Over 1 Million People Are Protesting The ITU With Google

In just a few hours, delegates from around the world will be meeting in Dubai to discuss changes to the ITU. The results of which could lead to further regulation of the Internet by less than reputable countries that want more power in controlling how and what its citizens access online. Google doesn’t like that for a variety of reasons, some self-serving, and the company has invited citizens from around the world to protest with them.

In a post on the Google Public Policy Blog, Vint Cerf details his hand in helping create the Internet. He says that “openness is why the Internet creates so much value today.” He also says that the Internet is “borderless and belongs to everyone.” That’s the basic gist of Google’s initial protest movement in getting people to share why the Internet is important to them. You can now see the results of that first movement in an interactive map.

That map shows a real time count of how many people are signing Google’s petition from around the world. It’s now at over 1 million people and climbing rather quickly. The largest number of those opposed to an ITU takeover of the Web are obviously in more developed nations, but citizens in less developed nations are doing their part to let their voice be heard. Surprisingly enough, even some people in mainland China have signed Google’s pledge.

The ITU negotiations will begin today and continue until December 14. You can add your voice to the growing number of those opposing the ITU until then. The sooner the better, however, as some governments may perhaps have a change of heart after seeing its citizens raise a stink. It worked for SOPA and ACTA. It can work here too.

Twindex - Is this the future of political polling?

With the current US presidential campaigns in full flow, it has become clear how significant a role social media now plays. Polls have long played an essential part in gauging candidates’ popularity but the development of the ‘Twindex’ begs the question if these will ever be redundant?

Brought to life by data analysis company Topsy, in conjunction with polling firms North Star Opinion Research and The Mellman Group, the Twindex will provide a daily update of how the candidates are polling. Each day at 8pm EST, the Twindex will be updated, scoring the candidates from 1-100 as a percentile, Topsy explains. So in the present situation, Obama has a relatively neutral score (44) whilst Romney, the Republican presumptive nominee, is sitting at the more negative end of the scale (26). The tweets taken into account include those that directly refer to the candidate’s surname or their Twitter handle, but omit the use of hashtags and other ways of referring to the candidates.

Whilst the Twindex cannot be considered totally representative, only ‘15% of online adults are on Twitter (Feb 2012)’, it does help highlight the current overall trends in opinion of the candidates. When shown in comparison to the Gallup polls, the Twindex does generally reflect a similar view. Most notably with this, one can see Obama’s ratings universally shoot upwards following the death of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011.  The daily updates of Twindex can highlight the role of smaller scale events in their favourability. For instance, Twitter Government (@gov) has recently posted that Michael Phelps has suggested ‘#olympics gold-medal US gymnasts helped drive @BarackObama's +10 #twindex gain’.

So will the Twindex ever eclipse the need for traditional polls? Quite simply it seems the answer is no. Instead, if the two systems were to be used together, a more comprehensive view of public opinion would be possible. With traditional polls, a range of questions can be asked in a conversational, public style. Conversely, with the Twindex, insight can be gained into more private views, those usually limited to ‘coffee shops and water coolers’, but with lesser range. The head of government, news and social innovation at Twitter, Adam Sharp, views this combination as being the future of the Twindex. Still, one cannot totally rule out the possibility of polls exclusively utilising social media at some point. Voters could be asked to voice their opinions through social media on a range of topics and the results of this then collated into a chart much like what the Twindex uses. This would avoid any false answers and perhaps give a more realistic result. It is unknown where this creation could take political polling but there are definitely possibilities for change.

What the Twindex really shows us is the ever-increasing role social media plays in politics. With both candidates surpassing previous budgets on their digital campaigns and more people turning to social media, it is understandable how this is the case. Political Science professor Colin Moore has highlighted that ‘it allows candidates to… tailor their messages to specific demographics’. Furthermore, it can be important with those crucial undecided voters. The informative and influential role social media can have is able to directly contact with voters, arguably more closely than television or other forms of media. Ultimately, social media is slowly finding its form in the political realm and this trend undeniably has the power to expand. 

Integrating and Using Social Media for your home Business

It's no secret that we're living and working in a digital age.

That's why it's vital that you utilise social media for your home business or company. We're already living in an age full of helpful technology and digital networking, and connecting with other people and businesses is easier than ever, thanks to the wonders of the internet.

Whether it be through Facebook, Google+ or Twitter; it's crucial to develop and maintain an online presence. Through a succerssful use and utilisation of Social Media, you'll find that not only will your customer or consumer base grow substantially, but the level at which you'll be able to develop and converse will feel much more personal, which is good for both the customer and you.

My business partner and I have recently started our own hlepful course teaching other small home businesses how to best utilise and grow through social media. All we need is your name and email address, and we will send you anything and everything you need to know.

You can sign up by clicking here.

Extra Income through Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the fastest growing industry on the Internet today. Extra Income made through this channel runs into billions of dollars yearly. Many people get involved in it without a solid plan for success. Indeed, many want to earn extra income using affiliate marketing, albeit without a real base plan, which is the most important reason for most being unsuccessful at it. Do you really look at any earning without understanding or planning the future of any business, be it at work or at earning extra income? 

