Top 6 + 1 Sites That Inspire & Educate

If you're a professional who likes to be intellectually stimulated and you enjoy keeping up with the latest news 
and breaking trends, the internet provides you with an endless choice of carefully curated sites to visit. Today, we bring you six of them that we believe are leaps and bounds above the rest. These sites will not only educate you on topics ranging from business and technology to art and design, they'll motivate you to find your own, original ideas and see them through. They're culturally relevant, they're idea driven and most of all, they're deeply inspirational.

1. TED

TED is short for three incredibly important subjects in our modern world; technology, entertainment and design. Started in 1984, TED brings together the most brilliant minds to teach us about issues that matter. Their mission is simple: to spread ideas. Their passion to change the world comes through in their inspirational talks. Next time you want to hear real stories from amazing people who do mind-blowing work, watch a TED talk.

Tip: Download TED's free iPad app to browse through 800 videos by date, popularity or keyword. Make sure to check out their Inspire Me feature which lets you find videos that not only fit your mood (inspiring, funny, etc) but your schedule (how much time you have). The talks range from 3 minutes to 30 minutes long.

2. Brain Pickings

Brain Pickings started from very humble beginnings. Its founder, Maria Popova, a UPenn student at the time, explains it best. "I started publishing, one curated item per day Monday through Friday, without much of a strategy," she says, "just pursuing my own curiosity and digging for nuggets of stuff that inspires, that gives you pause, that makes you connect dots you didn't realize were connectable. Over time, it just found its audience." Ultimately, Popova wants to make ideas not only accessible but relevant. More than anything, her site challenges you to see patterns, to discover how pieces of life's puzzle sometimes fit surprisingly together. 

Tip: With over 63K Twitter followers, Brainpicker has a strong audience...and for good reason. Make sure to follow them if you want to see some well-curated culture links from not just Brainpicker's website, but from all around the web.

3. PSFK

Though focused on design, advertising, and technology, PSFK is a must-read for anyone who wants to be on the cusp of new trends and emerging ideas. With an editorial staff that spans the globe, PSFK brings you interesting stories from broad viewpoints. Visit PSFK daily to see what creative professionals are currently talking about. You'll find everything from great advice, like Tips For Getting A Project Funded On Kickstarter, to inspirational talks from founders of companies likeThrillist.

Tip: Attend a PSFK conference, workshop or event to hear about the latest trends and ideas first-hand. Each year, PSFK brings together the world's leading creative thinkers and business leaders to a conference in a major metropolitan city. To get a feel for the type of talks you can expect to hear, check out their video round up from years' past.

4. Kottke

Kottke is an influential blog that was started by Manhattan, New York-based Jason Kottke back in 1998. It's a site that not only brings together interesting ideas in science, technology and art, among other subjects, it also summarizes that information in a personal way that makes it applicable to the reader. Smart and insightful, Kottke was recently recognized as one of Time's Best Blogs of 2010and was described this way by the American news magazine, "Touting only smart, stimulating items worth adding to the public sphere, Kottke.org is part odd-news aggregator and part archival treasure dig -- consistently one of the most surprising domains on the Web." We couldn't agree more.

Tip: Kottke is working on a new web app/site called Stellar which helps you discover and track your favorite things online. You can follow Stellar's Twitter account for updates or request an invite onStellar's webpage.

5. Information is Beautiful

Information is Beautiful was started by London-based writer and designer David McCandless. It's a blog that takes information - facts, data, ideas - and turns it into well-designed charts, graphs and data visualizations. Relevant to not just designers but anyone who appreciates statistics and facts, this site will not only keep you entertained, it will educate you on the world we live in.

Tip: Pick up the 256 page Information is Beautiful book for a comprehensive, visual guide to the way the world works. Great for inspiration on how to present your information in new and interesting ways.

6. The 99 Percent

The 99 Percent recently won the 15 Annual Webby Awards for best Cultural blog. Behance's think tank, The 99 Percent focuses on what happens after inspiration. The website is filled with inspiring interviews, action-oriented tips, and tried and true best practices. They also have an annual conference that's designed to help you turn your ideas into a reality. Held each spring, the conference is a two day event that brings over 400 creative people together to hear accomplished professionals talk about lessons they've learned on their journey to success. 

