On Tuesday November 13th, the Furl Team resolved several bugs that we introduced to Furl earlier this month -(11/6).  We still have a few more to address over the next few days, but we hope you can see the progress.

The takeover of Yahoo! by Microsoft is almost a foregone conclusion (see our initial reaction). Barring a bid from another suitor, such as News Corp. (not likely), eBay (even less likely), Google (no way), or a private equity firm, or a partnership with Google, most analysts seem to agree that Microsoft's bid will be accepted by Yahoo! One of the biggest hurdles in merging two massive Internet properties like these, though, is merging their gigantic and proprietary user authentication systems. There is, however, something that could save Yahoo! and Microsoft engineers from a massive headache in that regard: OpenID.

Yahoo! has some experience in merging identity systems. It has switched Flickr users over to its unified Yahoo! ID system, for example. But merging the hundreds of millions of accounts across the Yahoo! and Microsoft web ecosystems will make the Flickr job seem like child's play.

OpenID, though, could make merging the two systems a relative snap. OpenID is a decentralized identity management system that lets users log into multiple sites using a single set of sign on credentials. The idea is that if everyone supported OpenID, you'd only have to remember one username and password for all your various accounts. Emre Sokullu wrote a great overview of the system last year.

Both companies have dabbled in OpenID support. Last February Bill Gates told a group at the RSA conference that Microsoft would collaborate with JanRain, Sxip, and VeriSign on interoperability between OpenID and Windows CardSpace. Earlier this month Yahoo! gave OpenID its biggest bump by becoming an OpenID provider.

But while Yahoo! is letting its roughly 250 million users make their accounts OpenID compatible, and thus log into other sites using their Yahoo! ID, they're not authenticating OpenIDs from outside providers. That would be necessary in order to use OpenID to merge the sign on systems of Microsoft and Yahoo!

If Micosoft became an OpenID provider via its Live ID system, as Yahoo! has done, and both companies authenticated outside OpenID account on their systems, then users could log into any Microsoft or Yahoo! service with the ID they already have. All that would be left would be a utility to let people link two accounts (i.e., tell OpenID that when I log into Hotmail with the Yahoo! ID I use for Flickr I want to see the Hotmail account I've had for 10 years). As far as I know, this isn't very difficult and is something both companies have experience with from past acquisitions.

Full support of OpenID by both Microsoft and Yahoo! would be a huge win for OpenID, as well. When Yahoo! announced support of OpenID a couple of weeks ago, TechCrunch reported that there were 120 million active OpenID accounts. Adding Yahoo!'s 250 million accounts triples that number. I'm not sure how many accounts are in the Live ID system, but with over 260 million Hotmail users and over 240 million Windows Live Messenger users, you can bet that it's a lot.

So how likely is it that Microhoo adopts OpenID? My best guess is: pretty likely. .NET Windows Passport Live ID is a confusing system for users that changes names every three seconds, while OpenID is quickly becoming the Web 2.0 standard. Further, chief competitor Google also recently became an OpenID provider via Blogger.

Google today announced the release of a new API for graphing social net connections on the web at large. The Social Graph API is a way for developers of social applications to let users easily find data on their social connections across the open web. The information the API returns can be useful in helping users locate and add their friends when starting up at a new social application.

It was only a few weeks ago that Google announced that it had joined the DataPortability.org work group. It didn't take them very long to make good on the promise of contributing to the cause of data portability, though I suspect that Social Graph API has been under development at Google since before they joined DataPortability.org.

The Social Graph API uses the same algorithms at play in Google's search engine to discover how people are connected across the Internet. In fact, it only uses publicly available data -- if it's not on Google, the API won't be able to find it -- which Google says puts users in control of their own data since anything they don't like showing up, they can change at the source level.

The API works by searching for connections between people based on how people are linked on social networks and via publicly available profiles and pages -- i.e., if Marshall Kirkpatrick and I linked to each other on our personal blogs, or if we followed each other on Twitter, the Social Graph API might consider us friends because we have a strong connection. So, if I then sign up for a new social service, I can feed it links to my social presence elsewhere (like my blog or Twitter profile) and it will analyze those public connections and suggest to me that maybe I should be friends with Marshall on this new service because it looks like I'm friends with him elsewhere.

