I’ve been a fan of Boston Legal for a few years but the season premier tonight is really, really bad in my opinion. The new characters are weak and uninteresting, the performances seem anemic and uninspired, and the storylines are stupid rather than quirky. Did the old writers go on strike? If not, they should stop paying them. If this wasn’t bad enough I missed my Facebook pal Mark Cuban on “Dancing with the Stars”
So, the Las Cruces question today relates to whether Google’s “SERPs”, or Search Engine Results Pages, give good quality results for the Query “Las Cruces”. This post is also part of the nmohwy SEO experiment. To determine this we’ll take the top page of results and look at each one of them. In SEO terms this is called “scraping” a page and is usually considered bad form and even illegal in some circumstances if you do it over a large number of pages to create a new website, but in this case the scraping action has good legitimate use, especially because it’ll help me determine the most appropriate content for the Las Cruces web page at NMohwy.com. “Most appropriate content” has become a very interesting concept as Google’s search dominance continues. Without a high Google ranking it is very hard to get much traffic to a website so “pleasing Google” has become almost a necessary condition for the online success of a website. Yet as Peter Norvig, head of Google search recently noted at a conference there is a huge give and take going on between Google and SEOs that is reshaping the Google results and therefore reshaping the web. This was an inevitability of Google dominance but I think it’s a very undesirable outcome that is devaluing many of the things the web once valued highly (especially some type of very functional linking relationships that are now seen as “spamming”).
That said, it appears Google has done a very good job for the query “Las Cruces” with one glaring exception among the top 10 sites. I’ll discuss each below:
| Home page for the beautiful city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Rated as the best place to retire. www.las–cruces.org/ – 35k – Cached – Similar pages This, Las Cruces’ official city page, makes sense as the top choice for the query “Las Cruces”. With a simple query of the form “city”, it’s not clear if somebody wants Las Cruces Travel Info, City info, news, real estate, etc. However with most city queries I have reviewed Google tends to go with the official city page first, then the official visitor page second or third. This is intuitively consistent with what I’d think a user would want from that simple query. |
| Official Web Site of the Las Cruces Convention & Visitors Bureau. www.lascrucescvb.org/ – 68k – Cached – Similar pagesAs noted before this is a logical second page – Visitor Bureaus are usually key point of visitor contact (smaller cities generally don’t have this function or have it wrapped up as part of the Chamber of Commerce) |
| The chamber of commerce is a not-for-profit organization and is owned and operated by local business leaders who work to promote business growth in the … www.lascruces.org/ – 25k – Cached – Similar pagesAgain, a logical third choice for Las Cruces NM. Chambers offer businesses in the region and also will have much visitor and relocation information. |
| Las Cruces is a city in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 74267. … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Cruces,_New_Mexico – 89k – Cached – Similar pagesGoogle *loves* Wikipedia. This is partly for good reason as Wikipedia often has excellent features for many cites as well as millions of other topics. Recently a university study of Britannica and Wikipedia concluded that the errors in each of these online resources were roughly equivalent, suggesting that Wikipedia, with it’s much greateer number of articles, is actually a more authoritative resource than Britannica. |
| Daily news, opinion, sports, arts, entertainment, lifestyle and classifieds. http://www.lcsun-news.com/ – 105k – Cached – Similar pages |
Local Las Cruces news also appears to be an excellent site to rank highly.
| Las Cruces New Mexico Travel, Restaurants, History, and Relocation. las–cruces.com/ – 24k – Cached – Similar pages |
| Recent posts about Las Cruces, New Mexico on our local forum with over 100000 registered users. Las Cruces is mentioned 1128 times on our forum: … http://www.city-data.com/city/Las–Cruces-New-Mexico.html – 120k – Cached – Similar pages City Data is a good site that has created a huge mashup of many public domain data source, images they collect from users, and has a fairly large user forum. This is their key Las Cruces page and probably a good choice though there are many resources that offer similar information, though I think City Data does a good job of pulling them all together in an unattractive but very usable form. |
| Located in Las Cruces, New Mexico. http://www.nmsu.edu/ – 18k – Cached – Similar pages This result should probably appear higher because Universities are a key part of the community and also a key search destination for many. However NM State Las Cruces appears to have failed to do (any?) SEO work with the site to let Google know wazzup, thus Google winds up placing them lower than otherwise. |
| http://www.weblifepro.com/lascruces/ – 1k – Cached – Similar pages
This is the only clearly bogus result. The page is down so this must have been some sort of marketing effort gone bad, perhaps due to manipulative SEO practices. |
| Las Cruces, New Mexico’s Public School District. Calendars of events, board policies. Information on schools, employment, district news, assessment, … http://www.lcps.k12.nm.us/ – 45k – Cached – Similar pages This at first appears to be a questionable result for the first page though it could be a result of huge incoming links from kid related sites. People looking for an elementary school would tend to use “school” in the query. I suppose this criticism could also apply to the University listing. Perhaps the demographic for “Las Cruces” searchers has a good variety of ages including young kids,, making this a reasonable result. |
So, it appears that for the query “Las Cruces” Google has done a good job of rounding up relevant sources of information. Google’s strength is working with highly targeted queries so we’ll try that next for Las Cruces New Mexico related stuff.
