The Job Searches and Career Resources Collection

Tags

job searches

The Job Searches and Career Resources Collection is a new miner available at http://www.minerazzi.com

Use this miner to search job databases and the best career-oriented sites. Find job lists and career advice resources. Check prospective employers and recruiting companies. Submit job offers.

As usual, you can use it to mine the results from a search or compare how the resources listed were designed.

The Intellectual Property Resources Collection

Tags

Patents

The Intellectual Property Resources Collection is a new miner available at http://www.minerazzi.com.

Use this miner to access patent, trademark, and copyright resources. Find lists of patent attorneys and registration offices worldwide, including USPTO, WIPO, and EPO offices.

Crimes Against Meta Data: Sec.gov and Investor.gov sites

During the course of building a financial miner, we found sites committing a lot of crimes against meta data. The most recent are courtesy of the SEC.gov and Investor.gov sites. Perhaps the result bad copy rewritten by software or humans?

These are great sites for finding financial and business information, but some of their pages contain poorly written meta tag data that make indexers go ga-ga gu-gu.

To illustrate, check the meta description tags of the pages at the following URLs:

http://www.sec.gov/News/Page/List/Page/1356125649507

http://www.investor.gov/introduction-markets/role-sec/how-submit-comments-sec#.U-E3frR0yyZ

Links and CSS style instructions declared as meta description data? Great!

MHM: An Interesting Host Mining Tool

MHM is a tool for discovering sites on same host or IP and for the discovery of sites affiliated to each other, or that might be your competitor. It is available at

http://www.minerazzi.com/tools/mhm/mhm.php

It is great for discovering domain names branded with keywords or known name brands. Excellent also for discovering spam communities, domainers, and more.

You may also use it to build micro-indexes and topic-specific collections (as we do) or to chase down communities of personal interest to law and order agencies, recruiters, etc.

Are you a cyberchondriac?

Cyberchondriac = a person who compulsively searches the Internet for information on real or imagined symptoms of illness.

http://www.infotoday.com/OnlineSearcher/Articles/Medical-Digital/Seeking-Consumer-Health-Information-on-the-Internet-90558.shtml

“Powered by” in Spanish

The Problem:

When it comes to properly mean “powered by” in Spanish web pages, a lot of spanish-speaking users don’t seem to agree on how to properly mean that, as can be seen from the following links:

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/144054/how-do-you-say-powered-by-in-espanol

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=329580

Not even Google and Microsoft seem to find a sounded way of meaning the above:

http://es.bab.la/diccionario/ingles-espanol/powered-by

I realized that this is an even worse problem among those hispanics and second generation latinos in the U.S. that are too “americanized” (if that is a valid term).

The Solution:

When we have problems finding terms from different languages with equivalent meanings, the best that we can do is to stop forcing translations and start describing what we want to say. This is a kind of a descriptive strategy.

For instance, according to http://arl-shipzine.com/issue-2-powered-by , “powered by” implies the notion of a service being “provided by”.

So, following the descriptive strategy, “provisto por” is a more appropriate option than “impulsado por”, “potenciado por”, “generado por”, “auspiciado por”, “producido por” and other expressions that sound a bit ridiculous for the context in question. Of course, that’s just my opinion and you don’t have to agree with me.

“Impulsado por”…really? Are you launching a rocket?

“Potenciado por”…really? Are you a battery or power supply?

“Generado por”…really? Are you an electric generator?

“Auspiciado por”…really? Are you sponsoring something?

“Producido por”…really? Are you in a production business?

I know, I know. I’m being sarcastic. Me bad.

What is important to point out is that the above alternatives are subject to misinterpretations, while to imply “a product or service provided by”, o “un producto o servicio provisto por” has only one meaning: a product or service provided by someone, in a b2c (business-to-consumer) or b2b (business-to-business) context. 

At first glance, the above seems trivial, but is not. You would be surprised to see the faces of those latinos that read web content and creatives translated by SEO companies with no knowledge about Spanish or that use automatic translators. Bad translations can ruin any marketing, press release, or link-building campaign.

A nice service for my locals

Puerto Rico Daily News & Image Searches. Driving traffic to Puerto Rico’s best media sites. The fastest way to find news and images relevant to Puerto Rico. Coming soon to http://www.miislita.com

I think this can be applied to many knowledge domains without making the same mistakes from similar services across the Web.  For now, baby steps.