I spoke this morning to Google Developer Advocate Kevin Marks (whom we interviewed in December), and he showed me a demo using his blog as an example that shows how strong each of his various online presence points are connected. I.e., how his blog is connected to his Twitter account is connected to his Flickr page, etc.

As more and more users are beginning to suffer the effects of "social networking fatigue," anything that helps automate and make easier the process of adding your existing connections to a new network is a useful tool. The Social Graph API could be an important part of the data portability movement in that it allows users to find and evaluate their public social connections and take control of that information.

Google has set up a Social Graph API group as well as provided developer documentation.

Alexis Chiu / People.com:
Friends Mourn Heath Ledger in Second L.A. Service  —  Friends and celebrity colleagues - including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Sienna Miller, Ellen DeGeneres and director Todd Haynes - gathered on the Sony lot in Los Angeles to remember Heath Ledger on Saturday, PEOPLE has confirmed.

… may be much cheaper thanks to this service so consider using it. You also get local Spanish number !

Life in IT can be thankless, but you don't have to suffer. A 25-year IT veteran turned professional coach offers advice on how she and many other technical professionals found fulfillment and fortune outside IT.

Seven Tips for Pursuing a New Career Outside IT

February 13, 2008 — CIO — Let's face it: Life in IT can be thankless. Your work often goes unnoticed, unless you do something wrong. You put in long hours, working evenings and weekends. Expectations are high. Users are seldom happy with results.

Believe me, I understand. I spent more than 25 years in IT, having started as a systems developer and ending as director of career development in a high-tech consulting company. As my career in IT evolved, I realized I enjoyed management and staff development more than technical work. After the IT downturn of 2001, I decided to begin a new career as a professional coach.

It's easy to tire of a career in IT. I've talked with dozens of technical professionals who say they are burned out or who no longer feel challenged by their jobs. Many more senior professionals are forced to consider a job outside the field after being laid off and finding it difficult to land a new job, either because their skills aren't in demand or employers don't want to pay for their experience.

You don't have to suffer in IT. If you've ever considered a career outside the profession, the following seven steps will help you make your move. They worked for me and many others, as you'll see.

1. Identify your interests: What do you like to do?

Tom Prince knew he wanted to do something besides sell CRM software when he was Siebel's vice president of sales, but he had no idea what. After he left Siebel in 2002, he and his wife Mary decided to investigate the possibility of opening a restaurant. They loved good food, dined out often and understood their local, Boston-area market well. They partnered with Lorenzo Savona, a former general manager of two chic restaurants in Boston, who had been planning to build a restaurant similar to the one Tom and Mary Prince envisioned. In 2004, they opened Tomasso Trattoria in Southborough, Mass. Today, they also run Panzano Provviste e Vino, a market and wine shop next door to the restaurant.

"There's so much disillusionment in high-tech. You rarely get the feeling that you're selling people something they really want," says Tom Prince. "Here, we're providing something that people actually know and care about—something that people really want. Food affects their sight, their smell, their taste, their touch, all of their senses."

If you don't have a clear idea of what you want to do, start by evaluating your existing position. Make a list of everything you love and hate about your current job. Use those likes and dislikes to form criteria for a new career. Look for opportunities that feature the things you love but not the things you hate. For instance, if you love your job because of your relationship with your clients, look for jobs that focus on customer service. Or, if you love being the expert and sharing your knowledge, teaching is a possibility.

Also think about what you do in your spare time. What do you enjoy doing most? What is it about these activities that makes them enjoyable? If you love dogs, consider starting a boarding, grooming or training business. If you practice yoga, find out what it would take to become an instructor. Brainstorm ways you can make a career out of your passions the way that the Princes did with food.

2. Leverage your strengths: What do you do well?

For 24 years, Norman Daoust worked in corporate IT roles, except during a sabbatical when he focused on his music. Daoust plays fretted instruments—the guitar, electric bass, banjo and mandolin. After three years of trying to make a living as a musician he decided to return to corporate IT, only to remember exactly why he left before: the inability of large, bureaucratic organizations to embrace and manage change. He had to get out, but instead of going back to music, he opted for consulting in his area of expertise, information modeling and systems integration. He prepared for that transition by participating in several consulting workshops. When he was laid off from his corporate job in 2001, he took the leap. Seven years later he has built a successful consulting practice with many clients and the freedom to make his own schedule, including time for his music.

