tag

Depending on where you live, lost kids (and adults) aren't the only ones who could use the occasional aid of an identification device. In San Francisco, for example, it's been widely reported that dogs outnumber children.

And with about 10 million pets expected to get lost each year, technologies like "KoogaPet" will become an increasingly common sight. Though far from the only digital dog tag on the market, the KoogaPet is much smaller than others and holds more data.

The $30 dime-sized tag, which is waterproof and comes in various colors, can store information transferred from … Read more

Jiglu is a new tagging service launching in open beta today. Its goal is to take the work of tagging posts out of the hands of bloggers by automating the process entirely. All you need to do as a blog owner is install the plug-in, which supports itself by showing small, unobtrusive AdSense ads inside the lightbox where you search and browse blog tags.

The service works by spidering your pages and pulling out keywords where it sees fit, and listing them in a number of ways. My personal favorite is the TagMap, which takes your tags and organizes them … Read more

Every morning, each one of us wakes up a ragged mess and eventually, presumably after cleaning up a bit, exits the house dressed in attire that expresses his or her inner feelings.

Don't believe me? It's true; ask a shrink. The way you dress is a window into the subconscious. Of course, it helps if you know how to interpret the data. Sometimes the conscious mind overrules the inner self, so what you get is the opposite of what the person is feeling. It's complicated.

Okay, enough psychobabble. The premise here is that the way you dress matters and it matters in the workplace. Over the course of my career, I've noticed a lot going on with clothes, but nobody talks about it. Case in point, people have been commenting on the way I dress for decades, and I have no idea why.

Way back in 1981 - when I was an engineer designing chips for Texas Instruments - my manager told me I might consider dressing differently if I wanted to get ahead. I was wearing torn overalls at the time. Hey, I was just an engineer ... and it was Texas!

Anyway, he did have a point. Years later I read Dress for Success and began taking this stuff a bit more seriously. When I became a sales executive calling on customers, I began wearing a jacket and tie or a suit.

However, when it comes to really working, i.e. in the office, I'm strictly a blue jeans, untucked shirt, and sneakers or other comfy shoes kind of guy. I guess that's what comforts my neurotic subconscious.

When I worked at microprocessor upstart Cyrix in the mid-90s, Jack Kemp - quarterback turned politician extraordinaire - sat on our board of directors. That didn't entirely make sense to me, but he was a great guy and really fun at dinner parties.… Read more

Have you gotten sick of the word "platform" yet? Sorry.

According to a post on TechCrunch, MySpace.com is planning to follow in Facebook's footsteps and open up a set of application program interfaces (APIs) so that developers can create "MySpace apps" in the vein of Facebook apps.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who apparently got the details from developers who have been consulted on the project, wrote that we may be seeing this as early as next week--potentially at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

More specifically, this is allegedly going to be … Read more

If you ever wondered why parents can come across as worried and cranky members of the digital world, check out Noam Cohen's Link by Link blog post, Use My Photo? Not Without Permission. Cohen tells the story of a 15-year old high school girl, Alison Chang, from Dallas who was goofing off at a local church-sponsored car wash. Her church youth counselor snapped a photo and uploaded it to the photo-sharing site Flickr, where it caught the eye of an Australian advertising agency. Next thing you know, Alison's likeness appeared on a billboard in Australia.… Read more

This morning Netvibes is launching Premium Universes, a new program for businesses to get their own branded start page that can be integrated into their existing site, without jettisoning users off elsewhere. The intent is for site users to get the same functionality they'd get at Netvibes.com, while at the site owner's page. Site owners in turn, can place as much advertising outside of the Netvibes page as they'd like, supplementing the use of the service--and hopefully their revenue.

In terms of features, there's really nothing new from the Netvibes Universe program that launched in mid-April. … Read more

Getting ready for AMA's Hot Topic: Search Engine Marketing conference, which I'm chairing, next month has gotten me thinking about what truly constitutes a "hot topic." Online, folks' interests are fleeting. Remember "the good ol' days" when something was the hot topic for weeks or even months? Now, hot topics can come and pass before you even knew they were hot.

On the upside, the Web has made the tracking and monitoring of what's hot easier than ever before. Wondering what products are taking the world by storm? Can't have your morning … Read more

The meta description is an important element of your on-page SEO, yet its value is often underrated. Viewing everything in terms of search engine ranking impact blinds us to the opportunity that meta descriptions present search marketers. Admittedly, the meta description tag provides very little value in search ranking. Any value it may have once held in this regard has eroded due to keyword stuffing and other abuses by spammers intent on manipulating the search engines.

So how could this tag be so important if it plays so little a role in ranking? The meta description's real value comes … Read more

PC gaming still remains a staple of the modern geek. Even though Wiimotes and gamepads are fun, you just can't beat a mouse and keyboard in a straight-up multiplayer shooter. Cyber Snipa makes gaming accessories specifically for PC gamers. The company makes your usual variety of mice and keyboards, but it does offer two pretty unique products for the geek in you.

They'll do little to actually identify you, but the Cyber Snipa Dog Tags are still a pretty useful bit of kit. Instead of showing your name and blood type like military dog tags, these geek-minded tags … Read more