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May 10, 2011

Link Farms and the need for Due Diligence

Filed under: Observations — Tyler @ 10:19 pm
Diligence isn't just for lawyers anymore

Diligence isn't just for lawyers anymore

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is just information that I have gleaned through experience in running a website. Take any of this information or anecdotes with a grain of salt and remember that I am not actually suggestion that you do anything. I am probably using the word ‘you’ in the same sense as the royal ‘we.’ Read at your own risk.

In the past few months I have received emails from people that they wanted to exchange ‘links.’ At first I didn’t understand why people would want to do this, if we didn’t know each other or have similar websites. But then I learned about the desire for some websites to acquire things like Pagerank and other web rank things. This practice of linking to other sites in order to gain rank is unethical and can seriously jeopardize one’s reputation and I have no idea what search engines do if they find out if people are abusing cross-linking…but I can expect that it doesn’t bode well for the searchability of articles.

So when I got the email a few months ago it basically said that the person ran a website and they liked my website and they wanted to post a link to me on their page and have a link pointing at their website on overidon.com. It sounded innocent at first, but then I did some Due Diligence and took a look at their website. They quite literally had over 500 links to other websites in the sidebar to their blog in tiny print. I instantly thought to myself, “Are you kidding me, Snoopy?”

So I sent the person an email saying, “No thanks.” And I explained how their site made no sense.

But extremely recently, I got an email from a company that wanted to purchase a link on overidon.com. I thought to myself…”Cool, someone wants to purchase an advertisement.”

I took a quick look at their website and it definitely was not a linkfarm. It actually had no outgoing links at all that I could see. It was a shareware looking web-utility site.

I sent the person an email saying hello and I told them that I sell advertising space on the right sidebar only and the prices depended on the size of the ad and the duration it will stay on the site.

I went to writer’s group and later that night I got an email back saying, that they wanted to only purchase a ‘text’ link, not a picture advertisement. And they wanted to have a quote on pricing for quarterly and yearly ad time periods.

This surprised me, because I thought that a company would take more than a a few hours to get back to me. So that raised a yellow flag in my mind. And the second suspicious thing was that the person said they only were interested in a text link, not a color advertisement.

Well, being a skeptical person, I decided to do some Due Diligence before giving any price estimates. What I found was that this shareware company had a terrible reputation on forums. The software was allegedly hard to uninstall, had minimal tech support and did not do the functions that it claimed to do.

I looked at other forums and there were a bunch of perfect “5” star ratings, with a tremendous amount of “1” star bad ratings. This was a huge red flag for me and I did more reading and many people recounted their experiences of how the company promoted its software in any way possible and claimed that it could do things, when in fact it could not.

After evaluating this information, I decided that any price would not be worth risking the small, yet adamantine reputation that we’ve established here at overidon.com. So I replied to the company and told them that we weren’t interested.

There are a lot of temptations out there for webmasters who want to gain popularity and/or incoming links. But slow growth that is based on respect will win over shortcuts every time.

-Tyler

 

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May 9, 2011

Simple Strategies for Words with Friends

Filed under: Gaming — Tyler @ 2:17 pm
Words with Friends

Vocabulary and Timing is everything

In playing the game, Words with Friends the user usually has access to the internet. You can’t play the game without it. So there is a temptation to look up words before actually placing them. That is actually bad Words With Friends etiquette and my friend Brandon and I call that, “You using googlebro?” But since there is an automatic feature to see if what you placed is actually a word, there is no problem with experimenting and going on the fringe of one’s vocabulary limits. Once you place a word that you may only know 60% or so because you heard it briefly in a movie or in a book or article, then look it up and try and memorize the meaning. This will improve your vocabulary and will help you recognize even better word patterns later on. This is especially a good strategy to use when a friend plays a word that you don’t know, look it up and try and remember the word. Remember, a good vocabulary can help out in many professions as well as in school.

The first board strategy that people need to know is that the bonus point tiles are king. It doesn’t matter how snazzy your word is, if someone uses the bonus tiles they can clobber you point wise if you’re not careful.

The best way to play the game I find, is to maximize your own points rather than trying to limit the points of your friend. This means, try and avoid “blocking” expensive tiles and instead use them yourself.

You can combo letter and word bonus tiles. So if you see a triple letter score and a triple word score…try and make a word that uses both of them. Recently, I placed the word, “Azure” on the board. The ‘a’ was already there, the ‘z’ was a triple letter score and the ‘e’ was a triple word score. I ended up getting 30 points for the Z and then the entire word was tripled so the word, Azure in this case was worth 105 points. Not bad…sorry Krystal, I had to use it.

There are even better strategies that I can tell you. Most people play the game by using a letter that someone else used and then starting a new word. That’s normal right? Well, if you create a new word out of someone’s existing word by using only one letter and then make a new word in another direction based on that letter, you get the points of the original word (without the bonus tiles on that one of course) plus the new word that was created in the other direction including the newly activated bonus tiles. The next paragraph will explain this in more detail.

Let’s say someone plays the word ‘frog’ horizontally on the board. But you have a bunch of letters including an ‘s.’ You can place the ‘s’ to make frog into ‘frogs.’ Then you can write the word, ‘seven’ using the new ‘s’ in frogs that you just put down. This will give you all the points for the word frogs and the word seven, plus any bonus tiles you acquired in the word ‘seven’ …pretty cool huh?