A great tool you can use to identify your strengths is the book StrengthsFinder 2.0. When you buy it, you get a code to take the StrengthsFinder assessment online at no additional cost.

3. Assess your options: What could you do that reflects your interests and leverages your strengths?

Tom McGoldrick performed many roles during his 30 years in IT: systems programmer, project manager, department manager and senior vice president. He left IT in 2002 during a downsizing. When he stepped back to look at his life, he realized how much his career had taken him away from his family. He and his wife Sue Ann decided to look into running their own business.

They considered more than 1,200 different businesses and eventually narrowed the list down to six. One option was inspired by their beloved pet Labrador retriever, Apollo, who had a champion bloodline. They considered breeding dogs, but further research showed they couldn't make a living at it. When Apollo unexpectedly died, they looked for a burial/cremation facility that would provide Apollo with the honor and respect the McGoldricks felt he deserved. They discovered Paws in Heaven and were very pleased with the care and attention Apollo received there.

In 2003, the owners of Paws in Heaven decided to retire, and the McGoldricks bought the business. Tom McGoldrick recognized that the business savvy, technical knowledge and relationship-building skills he had honed over the course of his career in IT would lend themselves well to running and growing their new business. Paws in Heaven perfectly combines McGoldrick's love for animals with his business and technical acumen.

4. Try your possibilities on for size: What would this new career really be like?

Technical graphic designer Marissa Rosenfield Smajlaj was shopping at a bookstore in downtown Boston when she came upon a copy of the book Colette's Birthday Cakes by world-renowned specialty cake artist Collette Peters. As she flipped through the pages and admired each cake, she had an epiphany: "I could do this!" she thought. Smajlaj got a part-time job in a bakery to see if she'd enjoy the work. She loved it, decided to go to culinary school and was accepted at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu in London. She completed the Le Cordon Bleu Diplome de Patisserie. The following year, she became a pastry chef at a New York City restaurant. She hasn't looked back since.

5. Be open to opportunities: What's out there?

Bill Sobbing didn't start out as an IT professional. In college, he majored in English. When he graduated, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. He looked at many different possibilities, but none of them excited him. Eventually, a relative got him a job where the relative was working. When the IT department at Sobbing's company posted an entry-level position, he applied for it and was accepted. Sobbing found a career that interested him and spent the next 20 years working in various IT roles. He enjoyed the work but, like many IT managers, he tired of corporate politics. He decided to become an independent consultant and began working primarily from his home. One morning, he picked up a newspaper and read about a local school, The San Diego Golf Academy, which offers a program in golf course management. He had played golf casually since high school but never considered making it his career. Yet something in the story about the Golf Academy compelled him to check it out. Three years later, Sobbing is general manager of a nine-hole golf course in Phoenix, Ariz. He could never have done it if he hadn't indulged his curiosity.

6. Select the right opportunities: Which are viable?

In 2002, Alan Klug was a senior consultant with KPMG. He enjoyed working with clients, but the consulting industry was suffering from the post-9/11 economic recession at that time. Klug knew future consulting opportunities would be limited and decided to pursue something entrepreneurial. He considered opening a custom closets business, a car wash, and franchising a quick-service restaurant. He developed business plans for each idea, but none of them really grabbed him. Then he came across a small ad in Fortune for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Intrigued by a company that got paid for taking people's junk off their hands, he says he "researched the heck out of it." He learned that it was a lucrative and fast-growing business with a solid strategy and good management team heading it up.In 2003, he became a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchisee with four territories. He has since expanded to eight territories. He is on track to become a $2 million business in 2008 and is already thinking about what he might do next. "If an opportunity comes along, don't count it out immediately because it seems too good to be true. Just research it and find all the downsides," he says. "There are plenty of opportunities out there to be exploited."