Tip: Founder of 99% Scott Belsky recently wrote a book, called Making Ideas Happen, where he's collected personal stories from the leaders of top companies like Google, Disney and Zappos, finding out what methods they used to helped propel their companies forward. With practical tips, this book will help anyone in a company, big or small, see what it takes to bring their ideas to fruition.

Which websites do you visit to be both educated and inspired?

By Alice Yoo (from My Modern Met) on May 16, 2011

RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms

 

Another inspiring RSA Animate taken from a speech given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education expert and recipient of the RSA Benjamin Franklin award.

DOMINATE ORGANIC GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS!

Creative Advertising, Design, Printing, Branding, SEO, Link-Building & Marketing Services
I Produce Printing | Social Media | Branding | Creative Design | Business Process Improvement | Marketing | SEO/Link-Building | Advertising for Business | Realtors in Santa Monica | Los Angeles | S CA. UNDISPUTED DOMINATION of 1st Page Google ORGANIC Search Results! Call me if you are looking for the same type of winning success for your business. After all, the importance of innovative SOCIAL MEDIA (SM) and worthwhile content, is in it's opportunity for creating VAST PRESENCE throughout the WEB. This leading to DOMINANT VISIBILITY followed by INCREASED REVENUE. Where we are all striving to get: DOMINANT 1st page links/ranking in Google organic searches using your keywords. Test it yourself by clicking my link below:   Amgen, Avery Dennison, and Chevron provided the opportunity to develop and implement a robust project/people/inventory-tracking method, delivering clear visibility throughout the creative/production process of 150 to 180 concurrent projects with multi-level accountabilities and oversight accessibility by cross-divisional stakeholder/project managers/c-level constituents; manage the implementation of an intranet solution for stationery procurement through PeopleSoft and Ariba Spend Management System; create an efficiency model for "global market trends" data with hyperlinks, providing a 3-year perspective via quarterly updates in historical, current, and forecast data and a price-tracking data model, providing formulaic pricing trends, historical, and current insight over all suppliers within the CC&IG category. The ArtfulMind.Biz business model focuses on: ~ innovative and creative solutions ~ print and online project management ~ clean and efficient design ~ effective and measurable results ~ strategic sourcing and procurement ~ qualitative production ~ quantitative spend reduction The result: ~ your branding/corporate identity looks better ~ your SEO/Link-Building is effective & works beyond belief ~ your HTML works better ~ our social media networks look and functions better ~ your post cards look better ~ your business cards look better ~ your fliers look better Better is good and Effective is the end result. I Guarantee That! Technology is changing at the speed of novel thought, we the people, remain flexible to change and open to the continuum of the proverbial building of a better mouse trap. I resolve to provide great resource for printing | branding | social media | creative design | business process improvement | marketing | SEO/link-building | advertising for business | realtors in Santa Monica | Los Angeles | S CA. Thank you. Vincent Medina Managing Director http://ArtfulMind.Biz		Vincent Medina of ArtfulMindBiz       Payment   Cash, Checks   Hours   Mon-Fri: 8:00am-5:00pm   Travel   Customers may travel to my place of business OR I will travel to the customer up to 60 miles for an additional cost of $0.60.   Location   Marina Del Rey, CA 90292   Verification   DOJ Smart Search verified Address verified Phone verified Email verified Facebook verified Twitter verified LinkedIn verified Website verified Thumbtack reviewed

Albert Einstein | Illustrated Perspectives | Google Search Enlightenment

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space.
He experience himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest...
A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. 

~ Albert Einstein

"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength.
They are radical. henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."

~ Hermann Minkowski, 1908 (Einstein's Former Mathematics College Teacher)

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

"Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe.
But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes...
goodwill among men (humanity) and peace on earth."
~ Albert Einstein 

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click image for  p o r t f o l i o
 

UNDISPUTED DOMINATION of 1st Page Google ORGANIC Search Results!
Call me if you are looking for the same type of winning success for your business.

CLICK for GOOGLE RESULTS 

After all, the importance of innovative SOCIAL MEDIA (SM) and worthwhile content, is in it's opportunity for creating VAST PRESENCE throughout the WEB.
This leading to DOMINANT VISIBILITY followed by INCREASED REVENUE (period).

Thank you,

Vincent Medina
Managing Director
ArtfulMind.Biz | 310 251 9728

~ 15+ Years DELIVERING innovative creative solutions + print/online project management + clean efficient design + effective/measurable results + strategic sourcing + qualitative production + quantitative cost reduction.
~ Printing | Social Media | Creative | Business Process Improvement | Marketing | SEO/Link-Building | Advertising for Business | Realtors Santa Monica | Los Angeles | S CA.
 