Why time spent on a site is so important?

That is a recurrent question being asked by some of my readers. Here is my answer.

Back in 1995, I wrote in the Dedication section of my doctoral thesis:

“If I have a theory, but no experimental results, I may have nothing. And if I have a theory without practical applications, I may have an artifact.”

So, don’t give your visitors hearsays, half-lies, or misrepresentation of facts found across the Web, but things that they can really test, use, and that solve a real or urgent problem for them. Don’t waste your time repeating interesting -perhaps catchy concepts-, but that at the end of the day are just useless.

In addition to textual and audiovisual content of good quality, give them TOOLS. However, provide tools that make them interact more time with your site and that authoritative pages will recommend or link to.

This is important because the amount of time spent by users in a site is directly correlated to several web metrics/analytics like:

• frequency cap – restriction on the amount of time a specific visitor is shown a particular advertisement.
• stickiness – the amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.
• underdelivery – delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.
• unique visitors – individuals who have visited a site (or network) at least once during a fixed time frame.
• bandwidth – how much data (e.g., content, ads, creatives) can be transmitted in a time period over a communication channel, often expressed in kilobits per second (kbps). Data is any alphanumeric content. This includes parameters, variables or any text/pixel-based creative.

Other time-based metrics inherited from traditional media (TV, radio) and that are based on the time spent by users viewing a communication channel can be applied to web channels and sites; among others:

• average audience – the average number of people who tuned into the given time selected and expressed in thousands or as a percentage (also known as a Rating) of thetotal potential audience of the demographic selected. It is also known as a T.A.R.P -Targeted Audience Rating Point.
• channel share – the share one channel has of all viewing for a particular time period. The share, expressed as a percentage, is calculated by dividing the channel’s average audience by the average audience of all channels (PUTs) (It is held in higher esteem by networks than media buyers on a day to day basis and is only referred to by the latter group when apportioning budgets and evaluating a programme for sponsorship).
• cummulative audience or reach – the total number of different people within the selected demographic who tuned into the selected time period for 8 minutes or more (i.e., reached at least once by a specific schedule or advertisement).
• frequency – the average number of times that a person within the target audience has had the opportunity to see an advertisement over the campaign period.
• time spent viewing or TVS – how many minutes/hours an audience has viewed a particular channel.

[Sources: WebSiteMagazine, WebMediaSolutions, NielsenMedia].

So, any tool that helps your visitors to wisely improve their time spent on your site -in an effective manner, of course- cannot hurt you. For this to be true, however, the tool provided must be engaging, useful, effortless, and with a minimum learning curve; otherwise the user experience of your visitors can be frustrating and a waste of time.

Social Networks: New Player in PR Political Debate

Yesterday, Puerto Rico’s constitutional ammendment referendum was won by the people thanks to the power of intelligent people and the use of social networks, beating money-driven efforts by the current government.

Ha, Ha. More power to the people.

What is the more effective way of writing scientific research articles?

Over the years, I’ve been asked about the more effective way of writing peer-reviewed articles for scientific journals.

My response is always the same: Think like a referee/editor. Here is a list of items that they want to see accomplished:

Referees/editors like to see that the content and format of the title, abstract, document body, tables, images, graphics, appendices, and references follow their journal guidelines.

In general, referees/editors like to see in the first page of the printed version of an article:

1. Statement of the problem – what is the problem to be solved.
2. Purpose of the article – how the present research solves the problem.
3. Organization – how the article is organized and what is covered in each section.

This is a general practice across scientific journals. So, whenever possible, I try to accomplish 1 – 3 in the first three paragraphs of the first page of the printed article. To do this, you need to avoid lengthy introductions and wordiness. Be concise and ‘go the point’.

Referees/editors also like to see the article as a whole semantic unit. So they like to see:

Transitional statements; i.e., sections ending as an introduction to the next section.

1. One paragraph, one idea; i.e., each paragraph discussing one main idea.
2. Short paragraphs; i.e., each paragraph of about five sentences or less, where sentences are of appropriate length. This provides a natural stop to the reading. In general, short paragraphs and sentences are easier to read than the long ones. Use compound sentences with caution.
3. Facts supported by pertinent references.
4. Opinion written as opinions, not as facts.

Of course, there are other tips to think about, but in my opinion, the above can make a difference… well, in my opinion :)