If you have a couple of options and can't decide between them, take out a sheet of paper and divide it into columns—one for each possibility in question. Write the title of each option at the top of each column. List the pros and cons of each possibility side by side. If neither choice stands out, answer the following questions: What will happen if I pursue this career? What won't happen if I pursue this career? What will happen if I don't pursue this career? What won't happen if I don't pursue this career? Those four questions sound similar, but they're all slightly different and designed to help you explore the nuances of each possibility. Use your answers to those questions to decide which option is the best for you.

7. Create a career action plan.

Once you have decided on a career, you can put together a career action plan. This is a simple project plan with tasks, deliverables and target dates. It includes a long-term career objective (from six months to three years) with short-term tasks and deliverables for the next three months.

If your career objective is, for example, to launch your own consulting business next year, one short-term task to perform might be to talk with several consultants to learn more about what it's like. Other tasks might include investigating what areas of specialization are in greatest demand and what it would take for you to build your expertise in those areas. A deliverable might be to draft a preliminary business plan with a list of potential clients and the financial resources you have available to launch your business. At the end of three months, add new tasks and deliverables for the following three months. This simple approach works well for planning and tracking your progress.

As you begin building your career action plan, answer the following questions:

• What do I need to accomplish my goal?
• Do I need education, equipment, office or other space?
• Do I need hands-on experience?
• Do I need financial aid?
• Do I need a mentor or a coach?
• Who among my friends and acquaintances can provide assistance with my career change? What assistance can they provide: resources, expertise, moral support?

Remember, no one succeeds alone. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. There is something wrong with not asking for help when you need it. In most cases, people are more than willing to lend a hand.

These seven tips come from my own experience as well as the experiences of others. I leveraged my own interests and strengths in training and professional development to move from IT into my coaching business. In my corporate role as director of career development, I coached many IT professionals, from systems developers to executives. In that role, I had the opportunity to try out what would become my new career as a professional coach. Since I wasn't ready to leave my corporate job at the time, I worked with a mentor/coach to develop and implement a business plan that enabled me to remain with my company while I earned my credentials and began to build my coaching and consulting practice. I have been on my own since 2006. I have found great joy and success in my new career, and I wish you the same in your "Life Beyond IT," wherever it may take you.

Joanne Dustin is a certified professional coach and the author of Life Beyond IT: Open the Door...Your Future is Waiting.

Microsoft today announced will acquire Danger Inc., the makers of the popular Sidekick phones, for an undisclosed sum. The Palo Alto-based company provides services keep people in touch, stay organized and informed while on the go through real-time mobile messaging, social networking services and other applications.

Applications on Danger-powered handsets include HTML Web browsing, instant messaging, games, multimedia, social networking, Web email and personal information management applications. Combining these services with Microsoft technologies, including MSN, Xbox, Zune, Windows Live and Windows Mobile, will provide the software giant with tools to accelerate work against Google's Android mobile platform.

Danger was co-founded by Andy Rubin, who is now running Google's mobile phone project, Android. Google has assembled a community of carriers, cellphone makers, software developers and chipmakers to develop a mobile software platform.

Related News Articles

• Sprint, Microsoft Deliver Mobile Search Innovations
• Nokia and Microsoft to Deliver Windows Live Services
• Nokia, Microsoft to Boost Mobile Entertainment
• Treo 755p with Microsoft Direct Push Unveiled for Sprint
• Microsoft Reveals Windows Mobile 6

©2002-2008 Mobiledia Corp. A Cell Phone Resource Site. All Rights Reserved. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Gallery: Palm Centro now official on AT&T

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I know it has been awhile since I posted.  Tonight we have big news!  MSN Spaces is now Windows Live Spaces. The Windows Live vision is taking shape! In addition to tons of cool improvements (themes, social networking, and more), now Gadgets can be built for Spaces as well as Live.com.  Stay on top of developing for Spaces at the Spaces Platform blog.

One of the best aspects of Gadgets on Spaces is their viral nature.  See a cool gadget on someones space - just click on the + sign and you can quickly add it to your Space. Let the fun begin!

Quote

Gadget devs, come out and play!

 

Admit it. 

