The ClearCut WordPress Theme is a highly configurable WP theme for artful or portfolio sites with an unusual and unique layout, featuring a two column fluid theme layout, enabled with custom cufon fonts, options panel, css3, page navigation, and related posts.

Cold Water is a cool and clean looking blog theme that has a large content slider on the front page. The theme has 3 columns for your widgets and it also supports the WordPress 3.0 menu management feature.

Sketchpad is a WordPress 3.0 theme that will help fuel your socially oriented site with built in media subscription icons, a themesheep “related articles” feature, and a “latest tweet” area in the header.

The Bibs Yellow Dream WordPress 3.0 Theme is based on the new WordPress 3.0 default Theme with a few modifications, frames, and little shadow effects. The right Sidebar is optimized for Adsense 300px. The Theme comes with 9 Widget Areas in total.

Goodness is a two-column layout WordPress theme, with a righthand sidebar, a horizontal dropdown jQuery custom menu, a replaceable logo area, custom header, and paged and threaded comments.

Oceanic is calm as the pacific ocean with tweets, ads, social links and featured posts.

The TypoThemeZero WordPress 3.0 Theme comes with 5 sidebars: two Sidebars on the right with 300px width Adsense format, one sidebar on top of the postings, one under the postings, and one in the footer which can hold several text widgets.

CHINA executes more of its own citizens than any other country, and more than all others in the world combined. “Thousands” of Chinese were executed in 2009 according to Amnesty International’s annual study, which states that an exact number is impossible to determine because information on the death penalty is regarded as a state secret. But this gruesome record may yet change. The National People’s Congress is reported to be reducing the number of offences that are punishable by execution. Among the crimes that currently carry the death penalty are bribing an official and stealing historical relics.

…

ON TUESDAY July 27th BP announced its chief executive, Tony Hayward, was stepping down after just three years in the job. He leaves with a year’s salary, GBP1m ($1.6m), and a pension reported to be worth GBP11m, accrued over 28 years of service. On the same day the company revealed a quarterly loss of GBP17 billion, reflecting the cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr Hayward has received criticism over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon spill. For all the opprobrium heaped on him over the last few months, Mr Hayward’s payout is modest compared with those enjoyed by many similarly high-profile bosses.

…

Textarea Cache is one of those Firefox extensions that can save you a lot of hair pulling, because it auto saves whatever text you enter in HTML textarea elements (ie. text boxes).

After installing Textarea Cache, any text you type in can be recovered in case of an OS or Firefox crash. This can be a boon for anybody who writes a lot online – bloggers, webmasters, writers, even avid commenters and social media users.

You can recover text by opening the Textarea Cache window – all text you entered previously will be available in plaintext.

Get Textarea Cache [Addons.Mozilla.org]

Image credit: Mozilla Addons site

An original article by TechZilo

Recover form field text [Firefox addon]

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What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning.

Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world’s geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways.

As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site. Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant, which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost.

In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought itd be timely and fun to test Googlers geographic knowledge by hosting the companys first ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia? and Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?

The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, Due to this citys location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570. And they didnt just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions, they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica.

Through all of these education efforts for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike we hope people of all ages never stop exploring.

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

Having been a new dad for six months now, Ive quickly come to learn two valuable parenting lessons. First, being a father is truly a full-time joband second, sleep is completely overrated. Whether buying the latest bottles, binkies, blankets and bibs, or just blogging about the whole magical journey, becoming a father has been the most invigorating and moving experience of my lifetime.

This week, Im excited to help introduce our latest search story, New Baby. The video really captures the joys (and costs!) of becoming a new parent. Id like to share my heart-felt compassion with new dads everywhere (and of course, my wife and the other mothers out there who are the true heroes.) We will all rest when they head off to collegein the meantime, enjoy!

Posted by Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager

On Sunday night we had a wonderful opportunity to share our passion for astronomy with our community in Pittsburgh at the Deep Sky Urban Star Party, held in the abandoned swimming pool at Leslie Park in Lawrenceville. We loaded up a bunch of Android phones with Sky Map and joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburghwho brought along their telescopesand several hundred local residents for a night of stargazing.

As a Sky Map engineer the biggest thrill I get is when we get emails from people who have used our app to show a planet to their children for the first time. At the Star Party we were delighted to have the chance to show people around the night sky in person. It was great to meet so many people who were both excited by astronomy and interested in Googles technology. Thanks for all of your ideas for new features, and a big thank you to the Leslie Park Pool Collective and all involved for organizing such a fun event.