Here’s some secret hints with playing with random people you don’t know. Sometimes people that you randomly join a game with like to talk in the chat zone. But other times they can be really shy. One time some guy played a word that was pretty good and I said in the chat, “Do you really think you have what it takes to go against the webmaster of Overidon.com?” Then a few minutes later the guy said, “I’m not sure. I may die of old age before we finish this game because it takes you 5 – 10 hours in between each turn.”

I laughed when I read that and a few minutes later I placed a word that combo’d one of his words and also received a triple word score. He immediately resigned the match after that and then didn’t want to play again. So I recommend being nice and non-taunting towards people who don’t necessarily understand your sense of humor or personality.

-Tyler

May 8, 2011

Sonic the Hedgehog Big Band rendition of Casino Stage

Filed under: Music-Reviews — Tyler @ 3:02 pm
Sonic Casino Night

Sonic 2 - Casino Night - Big Band Music

Cody “Mr. Trent” Chavez created an excellent Big Band rendition of the Casino Night Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. This Big Band song was performed by the Nick Coates Orchestra. The song has a tremendous amount of style and gusto. The Big Band rendition of the music feels even more fitting than the original music. That is a big deal because remakes of old game songs usually don’t stack up to the originals. Even the vocal parts are great and they sizzle with character and pizazz.

The original song was composed by Masato Nakamura.

The trumpets seriously have good vibes. Mr. Trent does a lot of game remixes and arrangements and he has orchestras do the performances. So if you have a request, I recommend that you visit his channel on YouTube by clicking HERE and sending him a message.

 

May 6, 2011

Revisiting Films

Filed under: Tyler's Mind — Tyler @ 11:32 pm

Lately I’ve been revisiting films that have made an impact on me at some time or another in my life. The reason why I like watching things that I’ve already seen before is that it is similar to a good album. A good musical album usually has nuances that may not be necessarily appreciated to the full extent during the initial listen. Likewise, some excellent films have this density as well. And let it be known that I thoroughly enjoy old films and television shows and also new films in pop culture. But one thing that I’ve noticed, is that Science Fiction and Fantasy films can sometimes have deep layers of symbolism that may not make total sense in a contemporary/realistic setting.

So I am going to rewatch the film, Independence Day, which stars Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. I have a good feeling that I am going to love it, just as I did the first 4 times I watched it…but maybe I’ll gain some deeper insights and share them with everyone…see you in a couple hours!

OK. It is four hours or so later. I had to take the dog and get a sandwich and everything, so that’s why it took so long. But the movie was excellent. Actually, when I bought this movie from Target for $3.99 +tax I didn’t know that the film was going to come with the “Special Edition” that included 9 additional minutes of scenes.

The additional scenes were overall quite good, there was one where we see the interior of the alien fighter plane for the first time and the lead scientist admits how little he actually knows. Also there are several shorter scenes that add some tertiary character development. But when taking the entire film into account, it is such a long movie the 9 additional minutes don’t even seem like a big deal. Everyone walks into Independence Day (ID4) knowing well that they aren’t going to see the light of day anytime soon. So this movie is a theatrical commitment.

After revisting the film again I realized that Independence Day has a very sincere and complete message. Not only is the threat extremely dangerous, but despite all odds, humanity has the slight chance to prevail. But what I like most about the movie is that, it is human bravery, ingenuity, innovation, perseverance, teamwork and humility combined that allows for the victory to be achieved. If one single link in that chain was missing, the line would have been to short for them to reach their goals.

When I watched the film before, I seemed to get caught up in the two main characters portrayed by Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. But seeing it again, it is much more clear that the entire process was a huge combined effort. And even though Goldblum was lynch-pin instrumental in defeating the enemy, if it were not for the Area 51 installation and the work that the men did to keep it secret for so long, they would have been quickly dispatched by the first wave of attacks by the aliens.

Another thing that comes to mind is that I never noticed that it was the President’s decision to stay in the White House, that allowed Goldblum’s character to inform him that the code in the satellites was a countdown. If it wasn’t for the President’s bravery and captain of the ship mentality, he was have been whisked away to some super secure and inaccessible location. I took away from this that no matter how high in rank someone may rise, our connections with other people is what makes us the strongest. And by allowing communication, there is a greater chance for survival. Albeit the message we may need may come to us from the least likely of sources.

Without a doubt, the extended version made it more clear that the scientists greatly underestimated the unconscious alien that was retrieved by Will Smith’s character. The scientists literally sliced open the exosxeletal armor of the alien with scalpels and they knew it was not dead. Yet in spite of this, they had no military guards in the operating room. There weren’t even any armed soldiers outside the room. They had to open the double doors to get in. This was shocking to me, because it seemed that Brent Spiner’s character already knew that the aliens used the armor to make themselves stronger. So that forced me to take away the idea that the farther we delve into the unknown, the deeper and more sincere are the dangers. And we need to understand that despite how intriguing or interesting something may be, curiosity alone cannot save anyone from the black eyes that look beyond the void.

-Tyler

 

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