There is an interesting article in the Sydney Heralds, a large Australian online newspaper.
The article highlighted the fascinating irony that we as humans seem confuse data transfer with human communication.
I also found all of this terribly fascinating since I have been reading a lot about the way of the Tao in recent years (and days)
and there is a strong emphasis on an organic approach to life in that philosophy.
It quoted Bill Gates saying back in 1994 that he had a habit of combing his hair just before he sent out an email to someone.
It was speculated that perhaps he realized even in the early days of the internet that electronic mail carried the latent possibility of
 confusing sterile data transfer with the concept of real communication.
He may have been subconciously letting himself know that the electronic message he was going to submit was a replacement for face-to-face human contact which
 has always been basic to the process of communication between individuals. In fact, it may actually be a useful habit - a reality check if you will, which might encourage him to pause for a second and truly consider
  the difference between emails and interpersonal conversation.
“Email is a unique communication vehicle for a lot of reasons,” Gates was quoted as saying to ‘The New Yorker’ magazine. “but it is not a substitute for direct interaction….”
Wise words from one of the founding fathers of modern technology as we know it today.
All of this relevent because with each passing day, the dangers of our submergence in new media technology becomes ever more evident, particularly the curious urge to mistake mere data transfer
 with human communication, to mistake 1 meaning of “connected” with another, when the underlying message of the IT revolution is that the word now has 2 meanings, both of them valuable.
We should be careful not to think that since I have sent you some data and you have in kind sent some back to me, that it is an alternative to communication among 2 distinct individuals. It is simply not an alternative:
it is indeed a whole different process. Electronic mail or even text messaging can never quite do the entire job of communication since the human stuff like the emotions, various nuances and things you would
usually convey via your avatar are generally lost.

According to an article on science daily, WWW Addiction is in fact a very real problem.
Apparently it affects about 10% or so of all of all world wide web surfers and it goes by the technical name of “Internet addiction disorder”.
The news story goes on to state that the condition may sometimes lead to both anxiety and eventually major depression.
Some experts even suggest that it be included along with other types of addictive disorders like drug addiction and kleptomania.
At this point in time, world wide web surfing addiction is officially classified as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. This is a moderate to severe mental health
 condition which eventually results in a desire to engage in ritualistic thoughts & behavior, like excessive handwashing for example.
It appears that there are 2 distinct groups of people who are at greatest risk from this particular disorder, according to the experts. One group is teenagers. Perhaps more of a surprise however, the other risk group is males and females
 in their mid-50s suffering from a  sort of mid-life crises. The symptoms of WWW addiction in both of these groups are
 somewhat vague and are very often touph to diagnose. Sufferers might experience a difficult time sleeping, anxiety attacks while not web surfing, isolation factors,
 less prduction at work, and of course time periods of depression, unfortunately.
Recent research findings of this disorder have recently been published on the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
Some experts state that web addicts are inevitable and are simply a product of modernization.

According to a news story initially reported over on the market Watch website, the microsoft Corporation
will dispute the FCC on Internet over Television airwaves.
In particular, Bill Gates and company disagree with
the FCC’s findings that prototype devices, made specifically to connect individuals to high-speed Internet over unused television airwaves, either interfered with the Television signals or simply could not detect
them to avoid the interference. This story, while reported by Market Watch, was broke originally by the equally respected ‘Washington Post’ newspaper.
All in all, this filing is the big software corporation’s most recent try to get the FCC commissioners to approve a plan which would essentially allow a newer generation of portable wireless devices to connect to the world wide web without the apparent handicap of having to rely on the existing carriers.
 By the way these devices would basically use vacant Television airwaves to carry web service. Kind of liking recycling in a strange way. The airwaves will be available when Television broadcasters move to digital signals in the year 2009. The FCC plans to hold a meeting Thursday to talk about testing options for white-space devices.
In the document that it is about to file, they dispute the recent findings that prototype devices either interfered with the television signals or could not detect them in the first place so as to avoid the interference.  Their initial prototype was quite defective, but they then stated that another model has worked successfully in a
 demonstration it gave to the FCC over the past week. This should be an intersting case. I look forward to seeing how it all goes down.

