Some fun links

I caught up on some of my non-search feed reading this weekend. Normally I’d drop some of these links in my Twitter stream, but I ended up with a ton of links. So I thought I’d drop them here.

In case you missed it, Google’s webmaster console launched a new Webmaster Tools API a few weeks ago. A few days after that, they announced that Google’s Webmaster Tools are now available in 40 languages. I think every webmaster should be using this free service at this point.

Mac vs. PC is a really entertaining video:

It’s amazing that a small production can do match moves (tracking camera motion from video, then inserting virtual objects) so well. At this rate, it feels like we might not even need actors in a decade or two. 😉

Google had a Festivus pole over the holidays and I missed it?

Mmm, Girl Scout cookies. Learn how to make home-made Girl Scout cookies.

Seth Godin hits marketers over the head with his obvious stick in an excellent post:

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you’re not sure, that ads are risky, that you can’t tell. …

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don’t know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

Jacob Gube did a great post about 10 ways to improve your website’s performance.

I love this video where a projector shows objects falling down a whiteboard and reacting to things on the whiteboard.

Michael Zalewski on Google’s security team had a blog post about Google’s new Browser Security Handbook. The stuff about browser security mechanisms is pretty interesting.

Darren Rowse discusses the 21 things all new camera owners should know.

Reto Meier had a good post about programming for Android. It made me hit Amazon to order his Android programming book. While I was there, I picked up Erica Sadun’s book about programming the iPhone. I kind of want to make a movie where the two books fight with each other.

If you want to convert your blog to a different format, the Google Blog Converters project can help. It looks like it can convert back and forth between Blogger, WordPress, MovableType, and LiveJournal. I like that you can use this code to move your data out of (or into!) Blogger, which holds with the “not trapping users’ data” philosophy that Google has.

16 Responses to Some fun links (Leave a comment)

  1. Hey Matt,

    Any possibility of a 2009 grab-bag thread 🙂

    Thanks!

  2. Hi Matt, I’m in the process of converting a Blogger blog to WordPress. I came here to see what was up and instead found this great post, both the Webmasters API news and the blog converter were immediately useful. Many thanks and a great week to you.

  3. cool video though robots are easy to render thats why toy story was done lots of smooth surfaces

    I take it you know about Sanctuary Amanda Tappings new show which uses a lot of CGI and RED cameras? some times it is still going to be esier to get an actor to do it

  4. Matt – this is one of my favorite posts from you. Nice job!

    Also, call me crazy, but I was kinda hoping the PC would win in the video.

  5. This is a great little video that would make for a quality viral marketing campaign.

  6. Matt,
    I was actually going over various APIs that Google offers, right this weekend. And, while I certainly can understand Financial APIs or even Blogger APIs, I have a hard time understanding what’s good in the Webmaster Tools APIs? I can hardly see any tool that could benefit from it. If Google had reported external links to the web site concisely and accurately that would be at least one use, but since Google never does that – there’s really no point. Everything else can be checked, pretty much, once a week, to make sure “everything works”. How many times you have to set a preferred domain or a site map?

    BTW, integrating other Google services into WTB would be nice – I’d love to see how Base feed complements a site map and what’s their overall total performance is like. Just a thought…

  7. Thanks for Browser Security Handbook Matt and seems like content in the page needs regular update?

  8. Good stuff Matt, some useful stuff (mmm, cookies!)

    Oh and as a side note, I like the latest blog over at the Official Google Blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-search.html) I read something at Tech Crunch where it was mentioned how many grms of CO2 is offset by a single search on Google and it came to an absurd amount!

    Ohwell, it was good to see TechCrunch thought whom they referenced these stats from were a bit…. urgh… out, but I also like the speed of the big G PR machine! 😀

  9. The MAC vs PC is great! That would make a great TV commercial!!

  10. i wish my computers did that

  11. Home made Girl Scout Cookies? Isn’t that unAmerican? I actually analyzed the economics some time ago and was glad to find that the big money goes to the scouts rather than the bakery:
    http://joeduck.com/2007/03/15/girl-scout-cookies-are-a-great-donation-not-a-bakery-scandal/

  12. The best Mac vs. PC commercials are here:

    http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/

    I love how they characterize Linux. Brilliant stuff. (But some of the language can be offensive to some people, viewer discretion is advised, I warned you, if your virgin ears don’t like it…well…too bad.)

  13. love the video!!! totally cool and creative! 🙂

  14. It’s too bad the PC robot didn’t beat the Mac robot, I mean if it really came down to it there would be more PC robots so they would pretty much have to win unless they all blue screened.

  15. Я уважаю Мэтта, его блог очень интересный, недавно начал читать, зачитуюсь.. Много полезной информации для себя нашел. Спасибо!

  16. cool videos matt. I enjoyed watching it. Thanks!

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