For those who have been out of touch with the internet for a long period of time SEO (search engine optimization) does not mean anything. They have seen the blossoming of the net in its early days and are still occupied with the mindset that, stuffing the index page of their website with thousands of words that are irrelevant, is the sure way of achieving top ranking in search engines. They are neither wrong nor correct. About a decade or so back the algorithms used by the search engines to assign a webpage the top ranking was far different from the algorithms used nowadays.

In the good old days `sex’ was the word queried for the maximum number of times through search engines. It was not long before website designers caught onto this. Soon every website had the term `sex’ in its coding, even if the same was selling garments for babies. The method used by website designers during those days was quite simple. They would use the same color for text as for the background and stuff the index page with the term `sex’. The amazing part of this procedure was that it actually helped the websites concerned achieve high rankings.

One can safely say that this was the first instance of black hat technology. All of a sudden people who genuinely wanted to visit sexually oriented sites were amazed when their search results for that relevant term led them to sites that had no concern with sex. However, it was not long before the webmasters of search engine caught up with this trick and started penalizing web pages that used keywords that had no relevance to the contents of the actual site.

But this did not stop adult oriented sites from using this keyword stuffing trick. In order to put an end to this all, a new set of algorithms were put in place by search engine administrators. They put a restriction on the number of times that the keyword could be repeated on the home page. This marked the beginning of a new set of reforms. Very soon LSI was introduced and this changed the way web pages were optimized for search engines. For every new change that was brought about by the administrators of the search engine, a new set of methods were also found out that could bypass them. However, things are getting tough nowadays and many sites are being penalized for using black hat technologies.

This does not mean that one cannot push up the page rankings of their website. There are many honest methods available that a website owner can use for pushing up the popularity of their sites in the eyes of the search engines. It is just that the task has become more complex that before. There are several SEO organizations that can help you out with the task of fine tuning your website so that it is search engine friendly without breaking the rules by resorting to black hat technologies.

Email archiving is also useful for internal purposes such as employee monitoring.  While not very popular with staff, emails can be stored, retrieved and used for disciplinary or investigative purposes as well as compliance with internal guidelines.  This kind of monitoring can not only warn the company about breaches in security, potential risks and insider dealing.

With an effective email archiving solution, alerts can be set up for keywords or key phrases in an email that can flag up potential risks as they happen.  If this traffic is monitored regularly then action can be taken at the earliest signs, and potentially prevent it getting out of hand.  The keywords can be anything pertinent to the business from resume, career, swear words, to client file, secrets, medication and anything company specific.

While this activity may not seem ethically sound, it is another tool in the ongoing mission to protect companies from damage from without, and within.  Employees are often unaware of the problems they cause by sharing information they shouldn’t or gossiping about subjects that are better off left alone.  If an effective email monitoring and archive system is in place then these kinds of incidents can be stopped in their tracks by early intervention or discipline.

Most smaller to medium companies don’t have a legal department so the burden falls to IT.  In an in-house email archiving setup they will be the ones who control and maintain the system anyway so it’s logical for them to monitor.  However, in an outsourced situation that burden can be passed to the vendor to take care of.

There is inevitably an expense to setting up an archiving solution, but in this country it is one that businesses cannot avoid.  Since those high profile corporate  fraud cases, it has been legally mandated that every company large or small who communicates via email has to have some kind of storage and archive facility for them.

If an E-discovery request is presented to a company without a coherent archive strategy, they may have trouble finding the data requested, or even worse, may not be able to find it at all.  This not only causes problems for the litigation for which the data is bound, but also for the company itself.  The government and judiciary don’t look kindly on those who don’t comply with these new laws as it hampers them when they are trying to investigate companies.

The whole idea of the new legislation was to improve public confidence in American business by ensuring there was always a paper trail for everything they did.  Anything that gets in the way of that is viewed dimly indeed.

January 27, 2010

The choice of Somalia-born rapper K’Naan’s Wavin’ Flag as this year’s official World Cup song has proved controversial. It’s not the tune itself that’s stoking the fires: it’s an uplifting hip hop number taken from his recent album Troubadour, given an epic feel by swooning piano and guitar. The lyrics offer a nebulous positivity which surely recommended it to tournament sponsors Coca Cola.