Tech News World recently ran an interesting story about the internet and how the law is unfolding regarding this medium
and how various laws and regulations tend to generally follow major innovations such as the World Wide Web as societies try to come to grips with how the technology in question can
be best used by the world.
Thus far courts have seen legal subjects which pertain to the World Wide Web covering freedom of speech issues, security breaches, fraud, waste, abuse, intellectual property rights, patent law, privacy issues, telecommunications, copyright infringements, contractual law and even tort reform.
Given the sweeping impact the world wide web has had around the globe, especially since 1992,
it is really not too surprising that the innovations dealing with web technologies are proving to be extremely fertile soil for various relevent new laws, regulations, legal precedents as well as interpretations of existing case law as it stands.
In an article entitled ‘The Internet and the Law: Work in Progress’ it was discussed how
the case of Columbia Pictures Industries v. Justin Bunnell was somewhat groundbreaking in this regard.
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In this case Central District of California Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian ruled that information that is stored in a computer server’s random access memory (RAM)
is “electronically stored information” for purposes of a rule, included in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which is part of a set of civil law procedures that help to standardize the
discovery of electronically stored information. The court ruled that they should start logging certain servers’ RAM dat in addition to producing their logs. This possibly landmark ruling “raises potentially
endless legal and metaphysical questions by opening the door to discovery of data in RAM,” according to Clifford Davidson, an associate in a Los Angeles Law firm office.
In another major case the music industry’s effort through the Library of Congress’s Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) and it’s agents to raise royalty rates to a point that independent webcasters say threatens the viability of web radio as a whole.

As you go about the process of building traffic to your website, know above all else that the internet
is a fluid and ever changing medium. much more dynamic than most, if not all other forms of media, in my experience.

If you do not have the time to constantly alter your web strategy and adapt quickly to the constant tidal changes in the
online landscape, then I suggest that you stick to the fundamentals. By this I simply mean that once your website is optimized with the keywords
you are trying to come up for, focus your work primarily or even entirely on building quality backlinks to your website. Some website owners
will take the time to tweak their websites on a daily basis, but that that is not always necessary.
For general news stories you can look at For general news stories you can look at The IFIP Weblog

You can influence your rankings on the search engines more by building good relevent links to your site than
by constantly trying to alter your keywords and tags, unless you happen to be among an elite few SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialists.
The reason is that it usually takes so long for the search results to change, that you will not be getting any feedback
for possibly months at a time. So just spend your time and energy on your link popularity and you will be golden in the end.
I recommend you focus on quality backlinks and not just raw numbers, although numbers can help.

hey guys, here are some great new directory related websites that may interest you:

The Cool Directory: http://www.coolandstrong.com/ 

(I really like this one:)

The Human Edited Web Directory:

http://www.editorsdirectory.info

 and also the Human Contributed People’s Dir:

http://www.connectingsites.info

The Real Estate Directory:  http://www.aaferie.org

also keep your eyes peeled for these new ones being built:

http://www.symbion.org and also http://www.ifipcongress.org/

Okay that is all for now, I will have a new directory article available soon!

What Directories Should I submit to? A substantial number of link building campaigns include directory submissions, and because it often takes time to be listed in some of them 9especially DMOZ) it is probably a good idea to start with these. In the meantime you may wish to post your website to forums ot newsgroups as this method can bring instant hits. But which directories should you submit your website to? There are actually many of them out there, but I recommend quality over quantity. You are generally better off having a handfull of links to your website from some leading user contributed directories (which have more weight in the eyes of the search engine robots) than a large number of links in the smaller directories where everyone gets in. In fact, when looking at directories I look for a pagerank of at least 3 before I will even submit these days in many cases. Some of these higher-tier directories are somewhat difficult to get approved in, while certain others ones are very reasonable. The best directories to submit your site to are the Search Engine Friendly ones which actually have your site URL listed at some point, rather than outlinks that are simply a code). A few use ‘no-follow’ tags, but they usually mention this in the submission page. Avoid these. Some will ask for a link back, some won’t. Make sure to submit your site to the elite directories such as Yahoo and DMOZ.org, and to mid-to-high level ones such as The Blue Fire Human Edited Directory and also the PR6 The S1 Interactive Web Directory Remember that one-way links are always better than link trades, because the search engines give more weight to them. Directories which encode their links are only useful for traffic but will not help your site in the search standings. Only submit to these types if their Alexa Rating is relatively high. Obviously, the ones which don’t encode outgoing links with a “jump link” or ‘no follow’ attribute will help your site in the SERPS. Don’t forget forums, article links and press release links though because they can help as well.