Pay Attention to Search Engine Rankings:
Top 3 Spots on Google Get 58% of Clicks

Tags: Best PracticesGoogleSearchSEO

Here’s a reason to pay more attention to your search engine rankings – the top three spots on Google get 58% of clicks.  

 

Optify (via Searchengine watch) carried out a study, which showed that websites at the top of Google get an average of 36.4% of clicks, those in second place 12.5% and those in third 9.5%.

That chimes in with an earlier Chitika study, showing that the no 1 spot on Google gets 34.35% of traffic.
Optify also says that being any further back than page two has no real business value for you at all.

Not surprisingly, as I work for a social media agency, I am a big believer in SEO + social working together.
For example, Comscore has shown that 50% of ‘social media exposed’ surfers search for product terms every day compared to 33% of non-exposed surfers.
In other words, SEO can help improve your rankings but social media can prompt them to try and find out more in the first place.

Then of course, the search engine giants themselves are constantly looking for ways to embrace so-called ‘social search.’

The San Francisco Chronicle has a good summary of how search engines are tapping into social.
As (MIcrosoft) Bing’s Paul Yiu says in the piece, “search up until recently has been a lonely experience.
We want to introduce people as an important part of search.”

Google SEO Advice + Dancing with Google's Spiders | The Economist + Dominating 1st Page Google Search

 

These guys at GOOGLE are great... but, a little off base for creating 'less cost' models and cost avoidance regarding Google Adwords/Pay-per-click.

I did great work as a GLOBAL ANALYST with CHEVRON... work that lead my thinking & techniques for GOOGLE SEARCH DOMINATION.
More to do with creating vast visibility rather than seo for your singular site.
Vast visibility that leads your prospective clients... wherever you want to lead them... including your website.

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Search engines:
Google is engaged in an elaborate dance with firms determined to keep their websites high up in its rankings.

• Tweet

 

THE industrious spider “bots” that crawl around the web on behalf of Google, the world's biggest search engine, evoke both fear and reverence. Late last year the bots swept through the world's web servers to scrutinise some 8 billion web pages and determine their new rankings in Google's search results. As Google tweaks its mighty ranking algorithms, and applies them to the constantly changing pages of the web, different sites shuffle up and down wildly in its search rankings, repeatedly gaining and losing ground. This operation, which takes place two or three times a year, is known as a “Google Dance”.

Like hurricanes, Google Dances are given names, such as Bourbon, Gilligan and Florida, often by commentators at a website called webmasterworld.com. Jagger, the two-week dance that began late last October, moved through servers in three waves, eliciting chatter in internet forums. “Been kicked off the face of the index by jagger1,” reads a typical entry. “Will try not to panic til after jagger3.”

All search engines test and implement new algorithms constantly, though not in such a dramatic fashion. Because achieving a high search ranking is crucial to success for many online businesses, a huge industry has sprung up devoted to the pursuit of website visibility. In 2005 worldwide spending on such “search-engine optimisation” (SEO), grew 125%, to $1.25 billion, according to SEMPO, a Boston-based trade association. It predicts spending will grow by 150% this year.

In this Technology Quarterly

• What the nose knows
• March of the robolawyers
• » Dancing with Google's spiders «
• Bright sparks
• Attack of the Eurogoogle
• Listening to the internet
• Hackers go home
• Television's next big shift
• Arts, entertainment and media

The Google Dance can rattle companies, since precipitous—but often temporary—falls down the pecking order are common. But Paul Aelen of Checkit, a large SEO firm based in the Netherlands, admits that algorithm updates are “very exciting” for SEO experts, who can then test an array of tricks to figure out what works, and what doesn't.

SEO firms boost their clients' online rankings by tinkering with their websites to enhance the characteristics that search engines consider positive. This involves techniques such as simplifying complicated page addresses, rewriting copy to produce single-theme pages with accurate titles, adding extra keywords to the invisible page descriptions (or “metatags”) read by indexing software, and putting product information stored in databases directly on to fixed pages, so that search engines' bots can read it.

