That’s right my fine peeps…. Today is day one of the 2 day extravaganza to reward those in the Sphinn-o-sphere that have stood head and shoulders above the rest of us mere mortals. Be sure to head over to the Search Engine People website to catch all the excitement.

Part II of the awards ceremony will be right here on Houmah tomorrow morning at 9am… be sure to be here

Are you a Sphinn-o-holic? Do you find yourself with the urge to click whenever you see that little blue star in your web wandering? Perhaps you have Sphinn hooked up to your reader because you simply Can’t Get Enough? If that’s the case, I have some exciting news that is simply to die for;

The Search Engine People and Huomah.com are proud to present;

the (Un-)Official Sphinn Awards!! - You longed for them, asked for them and pleaded with your deity of choice and now; They’re Here! Be sure to tune in and watch all of your favourite ‘Sphinners’ stroll down the red carpet and into ever-lasting fame in the Sphinn-o-sphere. Some of the hardware up for grabs include;

The Tireless Reporter Award - The Social Seduction Award - Spread the Love Award - The Fast Fingers Award - The Frustration and Futility Award -- And of course the 2 Big Ones; The Bulls-eye Award and the Sphinner’s Choice Award

When and Where - The awards ceremony will be broken down into 2 completely riveting Blog-casts. The first part on Search Engine People and the exciting conclusion the very next day right here on Huomah.com

The Sphinn Awards Part I; is on SEP, Monday November 12 2007 (9am EST)
The Sphinn Awards Part II; here on HuoMah.com Tuesday November 13 (9am EST)

Be sure to catch all the excitement  – YOU could be one of our lucky winners!!  

Good Morning Mr.Gates how do you like us now?

It seems the good ship Google will now be more able to achieve its goal of indexing/processing all of the information in the world. Sure, it just so happens that much of that is YOUR information and interactions, but that’s a trivial minor consideration, right? I mean it’s just like their unlikely bunk buddy, Microsoft, whom merely wanted to make our lives easier with the proliferation of the PC. Google is looking to help us in our everyday world. Aren’t they?

So how does one get a hold of all of the information in the world anyways? Simple, just make sure you are as close to, or involved in, as much of the information transfer and processing as possible.

We are the Google – resistance is futile

Search – index the web and collect user performance data. Even if you are not logged in, there are many ways for Google to track your actions and intentions. Google not only indexes the world’s webformation, but has a plethora of data collection and behavioural targeting opportunities at hand far beyond simply striving for more ‘relevance’ in search result delivery.

Gmail and Reader – obviously your email and news reading activities are a bonanza of end user data that can be associated to understand you better and the aggregate data to better understand larger behavioural trends.

Get Social – Not to be left out of the Social Sphere, Google has aspirations of accessing not only personal social interaction, but tapping the business communities as well. We can certainly expect more moves into these areas soon. Of note we have LinkedIn, Orkut, YouTube (plus strategic partnerships such as MySpace) – and of course, the OpenSocial platform.

Dave's Notes; A mate of mine, Andy, went on a bit of a rant today and I felt I just had to post it.. as is…

Yahoo are fraudulent bastards - No really, they are.


Sorry if I offend anyone with this rant, but be warned, I'm very very annoyed about this. Has anyone seen this Digg story about; Yahoo setting affiliate cookies in natural search results? It is based on the post from WageRank article Yahoo is dropping affiliate cookies.

SNIPPET- “Let me show you how Yahoo is making affiliate commissions from their organic results.If you search on Yahoo, all of their organic results (not the sponsored links) are redirected through http://rds.yahoo.com. This is nothing new and they have been doing this for quite some time to record click metrics.”

So, they are, are they?

I didn’t believe it until I did it my own self. And ya know what? They do, the sneaky bastards. I looked into this a bit more, did a bit of testing and you should see the litter they drop on your machine. What’s more, that article only mentions that one "Orbitz" link. All of Yahoo's 'natural' search redirection goes through rds.yahoo.com. At the end of the URL string you can see where rds.yahoo.com redirects you too. It's supposed to be the URL of the result. View the source of this SERP, (mentioned in the article); 

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cheap+flights&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&vc=&fp_ip=UK – Now copy it all to an editor, strip out everything except the search results and you'll see the extent of Yahoo's treachery.