 

You've always thought MSN Spaces was pretty cool -- that we did some things right and would work hard to smooth out any rough edges over time.  But, you weren't sure if the Spaces team would ever let developers outside the company party in someone else's space.  Well, a big part of joining the Windows Live family today is support for web gadgets written by anyone including YOU!  Thanks to the great work done on Gadgets to date, you can now write a gadget that works both in Live.com (personalized portal) and Spaces (online expression/identity).  And, it only takes one person adding it to their space for your gadget to become popular -- visitors to that space can choose "Add to your space" or "Add to Live.com" right from the header of the gadget, then visitors to that space can add to their spaces, and it's off to the races!

 

What kind of gadget makes sense in a space?

 

Remember that the Live.com portal is about YOU catching up on the world.   Spaces is about the world (however big or small you define it with the permissions you set) catching up on YOU.  Users will decide which gadgets are worthy of adding to their space or not, and given our experience with Spaces features to date, the ones that will be the most successfull will be:

Customizable -- let the space author personalize the gadget so their instance of it is different than another Spaces user's instance.  This could be as simple as letting the space author select the city they want to show weather for OR as complicated as pulling the user's account data in from another service (ie, his/her Netflix queue). 

 

Reflective of the author's personality -- a gadget that helps the author to be creative with little or no work is more relevant than one that lets a visitor come to a space and check their mail account or convert their currency.  All of those gadgets are killer apps; it's just the ones that are more like sharing your photos or music tastes will probably be more popular. 

Adaptive to our rich themes/layouts -- after adding your gadget to your own space for testing, try selecting a bunch of dark and light themes AND moving the gadget between our narrowest and widest columns to make sure it works well in all scenarios.  You want that puppy to shine!

 

How do I get started?

1.  Build a Windows Live web gadget according to the SDK available at the Windows Live Dev site. 

 

2.  If your gadget has any settings/edit UI that visitors shouldn't see, then use the following code to detect whether Spaces is running the gadget in author mode and show/hide the UI accordingly.  There is a p_args argument outlined in the gadgets SDK and we've added a new method off of that called getMode().  You can do a simple comparison of the value returned from that method call to determine author vs. visitor mode.  

Something like the following:

          

         foo = function(p_elSource, p_args, p_namespace)

         p_args.module.getMode() == Web.Gadget.Mode.author

3.  Add the gadget to your own space using the following Spaces API: 

http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=URLEncodedPathToYourH ostedGadgetManifestURL

 

Switch between "Edit your space" and "View your space" to see how it behaves in both author and visitor modes.  If your manifest file, Javascript, and CSS are hosted anywhere but Windows Live Gallery (gallery.live.com), the gadget can only be added for editing/viewing by the space owner.  It will be hidden to visitors.    

4.  Zip up your manifest file and supporting Javascript/CSS files and submit that gadget package to the Windows Live Gallery so other visitors can add it to their space by going to Customize --> Modules --> "Add gadgets from Windows Live Gallery".  Once it has been verified to work in each service, it will appear in the Gallery for users to add to Live.com or Spaces.  Make sure you use relative URLs (mygadget.css instead of http://foogadgetdeveloper.com/mygadget.css) in your manifest XML to point to the scripts/CSS or the gadget will be rejected during verification.    

 

5.  If you upload a cool gadget to Gallery that you think will be a hit with Spaces users, comment on this post or send mail to spgadget@microsoft.com.   Same thing applies if you have feedback or feature requests for making gadget development for Spaces better.

We'll be updating the Gadgets SDK and sample code on dev.live.com very soon to reflect the additional Spaces items.  In the meantime, you have everything you need above.

 

Good luck stormin' the castle!

 

-- Jay Fluegel

Ric Merrifield - Microsoft gets down to business with Motion initiative

"Ric, director of strategy on the top secret Motion Incubation team, runs the Motion initiative. What's that? It's a group at Microsoft that studies how businesses work and looks for opportunities to help them do their business better. They made an entire map of how business works.

Motion's research led to the acquisition of Great Plains, too (which led to the Dynamics suite of services/applications).

Enjoy this look into a team you've never heard of before today and see how Microsoft approaches new markets and new acquisitions, and how it learns from other businesses."