UPDATE: Your Firefox extensions acting up could also be the problem. I’m checking this now and have removed several like “StumbleUpon, a custom toolbar, and a Video downloader. If this works I’ll try reinstalls to see if I can duplicate the problem but in meantime see this list of problems for extensions: Firefox Extension problems.
I should have listened to Mark Cuban some weeks ago when he noted the problems with Firefox. I’d been chalking up the slowdowns and surfing problems to a problem 512meg chip I’m in the process of replacing in the laptop, but it’s now clear the trouble is with Firefox. I just reinstalled the latest version 2.0.0.7 and still no luck – as a process Firefox quickly grows to absorbing 99% of my CPU capacity and everything slows to a crawl. I’m using IE for now until this shakes out or my new chip brings me to 1 meg RAM on this laptop which should be enough to compensate for the problem. I read somewhere that Firefox could be using all of my 512 meg as part of normal operations, and that his is *not* a firefox memory leak.
So, if you are experiencing the Firefox problems consider more memory or switching to IE!
You don’t want to miss this excellent western, filmed and acted much in the tradition of the old westerns but with some exceptional scenes that would leave even John Huston in awe of the filming technique. 3:10 is a complicated exploration of the two key characters – a sociopathic robber / gunslinger and a mildly disabled civil war farmer, played brilliantly by Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. The film is set in Arizona but was filmed in New Mexico and on sound stages. The film is set in an early, post civil war Arizona. Bale and Crowe cross paths and wits dramatically in this western action morality play. I felt that some of the action was unneccesary to the plot though this is a film where the violence is part of the story, and the chase scene in the train tunnels was a stunning example of bringing the exitement of an old western to a modern audience.
New York Times Movie Reviews are now available online. Fantastic. Thanks, Dave Winer, for pointing this out.
This excellent article by Michael Anissimov describes two versions of how things could shake out in the coming Artificial Intelligence revolution, and suggests that it’s more likely strong AI (that is, computer-like devices that think pretty much like we do) will lead to an explosive increase in intelligence as a result of “recursive self improvement”. The idea is that the intelligent machines will operate much faster than our brains can function, but will also tend to improve on their own designs.
For humanity, design improvements on our brain architecture have been a very-very slow process governed primarily by evolutionary challenges. Basic analytical intelligence almost certainly emerged in animals as an adaptive advantage in terms of survival. Unlike our cousins the higher apes, human brain power has combined with community history to allow us to build technologies that last through many generations, and more importantly to *improve* as new people grapple with new problems. This technological explosion is a fairly recent phenomenon but should still be considered a very slow process compared to the type of progress you would expect to see in an environment driven purely towards advancing the technologies surrounding “intelligence”.
If Anissimov and many others in strong AI research are correct, the time between the advent of conscious, recursively self improving computers and a massive explosion of intelligent machines could be very small – a few years or even possibly just a few moments.
Currently, we humans do a handful of physical transformations that take us off of the slow evolutionary treadmill. Glasses are a simple technology that changes us. Corneal transplant and heart stints are “advanced” technological enhancments to our bodies. Cell phones and computers are technological enhancements to our brains (and yes, the company called “BrainGate” has now connected computer chips directly to brains allowing human brains to directly interface with computers to do simple tasks).
Still, earth’s painstakingly slow evolutionary processes has yet to develop a creature that will be able to rebuild itself every few days into a vastly superior version of the former self. We appear to be within a few decades of that type of entity.
The implications of this re-evolutionary development cannot be overestimated.
If we assume as some have suggested, and extremely conservatively, that there are only about 3 intelligent civilizations per galaxy (my view is that this number will soon be shown to be absurdly low) and also assume fairly conservatively that there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe, this leads us to a rather spectacular number of some three hundred billion civilizations in the universe. Unfortunately we’ve only found one of them.
299,999,999,999 intelligent civilizations to go.
If you want to get lost in the most incredible picture ever taken, or just if you catch yourself feeling too significant, head over to the Hubble website’s zoomable Ultra Deep Field photo. Pull in a few of the approximately 10,000 galaxies in this view for closer inspection, realizing our own entire Milky way galaxy with its approximately 100 billion stars would be but one of these. Then try to wrap your head around the fact (and be sure to realize that we are talking about pure scientific fact here) that the deep field is only showing us a portion of our own night sky that is about one *tenth* the diameter of the moon. A full accounting of all the galaxies in the universe might yield *hundreds of billions” of galaxies although the estimates of the number of galaxies seem to vary wildly. I don’t understand this because it seems we could extrapolate from the Hubble untra deep field’s view a pretty good number for the total assuming a roughly even distribution of galaxies throughout the universe.