Photos by Jason Parker-Burlingham

Posted by John Taylor, Software Engineer

While UGC and Reviews can often be a mixed blessing, as long as Google continues to reward rich snippets with enhanced visual listings, it’s probably a good idea to try to make reviews part of your website strategy.For those of you who haven’t seen rich snippets and reviews in action, here’s a sample of what they currently look like

To qualify for this program you have to have reviews, format your data using microformats, and submit your website for inclusion in the rich snippet program. While it may change in the future, currently you need to have site level approval, so let’s clear the hardest hurdle: getting the review data.

Your first and best source for reviews should be your existing customer base. Contact your most recent customers and ask them to provide a review about their last sale with you. While some may provide you with the information right off the bat, most people will need an incentive to spend the time sending you a review. My suggestion is to offer a future discount to everyone who sends you a review. Or put everyone who sends you a review into a contest for a larger prize (check your local laws before getting involved in any contests). Going forward, you should make soliciting reviews part of the order process. First they get an order confirmation, then a shipping confirmation, then a review request.

This works perfectly fine if you have customer data, but what if you’re an affiliate? Affiliates don’t have that information, so what do you do? You’ll have to get creative and think out of the box. Look for reviews on Kitchen Aid Mixers. Take out an adwords ad on Kitchen Aid Mixer attachments or extras looking for reviews. Your approach might look something like this …

You could take out reviews on Kitchen Aid Mixers but it would probably be costprohibitive. Don’t limit yourself just to Adwords: take advantage of systems that invade people’s privacy … er … offer really good targeting like Facebook.

Another suggestion would be to use forums. Looking for Disney Hotel Reviews? Inquire on any of the popular Disney forums about taking out an ad. There are plenty of people who could be easily incentivized to share extremely in depth reviews. You could also use social media services like Twitter withintelligentsearches. Want to know how people feel about iPad games–here you go. You’ll have to filter for quality, but asking someone if you can re-use their tweet as a review is pretty painless. If you’re running a local geo based website, you can try going old school and take out an ad in your local newspaper. Again, you’ll be a lot moresuccessfulif you provide some sort of incentive to get people to give you what you want.

I’m not going to be naive and tell you there’s no such thing as fake reviews because we know that’s not true. That said, if it’s a practice you are going to engage in, do so with caution: the laws are pretty fuzzy and those fake reviews could come back to haunt you down the future.The real hurdle is getting that initial critical mass of reviews to jump start the process. Once you clear that hurdle, it becomes a lot easier

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

How To Get Customer Reviews on Your Website

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The following is a sponsored post.

For this post were going to be talking with Steven Wyer of Reputation Advocate.Steve, for my readers who arent familiar with your firm, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Reputation Advocate started in 2006 and is based just outside of Nashville, Tennessee in Williamson County. I have a deep history in media, marketing and software development and came to ORM out of a personal need. I was involved in protracted litigation and my own search results didnt reflect the complete reality of the situation. At that time, there were very few options that addressed the needs of small business and individuals. While major corporations utilized online tools to defend themselves, solutions for those that fell under the Fortune 1000 were hard to find. Because of previous businesses I have owned, I put a team of Internet marketing professionals together and Reputation Advocate began to develop online tools and solutions with the goal of influencing and controlling the search engine results. Four years later we have been fortunate in representing business and individuals throughout North America, Latin America and Europe.

Online Reputation Management or ORM is a growing industry, and as more personal and private information makes its way onto the web its not always flattering. What types of clients does Reputation Advocate provide services to and what are some common problems encountered?

In the early years, most of our client projects were aimed at a handful of slander sites and blogs. They had high traffic, are very well optimized to rank, are magnets for organic back links and offered little in the way of presenting a balanced perspective for persons that they targeted. In 2010 the Reputation Advocate client base is much more diverse and the online violations now take on many forms. Reputation Advocate tracks several hundred complaint sites and there is a linear growth to these that is quite concerning. As public records become digitized and offered through the Internet, professionals can be repeatedly confronted with issues they assumed were addressed long ago. This content is now delivered at the top of someones search results and the ramifications can be very negative.

Businesses are now routinely attacked, and many times these violations come from former employees and competitors. Most businesses now have a presence on the Internet. They have focused on content and graphics and some clients are even employing SEO and PPC campaigns. However, problems appear because a broader perspective relating to online defense has not been considered.