Here is a new webmaster article by
Ryan Joseph, who is a writer/researcher. He runs a web directory at http://www.sacconference.com 

Some Keys to Effective Directory Submission Find out some tips regarding directory submission. Here are some key concepts to help you understanding od this topic Every web directory has it’s own set of criteria that they follow when approving websites. While there is no strict standardization, almost all directories allow you to submit the title of your website (also known as ‘Anchor Text’), a description of your site (the length of which varies depending on the particular directory), and of course the website url or the the web address which will which will be hyperlinked on their site (this is what people actually click on to reach your site). Some directories these days are also allowing you to input a meta description and a keywords field.I like this idea because it adds more relevent content to the page in which your link resides and this may help boost your search engine rankings in the long run. It also helps if you find a Directory which focuses on quality over quantity, such as The RA Directory because you the search engines may judge your backlinks by how many are on the same page. The fewer the better, as this generally appears more natural to the search engine spiders. Since most user contributed web directories (and all of the good ones actually) are human edited, meaning a real person actually reviews your website before acceptance, you have to convince the directory editor or webmaster to include your preferred site title and description, so you therefore need to be certain of not over-stuffing these fields with keywords, as this is often considered to be spamming. And make certain that your website’s title is not too promotional, instead try to make appear as an unbiased, third party review of the site. Do not overhype it if you can at all help it. Remember that it is more important to get listed than to hype your site since frankly you are aiming more for backlinks than a lot of traffic. If you were a directory owner, you would likewise probably approve the websites which were information resources than those that did not have a lot of content and were hyped to the moon in the description and/or title. When selecting your keywords to use in the title, description and keyword field, note that using broad keywords is usually not a particularly wise idea from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standpoint. The keywords that are the most commonly searched will be used by many thousands of sites, if not millions. Therefore it is vital that you select keywords which are not oversaturated. In particular try to find some good niche keyword terms. Optimize using these types of keywords and you will see more traffic and more orders. I have also found that a smaller amount of target visitors yields much better results than a larger number of general visitors. This is why expired traffic and exit/popunder traffic is usually not effective. So use common sense, do not use the same keywords everyone else is using, if possible.

while such marketing methods like submitting to Web Directories is still a cornerstone of many website promotion campaigns. Although they are not quite as important as they used to be, they still serve some important functions. The major engines such as Yahoo and MSN send out their robots to search the web for new resources that come up. Being listed in established web directories ensures that your website will be among those resources which are indexed quickly. You can also build up your backlinks with directory listings. The top engines like Yahoo give a lot of weight to the number of backlinks to your website when ranking it for a specific keyword or keyword phrase and one-way links are considered by many SEO experts to have more relevence than the two way, traded links. This is also why writing articles and forum signatures can help boost your site in the rankings. So what makes for a good directory to be listed on? I look for something unique, hopefully something with a custom design, different categories and of course a high pagerank, such as The RA Directory for example. I prefer to see it differentiated as much as possible from the many standard PHP directories out there. I do not mind paying a small charge to get listed as I know that this will allow the directory to have a smaller index and therefore send more traffic and PR to my site. The majority of web directories that are out there allow you to provide anchor text (link title text) with keywords describing your site. This very important because It is not that easy to get links to your site with the keywords you want and web directories are one of the best ways to do this. To get started finding directories to list your site, I recommend starting with directoryarchives.com and going from there.

http://www.sacconference.com/ is another new Premium web directory