Google Apps customers may soon have a lot more options in terms of which of the company's other products and services they'll be able to access from their official accounts.  Google intends to let customers remove all restrictions sometime in the next six months.

If you're unfamiliar with Google Apps, here's what that boils down to: people will be able to do things using services other than conventional productivity offerings like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Groups, and Google Docs.

A post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog explained, "[C]oworkers will be able to publish their organization's blog on Blogger, share project images with Picasa Web Albums, track industry news in Google Reader, advertise online with AdWords and much more, all without switching back and forth between multiple accounts."

Administrative types don't need to worry that this change will introduce new distractions and create a mess of their workplace, either, because Google is going to grant admins the ability to set different services off-limits.

As for the timing of the move, the official blog post stated, "We intend to have all Standard, Premier and Education Edition customers moved to the new infrastructure that enables this change in the fall, and customers who would like more control over the timing of this change will be able to make the switch voluntarily during the summer."

Sunday, April 25th is World Malaria Day and the United Nations is placing its hopes on you and the social graphs you’ve nurtured to finally end this deadly, yet preventable disease.

You see, every 30 seconds, a child in Africa dies from malaria and every 10 seconds, another case is diagnosed. That might not mean a lot to you…I’m sure where you are right now is probably the furthest away from Malaria and Africa. But even where you are, right now, you’re in a place to actually save a life…literally.

Please join the efforts to #endmalaria. All it takes is a $10 donation here.  Or, text the word “NETS” to 864233, and a $10 donation will be charged directly to your cell phone bill.

100% of the proceeds will be given to UNICEF, used to buy treated mosquito nets, the lowest cost and most effective way to prevent malaria.

Once you’ve donated, please help spread the word using the #endmalaria banner.

To kick start the effort today, I reached out to good friend and one of my favorite artists, Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid). He designed an original piece (above) in the hopes of spreading awareness and support using art as a social object.

World Malaria Day

Sub-Saharan Africa i/> [...]

Sun Apr 25, 2010 09:00 am

Quality inbound links are an essential element of web site marketing and search engine optimization programs to increase traffic and online sales. The greater the number of relevant and authoritative links to a web page, the greater the potential for higher search engine rankings and qualified traffic.

A recent survey from SEOmoz illustrates just how important inbound links are to rankings. An impressive 4 of the top 5 ranking factors involve inbound links:

• Keyword focused anchor text from external links: 73% very high importance
• External link popularity: 71% very high importance
• Diversity of link sources: 67% very high importance
• Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains: 66% very high importance

Conversely, the No. 2 negative ranking factor was link acquisition from known link brokers or sellers (56% high importance).  Incidentally, TopRank has never engaged in link acquisitions in this manner, focusing instead on earning links through creative content promotions, social media and online public relations.

Tracking links to your web pages — and those of your competitors — is a major part of any SEO strategy. Fortunately, a host of free and paid tools exist to provide a comprehensive looks at where your web pages stand.

Since link building is so important, Lee and I have collected these 10 tools for tracking inbound links for you to test:

1. Majestic-SEO

Majestic/> [...]

Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:05 am

The new version of Digg has changed the playing field for two of its biggest constituents: power users and publishers. We discuss this with a long-time Digg power user.

The latest version of social news site Digg is currently in restricted beta, with a further 20,000 users added at the beginning of July. The new version adds the ability to 'follow' people or publishers, via a feature called "My News." This will be the default Digg homepage and it's prompted many to compare the new Digg to Twitter and Facebook. Another big change is that publishers may now automatically submit their content. This changes the game for both power users and publishers, because previously the secret to getting onto the Digg front page was for a power user to submit the story. That's no longer the case.

Sponsor

Power Users on Digg

Up till now, the definition of a 'power user' on Digg has been someone with the ability to make stories popular simply by submitting content or 'digging' it up. There was also a lot of back scratching that happened behind the scenes, among both power users and/> [...]

Wed Jul 14, 2010 06:08 am