Sitting Bull

Out and about in the blogosphere and saw this interesting concept about taking web content in the public domain, images or whatever and remixing them or as the site described, shapeshift it into a new form and profiting from it.  I’ve also noticed that there are now ebooks being sold about profiting from the public domain as if anyone really needed this.  A remix was made of the old sitting bull photo which was posted as a public domain image – whether it’s actually in the public domain or not is not something I’m personally aware of although I’m willing to take their word for it.  You’d have to check for yourself – I’m using it under the concept of “fair use,” as I’m actually posting a review of another site here.

And so, as you can see from the dozen samples above, it’s pretty easy to shapeshift just about ANY text content from the Public Domain into a new form…whether free or as a money-making product. The same is true for images . …

Original Article:Shapeshifting Public Domain Content | PublicDomainBlog.com

alleged ghost picture

 

To demonstrate this photoshop job, I quickly cloned out the ghost here: 

Ghost cloned out of photo

Next, find the source of the ghost and this ghost came from an urban legends post that had gone around the internet some time before. Here is the photo the ghost was lifted from:

Here’s the photoshop steps:
1. Open the photo without the ghost in Photoshop then open the photo of the urban legends ghost.

2. Using the lasso tool, make a quick selection around the urban legend ghost.
3. Grab the move tool from the palate and move the selection into the window. Control-T to use free transform and size the ghost into the window.
4. Set the blend mode of the layer to soft light. It appears that the blend mode was left at normal in the original photoshop job but I think soft light works better to blend the selection.
Here’s the final image:

Ghost photoshopped in window

Happiness on the other hand, a version of a love based emotion is as easily sparked with thinking happy thoughts.  We play little movies in our head and those movies create an emotional state.  Do we have the choice of what movies play in our head?  Yes – you can choose to change the picture.  Tired of thinking about something that’s bothering you, change the channel.  If the idea of puppies licking your face would make you feel happy, think that.  It’s surprisingly easy to say yet people still choose anger.  Borrowed the article Anger is a Choice.

For some weird reason, everybody is asking “is it possible to be happy?”   Well yes, after giving the question of whether it is possible to be happy, I’d have to say yes – it’s possible but it’s difficult.  Well it’s not really even difficult to be happy – that’s just a matter of thinking happy thoughts.  But to have a happy life and doing what you want can be difficult because not everybody is as interested in your happiness as you are.  It’ interesting that “is it possible to be happy?” is the hottest google trend today and makes me wonder whether anyone really cares about being happy or just getting a bunch of traffic to their blog.  Well the fact of the matter is that getting a bunch of traffic to my blog would make me extremely happy.  So to answer the question “is it possible to be happy?” – yes, by jumping on the is it possible to be happy bandwagon I hope to get happy.

Man, it’s hard to keep up with Google these days – once this integrates with the site feature stuff they recently implemented, it’s going to explode and Google will be the biggest cyber business in the universe.  Hold on to your data!

I could ask myself why anyone would want to search for such a thing but I know for every topic that exists in the world, there’s somebody searching for it.  The thing that gets me is the Google data mining aspect – that they keep records of every single search.  Think about this – it’s as if they are mapping human minds – a giant social project that someday could explain the inner workings of human thought.  What conclusions could someone draw about you if they had detailed data of everything you’ve ever searched for on Google – in addition to an analysis of everywhere you’ve ever been on the internet?  Would it be something you’d like to know if you were trying to sell a product – you bet it would – and my guess is we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet on how Google will profit from this data.  It will be shock and awe.

Just a humble prediction, what’s your thoughts?

I first learned about the nofollow attribute when I checked my strategy of signing up and submitting  internet articles to various sites such as eHow, associated content and similar sites.  In the profile pages of these sites, they let you put your blog url and you can even put your url in the article itself.  One right-click, view page source and i’m looking at a tag right before my url that says “nofollow”.  Hmmm – quick google search and there’s a lengthy discussion of the implementation of a nofollow attribute, intended to discourage spam comments.  Apparently it’s other suggested use by Google is when users submit links, to avoid association with “unknown” content, the nofollow tag is encouraged.  So basically, my efforts of trying to get some page rank by submitting content to third party sites was nil.