As feeble minded humans I don’t think we can even come close to appreciating the significance of the Hubble pictures or the numbers.
My personal guess is that there are already many intelligences in this vast universe that can comprehend the cosmos in a meaningful way, and that we have a shot at that kind of intelligence eventually when we find ways to enhance our intellect with computerized intelligence.
Here is a wonderfully written article by Anthony Doerr on this topic
The Travel Channel is profiling the top ten suites in Las Vegas:
10. Penthouse Suite, Las Vegas MGM Grand. At about $3000 per night offers 19 phones, an elevator to the second floor, and a spectacular view.
9. Palms Hotel, Las Vegas. Adrienne Suite, the “Coolest Suite” in town according to the Travel Channel. For $1500 per night you get a view of the mountains and city and a hotel address at one of the newest and coolest of the Las Vegas hotspots.
8. Sahara Hotel Casino. Ambassador Suite. This “Best Retro Suite offers a 1950’s style look and lots of old vegas glamor and history.
7. Turnberry Place. This “best alternative” to hotel suites is a rich and famous living hotspot. They showcase the 5.25 million dollar Suite, home to a wealthy client and will soon be home to many more Las Vegas luminaries and rich folks.
6. Elvis and Priscilla Suite at the Viva Las Vegas Hotel. This place does not look like my idea of a honeymoon place, but at $175 you even get neon lights and a Pink Cadillac bed.
5. Paris Las Vegas, Napoleon Suite. Over 4300 Square feet of opulence, primarily used by high rollers who often come in via private jet. Normally celebrities don’t stay here.
4. Mandalay Bay Four Seasons’ 180 Degree Suite is the ‘Best Escape” Suite. $2500 per night. A $10,000 hand carved bed is uniquie to the suite as is styling that is not typical Las Vegas. The Four Seasons goal is to remove you from Enjoy iced grapes at the pool where even the towels are chilled.
3. Las Vegas Hilton. Verona Suite. 15,000 Square feet of neo-renaissance opulence abounds in the Verona Suite that is generally for high rollers but unlike many of the other suites the Verona is on the market at $17,500 per night. 25 TV’s and big showers make this Las Vegas’ most expensive suite in terms of building costs according to the Las Vegas Hilton.
2. Venetian Hotel. The Presidential Suite at the Venetian. Sheldon Adelson is the Owner of the Venetian and says he likes to offer the Presidential to very high rollers – those who are gambling for 6-8 million per night and $150,000 per … .hand. Usually playing baccarat. Enjoy a Guggenheim Art Museum right in the hotel.
1. Bellagio Hotel. Villa One Suite. With entry through a private secret tunnel the Bellagio Villa One is a two bedroom, $6,000 per night masterpiece (unless you are a high roller in which case you’ll be paying nothing for the suite, but a lot more over time for the privileges). Staff pampers guests in a private dining room, private gym, and more. There are several villas at the Bellagio and each has a secret garden. The villas have 130 staff to help make the Bellagio’s Villa One the top suite in the Travel Channel’s roundup and the “most stylish suite” in Las Vegas.
The Bellagio, a 1.6 billion dollar hotel is only one of 58 five diamond hotels in the world.
Mint, the very timely and innovative startup that offers to organize *and optimize* your personal finances, won the TechCrunch 40 “competition” in Silicon Valley today.
I’m optimistic that Mint could be a great new company if it can get past the obvious key challenge – gaining enough trust from users that they’ll share banking passwords. This is a non-trivial problem given the incredible vulnerability you’d have if *all* your banking information was taken. For this reason I’m wondering if there is any way for Mint to figure out a way to offer some form of “insurance” to guarantee the protection of assets in the even of a Mint security breach. The challenge for them is that the depth of liability here is potentially enormous since they are “protecting” all of a users financial information.
Mint.com | TechCrunch | Mint Wins | Mint reviewed by VentureBeat
O. J. Simpson has just been charged with armed kidnapping after an incident at a Las Vegas Hotel called the Palace Station.
No, I don’t usually blog about such stuff but this is another optimizing test. This is only a test. Do not be alarmed or fear that O.J. Simpson will come to your Las Vegas Hotel room. For the next sixty seconds please ignore this test.
One of those with O. J. taped the fracas and it seemed clear from the tape that there were guns and the threat of violence. O. J. Simpson appears to be claiming he’s totally innocent of these charges and that it was all a misunderstanding between O.J. and the memoribilia dealer who had the Palace Station Hotel room.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled blogishness.
Joe Duck 