Here are the rules:

• Contest begins April 1st.
• No rules on functionality, purpose, etc. Just has to be a working plugin.
• The plugin has to be completed and in the WordPress repository by midnight on April 30th.
• Once completed, we will allow a week for voting.
• Loser pays winner $1.
• That’s pretty much it.

Wish me luck! On April 30th Andrew and I will be tweeting and emailing a link where you the public can vote so make sure to pay attention to this blog, Andrew’s blog and both our Twitter accounts. @joehall & @norcross

The Dell Mini 9 shipped with an optional Ubuntu OS. Which was one of the main reasons I got it. Overall its been a great netbook. However the model I got only has a 3.8GB hard drive. Which means everytime I update Ubuntu the amount of free space gets smaller and smaller. So to read my Kindle books I opened up FireFox and went to the Kindle cloud reader, which allows you to read your Kindle books inside a web browser. This worked really well for awhile. But I hated having to read on such a small screen, it felt as if the size of text I selected and the orientation of the screen made it so I could only read about 10 lines on each page. But then I remember, YOU CAN FLIP THE SCREEN ORIENTATION in Ubuntu! 90 degrees is all I needed to flip the screen to show more text.

Now the netbook holds like a regular book and is roughly the same size! Looks like I won’t be buying a Kindle anytime soon!

Before we get dirty with the details, I want to add a disclaimer: I have absolutely no relationship to any of the entities mentioned in this post. I do not have any relationship to any blog/link network or organized spammer.

By now I am sure that most of you have read about the demise of Build My Rank. When I first read that article, I felt sick (that is not a hyperbole). As an entrepreneur I can’t imagine what it must feel like to realize that in a matter of days your company is finished. I don’t want to get into the specifics over this incident, but it appears that Google’s moves against them were a result of a blog post and ensuing public debate that outed them as a link spammer.

Link spamming is not a viable strategy for SEO. Yes, you can see short term results, but by and large, these services aren’t for long term growth. Even though I think these services are a waste of money, I could care less if others use them, as long as they know the full risk involved. Many rave about lobster, but I like crab more, and that won’t stop me from having dinner with them.

But the problem with SEO outing isn’t just a difference of opinion on strategy. The problem with SEO outing is that no one assumes the full consequences of their actions. Let’s take the BMR incident as an example. How much money did they lose as a result of being outed? Do their employees have families? How many of their clients are now seeing revenue lost? How many SEO agencies contracted with them? And how many of their clients are affected? How many innocent business owners that don’t know the risk involved with these networks are now suffering? How many people are now on unemployment?

It’s easy to write me (and this post) off as “sensational link bait”. I am sure it’s a heck of a lot easier than considering your own actions. To prove that I could care less about links, I have set this post to “noindex nofollow”.

I mentioned in the beginning that I use to not understand why outing was so wrong. What changed my mind, is meeting client after client that has suffered bad SEO advice and has seen a substantial loss. Outing, only exacerbates this process by raising the level of risk.

When people engage in questionable SEO practices they are taking a risk. Many of them know the risk they are taking, but many of them don’t. Either way, it’s no one’s place to make that risk even greater. If your paycheck doesn’t say “Google” on it, it’s not your job to police the web.

So then what is your job? Your job is to keep a high standard for yourself. Your job is to keep a high standard for those you do business with. Your job is to continue educating the public on what good SEO looks like. That is how we build a better industry. That is how we build a better community. That is how we build a better web. Outing does none of that. What outing does do is create dramatic blog post that allows for the author to take a moral high ground while potentially ruining innocent people’s livelihoods. It makes me sick.

[photo credit]

If you thought this post was half way interesting, you might want to follow @joehall on Twitter. Hes a total nut bag over there, but worth a laugh.

Probability theory is a branch of mathematics that attempts to understand random events and predicts them so they aren’t that random anymore. For example, some will use probability theory to guess lottery numbers, others will use it to guess flu outbreaks. Some will use it to increase their chances at a desired outcome.

They do this by identifying all of the random variables in a given environment and predicting the outcome based on their relationship to other variables such as size of the environment.

I think a lot about probability theory. In fact I use it to make most of my decisions. Yes, I am crazy like that. Sure, I often am able to throw caution at the wind and take risk. But, isn’t it better if those risk are calculated, first?