Bloggers have been told repeatedly that making comments on other blogs is a sound strategy for receiving page rank by back links but the nofollow tag essentially removes any page ranking criteria from the link.  Google states that the bots don’t follow the tags and apparently Yahoo disregards the tag although there’s only one search engine that I care about and that’s Google.  The traffic from other engines pales in comparison so the campaign of back linking by comment is worthless if the blog in question uses the default setting of nofollow for comments (ie WordPress).

Let’s talk a little about comment spam – I hate it and so does everyone else but the fact of the matter is that Askimet does a great job of catching it.  Since I started this blog, Askimet has caught 1,902 spam comments and I have 5,53 in my spam que.  There are no spam comments on my site unless I intentionally let them in and frankly, I’m not bothered by this issue.  According to WordPress, the nofollow attribute did nothing to stop comment spam (yet has continued to leave nofollow as the default setting.)

What I have done about this nofollow issue

Since I was completely unaware that the nofollow comment attribute was on my site I disabled it.  I believe that if you leave a comment on this site you should have a back link.  That’s the way I want it on sites I comment on.  Comments are useful in many ways – they’re user contributed content that can help by adding keywords and help to make a site feel more like a community than a one-sided conversation.  So I installed a WordPress Plugin called Dofollow.  A moment later, the “evil nofollow attribute from your comments” is removed.  Will this result in more spam comments – I don’t really care since the Askimet plugin is catching them anyway.

About Comment Etiquette

When I go to a blog and make a comment, I actually read the post and try to add something intelligent to the mix.  A comment like “Great Article!”  isn’t really a comment, is it?  Yes it may take a few more minutes to actually read and say something useful but those kinds of comments are more likely to be clicked on by other readers than an obvious spam comment for the sole purpose of back linking.  The other thing in comment etiquette that you shouldn’t use your url in the name field – a) Askimet flags that as spam so I have to override it and b) you’re already getting a link, no need to be greedy.  I sometimes let these through but I’m just going to let Askimet kill them from now on.

With that said, please feel free to comment and get a back link that might actually contribute to your overall page ranking since the nofollow tag is gone here.

You might be wondering if you should purchase a professionally ghostwritten article for your website or blog.  You’ve probably heard that a well written internet article will help you to drive traffic to the keywords of the article.  I ghostwrite articles for clients, giving them custom, keyword rich content for their websites.  It’s not particularly lucrative for me but it helps to pay the bills so I’m willing to do it.  But this isn’t about me – this is a success story a client relayed to me about an article I had ghostwritten for his blog.  Since I maintain strict confidentiality regarding content I ghostwrite, I can’t tell you what the article was about or where it is on the internet.  What I can tell you is that I charged 3 cents per word for a 1000 word article and the client was happy and quickly paid.  A month later, I received an email from the client that the article was ranking high and someone emailed him wanting to purchase a link in the article.  He sold that link for $30.   One month after purchasing the article he had made his money back and profited by ad clicks generated by the article which will continue in the future.

Let’s look at this a little closer.  Why would someone want a link to an internet article?  Well, in this case, the article ranks high in Google and has some keywords which are commonly searched.  The person purchasing this link is hoping to siphon some of that traffic to his site where he’s selling a related product and he’s gaining higher relevancy for his site by a natural text link to his site in a relevant category.  It’s a win-win for the site with the high ranking article and a win for the linked-in site.

I’m happy for the client’s success with the article ghostwritten by me.  It virtually ensures continued business.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/idovermani/4267359429/in/set-72157613329246226/

Attribution

Read the Article with awesome tips for a successful 365 photo project – 11 tips to succeed with a 365 Photo Project