The FriendFeed vs Twitter debate has got me thinking about the nervous system of the mesh.  The activity streams that show all the events, tasks, pings that originate from your friends.  I pitched this feature to Mark Pincus and Tribe.net but he wouldn’t do it.

Now that Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed have each taken the idea and ran with it - in slightly different directions - I thought it would be fun to see how people are using these features.

1.  Yes - it’s just a feature, not a product unto itself so I sure as hell hope FriendFeed is planning on providing something more than just voyeuristically gaping at what your friends are doing.  Commenting is nice, but that does not make up a product or service.  CoCommnet found out about that.  Twitter is a micro-blogging platform and we know Facebook has all SORTS of activities and things to do. But what do you DO with FrendFeed?

2.   Presence and IM communication is key - and I think that’s how a lot of people use Twitter as some sort of multi-user chat room kind of way.  I certainly do.  Its really like a IRC channel to me.  I remember the early days of teh #Joiito IRC channel.  It was quite a scene.

3.   So if just looking at activities is only a feature and communication is key - where does that leave subcribing to people?  Isn’t the action of ‘following someone’ the same as ’subscribing to their feed’?  And how is this different from ‘friending’ someone?  I’m sure danah boyd will do an entire dissertation on these subtle differences but to us simple practioners, I submit that in fact there is NO difference between these features/terms.  Not that it really matters.

4.  One things for sure - we know humans sure as hell want access privileges and control over whether they’re automitically included into anything.  I wonder if Facebook has learned this lesson by now - or not?  THAT’s what Sarah Lacy SHOULD have asked Zuckerberg at SXSW. So this whole subscribing to - process - needs to have access and control filters added into the mix:

AT THE POINT OF SUBSCRIBING/FOLLOWING SOMEBODY - we need a way of deciding just WHAT I’m subscribing to.  Maybe I like your photos and blog posts, but I’m not interested in what your friends are doing or even who they are - or what Groups you’ve joined.  Just photos and blog posts - please.  That would clarify the process and make it clear what you’re interested in.

AND WHEN YOU MAKE YOURSELF AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBING TO - I really think this is when the access controls and filters have to be set up.  Anyone can subscribe to my blog, photos and profile changes, but ONLY my friends can subscribe to my friend status changes and Group anythings, and ONLY my family can see my videos.

If open is the new black, then Opt In and Access controls are the new Orange accessory.

Posted by randfish

Let's try a little excercise...

Common features of spam domains include:

• Long domain names
• .info, .cc, .us and other cheap, easy to grab TLDs
• Short registration period (1 year, maybe 2)
• High ratio of ad blocks to content
• Javascript redirects from initial landing pages
• Use of common, high-commercial value spam keywords like "mortgage," "poker," "texas hold 'em," "porn," "student credit cards," and related terms
• Many links to other low quality, spam sites
• Few links to high quality, trusted sites
• High keyword frequencies and keyword densities
• Small amounts of unique content
• Very few direct visits
• Very few links sent out in (non-spam) email to the site
• Registered to people/entities not associated with trusted sites
• Not frequently registered with services like Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central or Live Webmaster Tools
• Rarely have short, high value domain names
• Often contain many keyword-stuffed subdomains
• More likely to have longer domain names
• More likely to contain multiple hyphens in the domain name
• Less likely to have links from trusted sources
• Less likely to have SSL Security certificates
• Less likely to be in directories like DMOZ, Yahoo!, Librarian's Internet Index, etc.
• Unlikely to have any significant quantity of branded searches
• Unlikely to be bookmarked in services like My Yahoo!, Del.icio.us, Faves.com, etc.
• Unilkely to get featured in social voting sites like Digg, Reddit, Yahoo! Buzz, StumbleUpon,  etc.
• Unlikely to have channels on YouTube, communities on Facebook or links from Wikipedia
• Unlikely to be mentioned on major news sites (either with or without link attribution)
• Unlikely to register with Google/Yahoo!/MSN Local Services
• Unlikely to have a legitimate physical address/phone number on the website 
• Likely to have the domain associated with emails on blacklists
• Often contain a large number of snippets of "duplicate" content found elsewhere on the web
• Unlikely to contain unique content in the form of PDFs, PPTs, XLSs, DOCs, etc.
• Frequently feature commercially focused content
• Many levels of links away from highly trusted websites
• Rarely contain privacy policy and copyright notice pages
• Rarely listed in Better Business Bureau's Online Directory
• Rarely contains high grade level text content (as measured by metrics like Fleisch-Kincaid Reading Level)
• Rarely have small snippets of text quoted on other websites and pages
• Cloaking based on user-agent or IP address is common
• Rarely contain paid analytics tracking software
• Rarely have online or offline marketing campaigns
• Rarely have affilliate link programs pointing to them
• Less likely to have .com or .org extensions
• Almost never have .mil, .edu or .gov extensions
• Rarely have links from domains with .edu or .gov extensions
• Almost never have links from domains with .mil extensions
• Rarely receive high quantities of monthly visits
• Rarely have visits lasting longer than 30 seconds
• Rarely have visitors bookmarking their domains in the browser
• Unlikely to buy significant quantities of PPC ad traffic
• Rarely have banner ad media buys
• Likely to have links to a significant portion of the sites and pages that link to them
• Extremely unlikely to be mentioned or linked-to in scientific research papers
• Unlikely to use expensive web technologies (Microsoft Server & Coding Products that Require a Licensing Fee)
• Likely to be registered by parties who own a very large number of domains
• Unlikely to attract significant return traffic
• More likely to contain malware, viruses or spyware (or any automated downloads)