In an art form that is all about story-telling, K’Naan’s biography offers the ultimate tale of overcoming adversity and turning the lessons of a tough up-bringing into art. He escaped life as a child soldier and achieved fame in his adopted country of Canada and around the world with his acclaimed album of laid-back, African-influenced rap tunes The Dusty Foot Philosopher.

It is his comments about the piracy that has come to dominate perceptions of his country of birth in the rest of the world that have proved unpalatable to some. The idea that “one man’s pirate is another man’s coastguard” is clearly designed to provoke, but it’s hard to criticise him for attempting to draw attention to the plight of his desperately poor country.

Appropriately for a man whose name means traveller, K’Naan is on the move constantly to promote his music and, wherever he goes, proves an articulate and thoughtful spokesman for Somalia and the continent as a whole.

But his accomplished music, with its mingling of influences and socially conscious message, is very much a confection which appeals to Western tastes, and this is where Fifa and Coca Cola’s real misstep lies. By choosing a song from the worthy “world music” section of the record shop, they ignored Africa’s wealth of exuberant, thrilling pop.

Picking a contemporary African tune, perhaps from one of the participating countries, would have been a braver and more exciting choice and potentially one with a more valuable cultural legacy. A future football anthem could have come from venerable Algerian rai star Khaled or Ivorian rap group Magic System, whose global hit from last year, Meme Pas Fatigue, would have been my favourite, or from South Africa itself.

K’Naan might have Somalian roots, but the theme song for an African World Cup should have been written and recorded on the continent itself.

Children and their moms are seated on little blue chairs around toddler-height tables, waiting to turn organic apples and yogurt and pure maple syrup into parfaits.

That’s the recipe for their free sample class of “Let’s Cook Kids: Cooking Naturally with Mommy or Daddy,” a four-week program where children 3 to 5 and their parents meet once a week to create dishes using organic, all-natural and locally-grown food.

Eco-friendly choices play a role, too, in this class at Gymboree Play & Music of Ocean & Howell in Howell: The placemats are unbleached parchment paper. The bowls are made of sugar cane.

Wholesome Kids Cook, owned by Nicole Koroghlian of East Windsor and Stephanie Goodman of South Brunswick, offers the classes in New Jersey, and on this day, Koroghlian asks the children about their favorite food, explains why hands must be washed before preparing food and asks if they know the secret ingredient hidden inside a lime-green cloth bag she holds.

“It’s round, it’s a fruit, it’s red, and it grows on trees,” she says.

“Apple!” says Vanessa Mangelli, 3, of Howell, an outgoing, dark-haired girl.

Koroghlian holds up cinnamon sticks, explains they can be grated, has the kids smell the sticks’ sweet spiciness.

“Cinnamon has been used to help digestion,” Goodman says.

The adults help the children spoon yogurt into measuring cups, then into bowls.

“We’re using plain yogurt because it doesn’t have sugar added to it,” Goodman says.

The kids measure a teaspoon of maple syrup onto the yogurt. Tiny salt shakers, just the right size for a child’s hand, hold ground cinnamon. The children sprinkle some on the yogurt, then mix it all up.

“The best part is tasting, so taste it,” Koroghlian says, and they enthusiastically do.

She demonstrates how to use plastic knives to cut organic Fuji apples slices into small pieces.

Louis Tiboldo, 4, of Howell carefully cuts his slices.

“Good job!” says his mom, Kelly, 36, and he smiles.

The children layer yogurt and apples, top it with granola and raisins. Moms and kids sample the parfaits.

“Good!” Vanessa says.

“She loves to cook with her dad — lamb chops, homemade pizza,” Mangelli says.

“Seasoned fish,” Vanessa says. “I like to put it in the oven. And cookies!”

“I like this. It’s a good snack idea,” her mom says.

When asked if he’d make the parfait at home, Louis nods yes.

“It’s important to teach them about healthy eating,” his mom says. “And I’ll tell you what. This is delicious!”

Mangelli, 36, a second-grade teacher, says the class makes learning fun.

That’s important to them, Koroghlian and Goodman say. Parental involvement — and examples — also matter, they say.

Her mother made bread and other food from scratch and taught her to cook when she was young, says Koroghlian, 39, who has a master’s degree in social work and is a certified counselor with L.E.A.N., a healthy lifestyle program created by nationally known pediatrician William Sears.

“I ate healthy foods and exercised. Once I had children, I became more aware of using organic foods because of the pesticides on other foods,” says Koroghlian, whose sons are 5 and 7.