Don not be under any misconceptions, though affiliate marketing is an easy and entertaining way to earn extra income, it is serious work, and just like any other job that requires effort, perseverance, and above all, a clear line of sight and plan of action from start to finish line. 

Small things like setting up your home office properly, getting up to date on know-how, setting achievable goals, making people connections, and investment in your business will ensure that you are one-up on your competition, and also make sure that you firmly stand over them. 

Home Office Setup 

The most important step to take before becoming an affiliate marketer is to set up your base – little home office you’ve always wanted. 

You can find many resources on the internet about ergonomic design. Ergonomic because anyone intending to spend a major amount of time working on their computers need space which promotes good posture at the same time takes care of safety issues involving their office workspace. 

Learning the Trade 

Nobody gets into work untrained. Even when you applied for your first job, you had made sure that you are qualified and can do justice to it. Putting in a nutshell, no one hires you for giving you a free extra income without basic training. 

What you need then, is to get some training on how to become a professional affiliate marketer. You can start by finding another one and check what they can do to help you. There are many professional affiliate marketers already earning a substantial extra income, who would be willing to teach you by passing o their knowledge so that you can augment the extra income they are already earning. The internet also offers a lot of resources and conference time tables which you can attend to learn. 

The secret is to become a student of your own business; you will get to learn something new day after day. Now you are ready to begin by setting some realistic goals for yourself. 

Goals 

The major problem that plagues most affiliate marketers is that they tend to set themselves unrealistic goals by being over confident about their skills and plans. This results in becoming disenchanted very quickly due to non attainment of goals. Being realistic removes a lot of pain in this context. For example a goal of $5,000 a month realistically attainable, but a first time affiliate marketer is not likely to attain it when starting up.

How To Use a WordPress Blog To Enhance Traffic To Your Website

WordPress blogs can be installed easily in any website and it can be used to drive traffic by writing useful posts that contain relevant information and relevant business key phrases. As we use a blog in our websites to update our prospective and existing customers about our products and services, we can also use it strategically to enhance traffic to our websites.





WordPress blogs are very easy to install in your website. You or your web designer can customize it as per your specific needs. The WordPress admin interface is so handy to use that it hardly takes few minutes to write and publish a new post. But it is important to know how to use your blog for search engine optimization and to drive traffic to your website.





Four important things you need to show on your blog are recent posts, archives, categories and comments. Every new post you generate through the WordPress admin must be done strategically as search engines consider it as a new page on your website with a distinct link. Hence, it is vital to understand the importance of the title you select for your blog post. You can easily customize the titles of the posts in WordPress blog in a way that only title comes in the new post link and not the date or category of posts. You can even include business key phrases in the title of the post. For this, you must write a post that contains useful information on the services or products you want to promote. Title must be selected accordingly.





As it is not easy to update content on your website regularly, writing new posts serve that purpose. You can target new keywords through the blog posts. What you need to do is to write relevant content including these keywords and link them with the appropriate page of the website. It serves dual purpose. First, you help your customers to know more about the services you provide and second, you make search engines to see the appropriate interlinking with targeted keywords on your website. You can also target long tail keywords through blog posts as it is not easy to target these keywords through main pages of your website. This way you can drive traffic to your website through WordPress blog.





Try a WordPress blog to drive traffic to your website through strategic writing in your posts and to keep your targeted customers updated through relevant information about your products and services.

Improving Traffic After Googles Panda Update

The recent Google Panda update has raised the bar not only for SEO experts but also for web designers. It’s getting tougher and tougher to rank well and that means that you really have to pay attention to all designing and Google ranking factors. When we do this, search engines rewards us because we are rewarding our audience and providing them with the information and experience they are looking for. The following points will help you to make your website panda proof:- 

1.Content is key:The Panda algorithm update emphasizes providing assurance only on websites that contain unique and useful content. This will help users better find content relevant to their search. If you provide web page content that is unique, relevant, high quality and preferably 1000+ words, your site will likely be rewarded with improved rankings and therefore, increased traffic. 

2.Above the fold design: Narrowing your header images, removing header banner images and pushing more content onto the top of your site will help with Panda. 

3.Web Page indexing: A website with more than 100 web pages and maximum pages indexed by Google would be considered as a Panda friendly website. 

4.Page rank: Page rank is still one of the most important factors. PageRank is an independent measure of Google’s perception of the quality/authority/credibility of an individual web page. It does not depend on any particular search phrase. Google conveniently reports this as a number from 0-10 (10 being the best). 

5.Check your Domain registration: Domain registration for five years helps to enhance authority points. This is a small tip, but every little bit helps. 

6.Webmaster tools: It enables webmasters to get a better idea of what Google “thinks” about their web sites, how the Google “spider” sees them, and what improvements could be made. 

7.Social media proof: Google Panda takes social media trends seriously and content that is loved by social media sites like Twitter and Facebook gets better position in search engines. 

8.Optimize for Fast Load Times: Avoid flash, single background images in the website. Google tends to favor sites that are snappy, quick, and fast.