The quest to understand how search engines rank websites has become an obsession for some. Web forums devoted to the topic hum with debate, and many SEO experts comb through patent applications to find out what new algorithms are in the pipeline. That ruse, however, is becoming less effective. Matt Cutts, a senior engineer at Google who is assailed with algorithm questions at industry conferences, says his firm, like its competitors, carefully controls access to its secrets. “A lot of our best ideas don't get filed as patents because patents eventually become public,” he says.

The best SEO firms can do wonders for a site's ranking. Lee Odden, the president of TopRank Online Marketing, a firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says one of his clients stopped paying out $50,000 a month on pay-per-click advertising; instead, Pacific Security Capital, an investment bank based in Beaverton, Oregon, now spends a tenth of that figure on SEO and claims the top spot for some 50 keywords on several search engines.

The most powerful determinant of a web page's importance is the number of incoming referral links, which is regarded as a gauge of the site's popularity. Site optimisers solicit links from directory sites, swap links with prominent sites, and fish for links from bloggers by sending them press releases. But the influence of links begets abuse. Unethical methods, known as “black-hat SEO”, include renting links from popular or long-established sites (their links carry more weight). Some unscrupulous SEO outfits even exploit loopholes in website-management tools to place hidden links on prestigious sites, such as those maintained by universities.

The “link farm” technique involves spamming the web with automatically generated bogus blogs, known as splogs, that link to a website to give it a boost. David Sifry, founder of Technorati, a blog search-engine based in San Francisco, estimates that 10,000 link-bearing splogs sporting content copied (or “scraped”) from legitimate sites are put online every day to fool the spider bots. “Cloaking” involves presenting content to indexing bots that is different from that which web surfers who visit the site will actually see. “Keyword stuffing” involves hiding popular search terms on a page—using, say, white text on a white background—to attract visitors.

Mahesh Murthy, the founder of Pinstorm, a company based in Mumbai that is one of India's biggest SEO firms, says that the Google Dance and other similar algorithm updates are constantly getting better at detecting and “shutting out” cheaters. This can mean relegation to the bottom of the rankings, or even removal altogether. Last month Google accused BMW, a carmaker, of using cloaking, and briefly removed its website from its index. But the financial stakes are so high that SEO firms will continue to look for new ways to boost their client's rankings. This is one dance, it seems, that will not be going out of fashion any time soon.

from the print edition | Technology Quarterly

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click image for  p o r t f o l i o
 

UNDISPUTED DOMINATION of 1st Page Google ORGANIC Search Results!
CLICK for GOOGLE RESULTS 

After all, the importance of innovative SOCIAL MEDIA (SM) and worthwhile content, is in it's opportunity for creating VAST PRESENCE throughout the WEB.
This leading to DOMINANT VISIBILITY followed by INCREASED REVENUE (period).

Thank you,

Vincent Medina
Managing Director
ArtfulMind.Biz | 310 251 9728

~ 15+ Years DELIVERING innovative creative solutions + print/online project management + clean efficient design + effective/measurable results + strategic sourcing + qualitative production + quantitative cost reduction.
~ Printing | Social Media | Creative | Business Process Improvement | Marketing | SEO/Link-Building | Advertising for Business | Realtors Santa Monica | Los Angeles | S CA.
 

Pay Attention to Search Engine Rankings:
Top 3 Spots on Google Get 58% of Clicks

Tags: Best PracticesGoogleSearchSEO

Here’s a reason to pay more attention to your search engine rankings – the top three spots on Google get 58% of clicks.  

 

Optify (via Searchengine watch) carried out a study, which showed that websites at the top of Google get an average of 36.4% of clicks, those in second place 12.5% and those in third 9.5%.

That chimes in with an earlier Chitika study, showing that the no 1 spot on Google gets 34.35% of traffic.   Optify also says that being any further back than page two has no real business value for you at all.

Not surprisingly, as I work for a social media agency, I am a big believer in SEO + social working together.    For example, Comscore has shown that 50% of ‘social media exposed’ surfers search for product terms every day compared to 33% of non-exposed surfers.    In other words, SEO can help improve your rankings but social media can prompt them to try and find out more in the first place.

Then of course, the search engine giants themselves are constantly looking for ways to embrace so-called ‘social search.’

The San Francisco Chronicle has a good summary of how search engines are tapping into social.  As (MIcrosoft) Bing’s Paul Yiu says in the piece, “search up until recently has been a lonely experience.    We want to introduce people as an important part of search.”