“My father ran marathons and still is very active,” says Goodman, 43, whose sons are 8 and 11. “My mother is a very good cook. We always sat down to eat as a family. We always had fresh fruit and vegetables.”

Goodman, a certified nutritional consultant with a bachelor’s degree in math, sees firsthand how food affects health.

“I see children with a lot of behavioral and attention issues, but when they change their diet, their behavior improves,” she says.

Kathy Froelich, owner of Gymboree in Howell, agrees.

Gymboree, which stresses parental involvement and serves newborns through age 5, uses physical activities, music, art and stories to help children develop cognitive and social-emotional skills.

“It’s very important to teach children what they put in their mouths affects all of that,” says Froelich of Middletown.

The class had personal appeal, too.

“My younger daughter was a difficult eater. She took a cooking class at (age) 5, and after that, she was ready to try everything,” says Froelich, 42, whose daughters are 9 and 12. “As a result, she’s eating better.”

Her family avoids processed foods, she says.

“If we are eating carbs, we make sure it’s whole-grain carbs. We eat fruits and vegetables, and I explain to them why we’re eating this way,” she says. “They didn’t necessarily like the whole wheat pasta, but understanding why we eat that way, they’re now willing to eat it.”

Some parents who take classes already are making healthy choices. Others want to learn how to do so, Goodman says. It can start with small changes and doesn’t mean being in the kitchen for hours.

“I’ve been doing a lot of soups lately — butternut squash with dill, asparagus,” she says.

“Start early,” Koroghlian advises. “If you do it early for your children, if you feed them no sugar or less sugar when their tastes are developing, and whole foods as opposed to processed foods, they get used to that taste.”

Hot on the heels of installing SMART Board technology in all classrooms at Neosho Middle School last spring, the work of the Neosho R-5 Charitable Foundation and its supporters is not done yet.

During a press conference Monday morning at Neosho High School, Kim Wood, president of the foundation, announced that its members would begin a campaign to raise $50,000 to install SMART Board technology in classrooms starting at the junior high school, and then moving into the high school.

Attending Monday’s press conference were members of the Neosho R-5 Charitable Foundation, Neosho R-5 School Board, and administrators of the district, as well as Neosho Junior High School students who would benefit from having SMART Boards in their classrooms.

SMART Boards are interactive computer boards, where a projector puts an image on an interactive white board. With that board, students can touch, write and move items on the screen through a connected computer.

“We are here today to celebrate our final push to install SMART Boards in every classroom in the district,” Page said. “It is quite an achievement. I am very proud of the Neosho R-5 Charitable Foundation for taking on such a monumental task. I don’t know of another school that is blessed with school-minded, dedicated individuals than those who serve on the foundation board. They have had a monumental task of not just getting ready to do what they are going to do this year, but last year they raised $75,000 for technology at the middle school.”

Page said technology has become imperative in its use in the classroom.

“Technology continues to expand in its beneficial influence and interaction between teachers and students from across the globe,” Page said. “We have a chance and opportunity to be on that cutting edge today as we kick off this campaign.”

Kim Wood, president of the Neosho R-5 Charitable Foundation, said the foundation will begin to seek donations, and more information on the campaign can be found on the foundation’s Web site at www.neoshofoundation.org. She said all donations are tax-deductible.

Dr. Jenifer Cryer, principal at Neosho Junior High School, said having SMART Board technology in all classrooms will help teachers prepare students in the 21st Century.

“We plan to use the SMART Boards in a number of ways that will help us,” Cryer said. “SMART Boards save a lot of time in the classroom with instruction.”

Darren Cook, principal at Neosho High School, said SMART Boards can help teachers open up a new world to students that can’t be done as easily with a simple workbook and pencil.

“There are so many different Web sites that can help bring learning to life,” Cook said. “With SMART Boards, the students can see it and interact with it. I think what we will be able to do is to use different instructional strategies in the classroom.”

WARM SPRINGS, Ga. — A Georgia woman is in jail after police say she forced her son to kill his pet hamster with a hammer as punishment for bad grades.

The sheriff of rural Meriwether County told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday that the 12-year-old boy told his teacher about the killing. The teacher reported it to the Division of Family and Child Services, who contacted police.