For high quality content domains, the opposite is true (at least, for a good percentage of these). Now think about the sites you're building - which features apply to them? What could you do differently to be more like the "high quality" category and less like the "spam"?

BTW - Love to hear your take on features you think are common to spam, or to high quality sites.

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Posted by randfish

On Thursday morning (yesterday), SEOmoz reached 2000 PRO members and we had a mini celebration at the office to commemorate.

To honor the occasion, Mystery Guest stayed up until midnight the night before, baking us fantastic, shortbread, chocolate-dipped cookies in the shape of 2s and 0s.

Left to Right: Danny, Rand, Sarah, Jane, Gillian, Susan, Nick, Scott & Christine

Susan Moskwa had stopped by to do a Whiteboard Friday (which should be posted any minute now) and joined us in the celebration.

Obviously, I'm ecstatic. It may be an arbitrary number, but it's been symbolic to me and many of the other mozzers for months now as a potential tipping point for the service. I'm really proud of what the team at SEOmoz has achieved - buiding great tools and a terrific website, interacting and inspiring people throughout the SEO community and working together to build an atmosphere that makes me excited to go to work every morning.

We're not done - not by any means. In fact, to be perfectly honest, the PRO toolset and value proposition today is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we'd like to offer in the future. Several of us got together for a nearly two-hour meeting (we got a bit sidetracked by some engineering challenges) today on features and functionality for a completely new tool that we think will be a remarkable boost for competitive analysis and brand tracking.

In addition to congratulating my team and sharing a few photos, I'd also like to use this post to officially announce our intention to launch V4 of SEOmoz (the 4th iteration of the site since its birth in 2004). That launch is expected to arrive right around Halloween of this year (October 31st), and will feature a ton of new material, new functionality, a new look and feel and a considerably faster load time (as we're also planning to add load balancing and more robust, scalable code).

However, we can't possibly predict every feature our members (that's you!) might enjoy, so please feel free to leave comments with your suggestions for the PRO section, the free stuff, the blog, YOUmoz, the Marketplace, Events or any other part of the site. In the past, we've gotten many of our best suggestions from our membership, and are hopeful that this time is no different. Obviously, I can't promise that we'll include every feature, but with a longer development cycle, we'll be able to accomplish quite a bit. No suggestion is too big or too small, so please do contribute.

Finally, a huge thanks to all our members - both PRO and non. Early next week, we're on schedule to reach 70,000 total SEOmoz members, another milestone, and looking over the blog, the marketplace, Q+A - the areas where we get to interact as a community, I'm amazed at the quality of people, content and discussion. If we could send you all delicious shortbread cookies and champagne, we totally would :)

p.s. Have you noticed how good the YOUmoz content has been lately? Seriously, there are some very good posts going up there of late - bravo, YOUmozzers!

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