Being a good entrepreneur many times means just taking calculated risk. And, probability theory tells us, that the more risks you take the higher probability for success. Which is why there are so many “serial entrepreneurs” out there. They understand that the more risk they take, the more likely they will succeed.

The same goes for blogging. Here is a list of some of the desired outcome that I want from this blog.

• More direct backlinks.
• More Page Views.
• Larger personal brand awareness.
• More engagement.
• More opportunities.

So how do I get all of those things? I take more risk. Or in other words, I blog more often. I used to believe that it was smarter to only blog when you have something really valuable to say. That way your best work stands out the most. But then I looked at some of my favorite bloggers and realized that they have everything that’s listed above because they take more risk.

Sure some of their post aren’t the best out there, but because they took the risk they are closer to being outstanding.

So, because of that, I have decided that I am going to start and take more risk with my blogging. For starters, I am going to try and blog here more often. In a perfect world I would blog everyday, but I don’t think my duties with the company I run will allow for that. But, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Remember a few days ago I mentioned that to be productive you need to work your “get things done” items into your “work flow”. Well blogging is no exception. To help me blog more I am now using BlogDesk. BlogDesk is a desktop application for Windows users that allows you to tie in all your blogs and write and post all from one application. Its great because I don’t have to login to my blog to write, I just click the icon in my task menu and start writing and it automatically publishes when I am ready. I have tied all my blogs into it and its been working great. Oh and its free, so that’s cool too!

Next time you are faced with taking a risk, don’t shy away from it. Instead use probability theory to calculate the risk, and go for it. Because risk taking is the path to success.

[photo credit]

Seeing this need to work my task into my work flow, I have decided to not do yearly resolutions and instead focus on quartly plans. This way I can plan out the quarter I am in, and that only. My goals are more short term and as a result less likely to loose touch with them. Also, I can actually schedule most of them because at the most they are only a few months away. Then when the next quarter rolls around I will set a whole new list.

How are you takling your goals this year?

One of the biggest advantages of utilizing the cloud is the ability to pretty much outsource the tech and management issues related with self hosting. But at the same time using the cloud leaves you vulnerable to companies that can and do experience massive outages. There has to be a middle ground.

There is! Using shared or grid based hosting services in conjunction with software like WordPress is the ideal solution. These “micro-clouds” allow for regular backups and complete control over your hosting environment. Which means that when you are hit with a outage or downtime, you can rebound much faster because you have direct access to the data you created and own.

If your company is using tumblr or a similar service, and you want to move to WordPress with a micro-cloud solution. Let us help you with that transition!

The image above is a screen shot of my Twitter. Yep, that’s right, I said “my” Twitter. You see no one else looks at Twitter the same way I do. No one else has the same follower/following formula. Sure many may have the same number of followers, but no one has the same followers and following. This is because no one else is @JoeHall. Social media is full of different humans (and robots) and each one of us experience it in a different way. Each one of us has a different social media reality. So, you have your own Twitter as well.

Long before social media, philosophers have theorized subjective realities as being the basis for conscious behavior. In 1974, Thomas Nagel asked, “What is It Like to Be a Bat?“. Here, Nagel, tells us that because bats are conscious and interact with the world in a completely different way than any other mammal, their reality is unique. However, you don’t need to be a bat to have a subjective reality, each one of us sees the world differently and thus has a different experience.

The study of subjective reality has been nearly impossible given that no one can truly get inside the mind of someone else. Even the movie Being John Malkovich showed us that having access to another person’s reality isn’t enough if you can’t shed your own on the way in.

However, with social media things are a bit different. Now the saying “walk a mile in someone’s shoes” isn’t just a figure of speech. For example, if I wanted to, I could let anyone reading this, log into my Twitter account. While logged in, they could experience what its like to be @JoeHall. Or better yet, one could log into a spam bot’s acct and see what it’s like to be a spam bot. Or you could log into my mom’s email and get a tiny glimpse into her digital reality. By doing so you would have expanded your own reality and would have a much more rounded perception of the digital landscape.

As we work to build digital realities we are also expanding the potential for new experiences and new avenues for exploring those same realities.

A big thanks is in order for the WordPress core developers for including this fun little surprise. Apparently this Easter egg has appeared in WordPress since version 2.6.