away. I haven’t used Icerocket.com that much, in the past, but maybe I’ll start.

via: Blog Maverick

technorati tags: myspace, icerocket, markcuban

CC: BeWild.com

The other day I noticed that I had an unapproved trackback ping that looked like it could be a little bit “legitimate”. Well, turns out it was one of the most blatant attempts at Link Spam that I’ve seen. What makes matters worse is that the spam was from a “legitimate” company. Well, only if you consider rave clothing, body jewelry and stoner gear legitimate. Anyway, the company in question has had an online presence since 1991 and has a decent marketing budget that’s spent on Google and Overture ads. I hope that this attempt for a link was not supported by management, because if it was, it would tell you a lot about the character of the management. However, I would assume that this unscrupulous effort was a result of some false promise of a shady SEO person.

If you’re a website owner/manager and are trying to get better placement in search engines, be very weary of people who promise to get you x amount of links or a certain ranking in google. A legitimate SEO person will never make promises of search placement or a certain number links.

Top 4 Questions to ask a SEO before you hire them
1. What are some of your top search ranking accomplishment? Can you show examples?
2. What type of techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
3. How much of a volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect?
4. Do you have references that I can contact?

If the information that the SEO gives you, sounds to good to be true then it probably is. And, always check referances.

Here’s a list to some of my favorite sites for SEO information and services:
1. Begginers guide to SEO
2. SEO Company, 155 SEO Tools
3. Digital-Web Magazine, SEO Articles
4. AndyHagans- LinkBuilding
5. Google Information For Web Masters
6. We Build Pages- Free SEO Tools
7. Matt Cutts- Blog
8. Shimon Sandler- Blog

technorati tags: seo, google, mattcutts

I thought this was pretty cool. Go check out The World Population and density map over at the Hive Group.

technorati tags: thehivegroup, map, population

I went to my bank the other day to do some stuff with a loan for a house that I am thinking about buying. While going over all of the information, the loan officer asked the usual questions including, what’s the asking price and how much the house will appraise for. To my surprise, she checked Zillow.com to get a idea of how much the house would appraise for. This was a big bank (WAMU), and I would assume that they had a private label program for checking comps. But, nope, they used Zillow. I guess Zillow is doing something right.

By the way, Zillow.com added “Brids Eye” views, via Microsoft Virtual Earth. So, now you can get 3D views of homes in selected cities. Cool stuff.

technorati tags: real estate, zillow.com, local.live.com/

I apologize for the lack of post over the last week. I was out of town for a few days and then had to get caught up on my consulting projects. So, anyway, I’m back. I’ll be making almost daily posts, moving forward.

When I first started allthatscool, one of the first things I did was claim my blog at Technorati. From the first week of posting, my blog rank at Technorati was 375,467 with 8 links from 4 sites. Being that I love stats and measuring growth, I started tracking my Technorati site rank. Funny thing is, week after week, my ranking went up, or down, depending on how you look at it, either way it was the direction that didn’t show growth. Additionally, my link count stayed at 8 links from 4 sites for months. I continued to track my rank but clearly there was something not right with Technorati. See my post from December, “Technorati 8 links from 4 sites
“. Anyway, after writing the previous post, I gave up on Technorati and tracking my rank. Well, yesterday I checked in on Technorati and noticed something cool; Rank: 47,078 (67 links from 47 sites) . What ever problem they were having is fixed, i guess. If anyone could explain to me why this happen, I would be very interested in finding out. Whatever the case , I’m back to having faith in Technorati.

technorati tags: technorati, siterank, allthatscool.com

If you were unable to attend the SXSW 2006 Interactive conference here in Austin. Well, turns out, you didn’t really need to. I just discovered today, that the SXSW site actually has podcasts of a lot of the panels and keynotes and plan on releasing them all, over the next few months. It’s pretty cool stuff. I attended but didn’t get to go to everything I wanted, so this should work just as good. Go to SXSW.com to check them out and click here to see the release schedule.

technorati tags: austin, sxsw2006, podcast, tech

I just noticed the banner below, on the Pandora site. I listen to Pandora pretty much everyday, and like it a lot. Now, they’ve partnered with Slim Devices, makers of Squeezebox. I’m not exactly sure what they mean by “partner”. I would assume it’s just cross promotions, because it looks like you could access Pandora with Squeezebox anyway, without the partnership. I guess I’m just going to have to get one to find out for sure.

technorati tags: pandora, slimdevices, squeezebox

It’s official, we’re now a member of the Alexa 100k club. Okay, it’s not really a club and it’s not really that big of a deal to most people. But, it’s pretty cool that we’re ranked 99,560 . Actually, it’s real good considering this site has no real focus and is not updated everyday. Our traffic has grown month over month since launching back in July of last year. So for all of you out there that actually checks out allthatscool.com on a regular basis; thanks.

technorati tags: alexa, allthatscool.com, blog