Sheriff Steve Whitlock said 38-year-old Lynn Middlebrooks Geter of Warm Springs faces one charge each of animal cruelty, child cruelty and battery.

The sheriff’s office said she remained in the Meriwether County jail early Friday. It was not immediately known if she had a lawyer.

Meriwether County is located about 90 minutes southwest of Atlanta.

Beery bank robber reportedly spends $3K on cocaine, hooker

Detectives say that after robbing the BB&T Bank at 15825 E. Silver Springs Blvd. on Tuesday afternoon, a beer-drinking Denis F. McAuliffe stopped at a motel on the busy roadway to engage the services of a prostitute for $2,000.

Before that, officials say, McAuliffe, 42, drove around and purchased $1,000 worth of cocaine.

Flanked by Detective Larry McArdle and Sgt. Keith Miller, McAuliffe declined to comment Wednesday while being led to a car that would transport him to the Marion County Jail.

A few hours earlier, McArdle and Miller had arrested McAuliffe and charged him with armed bank robbery and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Detectives say that on Tuesday, McAuliffe was the man who entered BB&T and approached a teller, saying he was robbing the bank. He pulled up his shirt, showing a firearm in his waistband. The teller handed McAuliffe some money.

He left the building and fled the area in a vehicle.

Officials say McAuliffe received $4,254 from the bank.

On Wednesday, a probation officer contacted the Sheriff’s Office and told them the man shown in pictures sent out by detectives was McAuliffe and that he was on felony probation after being convicted of burglary and auto theft in New York in September 2007.

The Florida Department of Corrections Web site shows McAuliffe was released from prison in June 2005 after serving time for burglary and two counts of grand theft. He is on parole until May 2011.

Miller and McArdle went to McAuliffe’s home at 10441 N.E. County Road 314 and found him there. They received permission to search the residence and a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee parked in front.

When Miller opened the Jeep’s tailgate, he found $1,145 in cash, a .38-caliber revolver and a blue polo shirt with a “Rose Bowl” emblem. It was the same shirt officials say the robber had on during the holdup.

McAuliffe told Miller, “You got me. I will tell you everything.”

He told the detective he robbed the bank and that beforehand, he drank approximately 10 to 12 Busch beers at his home.

He said when he drinks, he “becomes stupid.”

He said after he left the bank, he drove around and purchased $1,000 worth of cocaine before getting a motel room and paying a prostitute $2,000.

Taxi or airport shuttle related scams are all too common no matter where in the world you travel to. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Florida or Thailand, these scams are around, and easy to spot once you know what to look for.

For those of us who live in Fort Myers, airport transportation is simply a matter of driving there and leaving the car at the car park. It might be expensive to keep the car there for an extended time, but we often don’t mind. The alternative of course is to organize a taxi or airport shuttle.

Arranging transport in advance with a legitimate provider is the very best way to avoid scams when at airports. Many package trips have the option to include transfers as well, and it’s often a good idea to include them. One way or another you’re going to have to get from the airport to your destination, and airports tend to be quite a way from built up areas, which can mean a long trip.

Some of the most popular scams are ones that even legitimate private taxi drivers aren’t above trying with a visitor. For example, the unofficial, and unlicensed taxis whose drivers can accost you at arrivals. They pester you into letting them take you somewhere for a fraction of the legitimate price.

Not only are they using unlicensed vehicles, they are often not insured for paying passengers, might hold you hostage, run off with your luggage, take you somewhere you don’t want to go, end up charging you much more than the agreed price or exaggerating the cost of the airport fees or bridge tolls he might have to pay.

There is also an increasing amount of lying going on. Cabs have been known to lie about the destination hotel, saying it’s closed because of fire, damage or pests and take you somewhere else, where he gets a commission.

The other classic is not resetting or rigging the meter if the car has one. When you use a cab anywhere, make sure they reset the meter and it begins at zero, or whatever the pickup rate is and climbs normally. It has been known for rigged meters to climb at a much higher rate than is normal. This practice is prevalent in a few US cities and in Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam.

The majority of taxi drivers are legitimate people just trying to make a living. It is an unfortunate truth that you can never tell these people from the scammers. Avoiding these kinds of scams is easy. Pre-book the transportation using a package, or legitimate provider.

For residents of Fort Myers, airport transportation is as easy as picking up the phone book or searching online for approved companies. While it’s still possible, we haven’t yet reached the lows that many other cities have.