Even though most people believe that they are careful about what they post about themselves online, that may not always true. Casual acquaintances, business associates and even family members might post content that is sensitive, untrue and damaging. Do you see that becoming a more serious problem in the future?

People have become much more aware of social media and with that awareness has come a certain power that has not existed before. 500 million Facebook members believe that they are safe and yet Reputation Advocate has seen many instances over the past six months that allow us to draw different conclusions. Hundreds of millions of blogs exist and everyone claims the First Amendment right to free speech. The difference is that you cannot confront your accuser, resolve differences in private and deal with conflict. When you are violated online you may never know who the attacker is. Clients can speculate but very few individuals come to the point of confronting the attacker. Currently the courts have a very narrow body of law that specifically addresses these issues. While there have been several precedent-setting cases, most people attacked do not have the financial ability and stamina needed to even attempt to defend themselves. Until fundamental federal laws are adapted to meet our digital world, we believe that this problem will only escalate.

Lets switch gears and talk about the corporate end of things. What are some of the common problems Reputation Advocate sees for your corporate clients?

As I mentioned before, most businesses now have a simple online presence. The Reputation Advocate clients we hear from most are those that believe that the digital world plays by the same ground rules that have been generally accepted business practices for decades. Traditional member organizations like the Better Business Bureau and the National Federation of Independent Business have offered channels for communication, conflict resolution and business validation. The Internet bypasses all of that. What we hear is that It isnt fair and that these online attack practices lack integrity, and its absolutely true! The whole landscape for business has changed forever. Either businesses accept this new reality or they open themselves up in ways they cannot even comprehend. Businesses can actually lose their online identity, have others misrepresent themselves and even have their name associated with terms like fraud, scam, thief and worse. The only way to defend a business is to adopt a new perspective. Companies need to proactively create, monitor and manage their online reputation and Reputation Advocate is seeing an increase in the number of businesses hiring us before they are attacked online in order to build a defense for their online reputation.

As companies become more involved with social media and communication on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, the potential for an error or mistake increases. What are some guidelines companies can set up that will allow them to participate in social media without creating a reputation management problem for themselves down the road?

To begin with, every individual and business in the United States should read the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) and the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Many businesses make key assumptions regarding rights and protections that are not correct. Once it is understood that the current laws put in place to protect Internet service providers may actually act against the protections that could be provided to individuals and business it wakes everyone up.

Next, monitor keywords. You will learn a great deal about your online reputation by simply utilizing Google Alerts. Monitor your name, your company name, company officers, products, brands, competitors and your industry as a whole. As the old saying goes: knowledge is power. Also, make sure that you have formal, legal trademarks filed to protect your brands. If there is blatant slander against a trademarked name, a Takedown Demand can be sent to the hosting company based on trademark infringement.

Finally, the most basic of online defense strategies is to own the URLs that represent your company and your brand. Reputation Advocate consults with companies often and it seems that they almost never consider this, the most vulnerable area of all. Simply put, if you dont own it, someone else can.
Reputation Advocate offers services both for reputation repair and reputation monitoring. Not everyone needs to monitor whats being said about them online, but a lot of us do and more will as time goes on. When do you think people need to start being concerned about their online reputations?

The most direct answer to your question is right now! We believe that every individual and business should be concerned about what is presented about them online. The old adage an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure absolutely holds true for a persons online identity. There are a number of good general monitoring tools that can deliver comprehensive reports detailing every time you or your company are mentioned online. For most people this is just too much information. The sheer volume can overload small businesses and consume a major part of most days for business professionals. What most people need to be aware of is the negative information that can be found. Reputation Advocate offers these services as part of a comprehensive ongoing online defense.

What is some advice you can give people about preventing reputation management problems or minimizing them right out of the gate?

You must be vigilant. Just because a negative listing is not easily found today, does not mean that it will not begin ranking next week, additionally, you dont always know what long tail search terms people use when doing research on you or your company. Reputation Advocates best advice is to establish your online presence immediately before you find the need to defend yourself. Also remember that whatever information you place on a social site can be used against you. This goes for contact information, pictures, family information and the names and titles of employees. For headhunters this is low hanging fruit. Slander has the ring of integrity to it when it includes specific information and many times this information comes from the client themselves. Always have the perspective that every piece of content that exists about you online is available to anyone at any time to be used for any purpose by those who know how to use it.

How does someone know they are in over their head and that its time to use a professional service like Reputation Advocate to help with the problem?

In general, by the time a person or company discovers an online attack, outside help is immediately needed. One reason for this is that when someone is slandered they react and want to be vindicated. Generally speaking their response, which is usually triggered by emotion, almost always hurts their online reputation rather than help it. The solution usually lies in a solid planned response that may not provide the immediate gratification of a fiery response but will deliver a stable long-term solution. Simply creating a bunch of social sites and hoping to hide the negative listing(s) does not work anymore and nicely asking for the content to be taken down seldom works. Online violations are not easy to address. There is no such thing as a silver bullet or cookie cutter solution. Companies that offer services with blanket marketing statements may not approach a client solution comprehensively. It is always easier to sell then to deliver. By partnering with the right online reputation management firm, over time a client can have confidence in a solid online defense that protects the most valuable thing they own; their name.

While every situation is different, whats a reasonable timeframe to expect that it will take Reputation Advocate to clean things up?

While we read marketing materials that indicate conclusive permanent ORM results in a matter of days, our experience suggests that there is simply no definitive answer to this question. The biggest companies involved in ORM suggest 30 day results. We benefit from these claims when clients contact Reputation Advocate after being disillusioned by unrealistic expectations and disappointing results.

Everyone who contacts us receives a free initial evaluation. During this evaluation we review the negative listing(s) and their SERPs, and after this is completed we can provide them with a reasonable timeframe about when to expect to see new positive listings on page 1 and when they can expect the negative listings to begin to be pushed down. Clients are involved in reviewing content and the initial collaborative effort is an important aspect of a project for most of our clients. Our average client begins seeing results within two to three weeks of beginning a project.

Lets look to the future a little bit … what are some interesting things you see on the horizon in your space … and how different do you see things in the next 12-18 months?

As I mentioned earlier, there is an absolute linier progression of growth as it relates to unwanted content for all sectors; business, professional and every day people. The damage is real. As additional historical information is digitized and social sites continue to expand, the need for services like Reputation Advocate provides will also multiply. The wild cards are held by the search engines and the dominant social sites. With Google changing algorithms daily and the projected growth for sites like Facebook and Twitter, an ever-growing percentage of business will be driven by SERPs. Congress is scrambling to address privacy concerns and foreign governments are asking for meetings with the CEOs of private social media companies. This digital landscape changes daily and those providing ORM will continue to adapt.

If the question is asked, Where is this leading us? everyone within this industry peers into the same dimly lit glass. I dont believe many people have any true sense of what this means to the average business owner or college graduate looking for a job. What I do believe is that the need to take action is immediate, that those who take control of their online reputation will defend themselves better than those who ignore the inevitable and that all of us will be viewed increasingly as who we appear to be online and less by a more thoughtful examination of our business, our character and our lives. We are not going to stop this train.

Thanks Steven for taking the time to talk to me about Reputation Advocate. If you have any questions please contact Reputation Advocate or Steve Wyer at 888-229-0746 or request a free consultation regarding your online reputation.

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Interview with Steven Wyer of Reputation Advocate

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July 28, 2010 6:00 AM

Apple Games has released a new game feature, this time entering the embattled universe of Blizzard Entertainment’s recently released StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The real-time strategy sequel continues the story of the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss with an expanded single player campaign, and features all new units and strategies for multiplayer fans to explore. Apple’s article includes comments from SC II director Dustin Browder, discussion of new unit mechanics, and a brief history of the universe shared by Protoss, Terran, and Zerg factions.

The wide variety of StarCraft IIs missions comes from lessons learned while developing scenarios for Warcraft III and its Frozen Throne expansion pack, both of which many of Browders team members worked on. Looking back at the original StarCraft proved useful too.

StarCraft is considered a polished game, Browder says, but we learned a lot from it that we applied to the sequel. For example, the starting experience is now much different: we do in-game cinematics that immerse you in the story, and we let you walk around the bridge of a starship, where you can talk to other characters. It takes the game to a new level.

He points out that those lessons were key to figuring out not only what worked, but also what didnt: We tried a lot of different things during development. For example, we tried cover systems, which have been used in first-person shooters and other strategy games, but StarCraft II is so fast-paced that they didnt work. They made the game become stagnant.

The team also drew on the thoughts of the many StarCraft players who fervently play the game today. Those fans were able to educate us on what is happening now in the StarCraft world, and what they wanted to see from the sequel, Browder says. They helped a lot during the Beta. They were involved from the earliest stages, and they really helped us fine-tune the game based on the way the original StarCraft is currently played.

Click over to the site below for the entire article.

Apple Games: StarCraft II
Blizzard Entertainment
StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty