There's no irrelevant keywords here, no hidden text, no hidden links,
Uhmm... Here's an H1 tag that's hidden, exactly the sort of SEO trick that google warns against.
<h1 class="offscreen">Welcome to Target Products and Promotions</h1>
And more relevant, perhaps, here's one from the "Your Mom Is So Hot" Target search.
<h1 class="offscreen">your mom is hot Products and Promotions</h1>
In this case, there are no actual promotions available from Target about "Your Mom is So Hot," which means, I think, that it's expressly deceptive.
And here are some hidden links on the page as well.
<a href="#mainBody">Skip to Main Content</a> <a href="#leftNav">Skip to Left Navigation</a> <a href="#scripted_tabs">Skip to Product Information Tabs</a>
These links cannot be seen in a regular browser. Dunno if this qualifies as nefarious or black-hat, but it's definitely, obviously hidden links. Of course, any site with a dropdown menu has hidden links on it, but these hidden links on the Target.com page don't even qualify for that. Perhaps they show up if you have javascript disabled, or browse from text-only browser. The point is, in a regular browser, they are hidden links.
I suppose I'm responding to an AC troll. But I do find it interesting that Target.com can get away with clearly deceptive hidden H1 tags. That's like the definition of amateur black hat SEO.
Tom Stoppard used to tell an anecdote in his interviews about how, at an earlier point in his life, he used to feel guilty for getting away with being an Artiste. Which is to say, ditch diggers work hard, sysadmins work hard, but Stoppard lucked out and got to frit about with his imagination and a pencil, and thence be paid.
But Stoppard eventually assuaged his guilt by posing the following question: What if we lived in a world with plenty of material satisfaction (good food, jet-skis, cozy houses) but no art? His contemplation of this question led him to feel okay, generally, with the prospect of spending all his time & effort on the seemingly useless pursuit of making plays and movie scripts. And he felt okay being the lucky one who gets the leisure, indeed gets PAID to do it.
Stoppard is all famous and horribly clever and whatnot, but I think he missed the mark with his argument. There's no reason that being a creative genius means you ought to get PAID for it, or that you DESERVE the time and money to Make Your Precious Art. Because even if you stop paying all the artists, stuff will still get made. Some of it will get popular. We will still have fads and trends and cliques and identity groups and that-about-which-to-get-obsessed. In short, we will still have everything that Big Content presently commoditizes for us in tidy artificially expensive packages. There is a world out there, one that exists without the high-dollar-cashflow content machine, and it has plenty of Art in it.
There's an analogue already existing in the academic world. Scientists, some of them, are freaking Brilliant. And even in a landscape where scientists don't regularly reap fantastic cash awards, they still doggedly pursue their craft. The landscape has shifted in the last decades, with universities rushing to cash in on the patentable discoveries that percolate up from their laboratories. But this has not yet (totally) changed the culture of the academic scientists, who don't pursue their science just for the Huge Bucks lurking in the next Petri dish.
I sure would like to be a Super-Billionaire-Artiste, sucking up cash and bidding my minions prosecute the latest artificial-bottleneck-du-jour. But if I ever achieve such a thing, I won't kid myself and pretend I deserve it. It's like any other privelege inherent in living in the upper middle class of the Western world. Whenever I think about my comfortable cheap clothes made at the expense of near-slave-labor, I feel a twinge of guilt, and then return to cheerfully slurping my Diet Coke(tm), and I forget about it. Same with profiting from Copyright Persecution. Sure, it's a privelege and a pleasure to profit from fake scarcity. But it's a GUILTY pleasure. And it's going away.
When I read a book, there is a kind of copy of that book in my brain. It is not digital. It is not accurate. I recently read "Babel Tower" by A.S. Byatt. I remember the story of that book, much to the chagrin, I suppose, of Ms. Byatt. The Imperfections of my memory-copy do not mitigate the fact that I have stolen the book. I am an IP Pirate. I could get on the phone with my friend Nate, and retell to him sections of "Babel Tower". This is called Peer-To-Peer Network Evildoing. Thank goodness there is a profound moral difference between copies that are Analog (nice) and copies that are digital (evil).
Were I to memorize passages of the book, those passages would be effectively exact. I have memorize some poems, and I can type them out word-for-word and comma-for-comma, years after I memorized.
I have memorized the poem "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" by Wallace Stevens. It's one of my favorite poems. Sadly, Mr. Stevens has not been dead long enough, nor written his poem early enough, so his copyright is still in effect. It is too bad that Wallace Stevens didn't get all his poems written before 1923. He had the bad grace to write poems AFTER Walt Disney arrived, which means that Wallace Stevens' immortal legacy will never, ever enter the public domain. At present, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," published in 1923, is set to enter public domain in the year 2017. The likelihood if this happening is, I fear, meagre. The ministrations of The Walt Disney Corporation will see to it that we never get the benefit of this poem. Because if we DID get it into the public domain, that would mean that other Obviously Important Proprietary Things (Mickey Mouse) would also pass into the public domain. And we can't have that. It is interesting, at least to me, that "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" was published in 1923. This is the magic cut-off date as the law now stands. Before 1923 - belongs to the world. After January 1, 1923 - belongs to "The Right Noble Estate of Whomever is Willing to Sell it to Disney." Were I to dig up some biography history of Stevens, and discover that he had published the "Ice-Cream" poem in some literary magazine BEFORE it appeared in "Harmonium" (1923) then... voila. The wide world (the public domain) would own "The Emperor of Ice Cream." Indeed, it is likely (though I haven't dug it up) that most of Stevens' famous poems were published in magazines prior to 1923.
How sad for the estate of Wallace Stevens that he did so much of his well-known work at the beginning of his career. If only Stevens had known how copyright law would unfold, he could have jealously guarded his art, and released it in the safer regions of the post-1923 universe.
Let us imagine that tomorrow I start writing a short story. Let us say that my story is influenced, dominated by the cadences, rhythms and ideas in "Emperor of Ice-Cream." Let us say, more scandalously, that my story is similarly influenced by "Babel Tower." (O come swiftly year 2081, where I should be released from my Copyright Bondage to Ms. Byatt!) When I have finished my new story, it will be a Derivative Work. Unless I pay royalties to Ms. Byatt (and to every other influence on my literary style) I am a Pirate. I have stolen their Intellectual Property, made copies of it in my head, and then created Derivative Works based on their hard-won Authorship.
The only Legitimate authors and musicians in America are those who have never seen, read, nor heard anything except pre-1923 material. Show me those people. They are not pirates.
Ahh. I just discovered that "The Emperor of Ice Cream" was published in "The Dial," uly 1922. So ignore everything I said about its copyright. That poem belongs to everybody.
I think the immediat parent is onto some of the thickest, thorniest issues. What happens to the songwriter who doesn't sing, but still wants to earn cash on songs? If copyright goes away, they get a day job. Or, they get a salary from some Music Making House.
In the video game industry, there are TONS of artists who just get a salary (and bonuses, stock options, etc.) They have given away, before the fact, the copyright to all of their beautiful digital imagery. Also true with sound effects, and music made to hire for video games. So we already have structures in place for paying artists who don't get copyright to their work.
Of course, the video game scheme is also founded on copyright. If a production house could go and steal the images and ideas from their favorite competitor, they could cut a lot of the art direction budget of video games, movies, etc. Oh wait. They already do that. What are we saving with the present copyright scheme?
What about novels? How is a novelist, a good one writing worthwhile stuff, supposed to earn the money, and the time, to write more? What does a world look like where all the market-driven 3rd-grade-reader-level crap has fallen away? I am not convinced that the present Oprah made-for-TV novel market is particularly conducive to good writing, or particularly beneficial to good writers. I have some favorite authors who are writing today, and I wouldn't want to take away their livelihood. But I suspect there are more good writers who gave up on the cheez-o market, and stopped writing. The artificial bottlenecks, the content monopoly, the capital-intensive machine that runs, I sh8t you not, the world of ideas. How broken can you get?
Artists, presently making money, don't want the rug pulled out from under them. They have a way of life. They have traditions, and institutions, which have produced glorious stuff. I can see no way forward, away from tight copyright, that would keep them completely safe.
Of course, it's easy for me to write them off. I am more of the embittered, untalented wannabe who never made any money from art. But the real, paid artists have a lot to lose if we tip the apple cart over. The plantation owners of the southern United States were in a similar predicament, when those pesky northerners pulled down their entire system of wealth. They were screwed, royally. Nowadays, we think of emancipation as a step forward. I do think that somewhere in the Star Trek future, people will think it's disgusting that we used to try to "own" ideas.
For podcast books there's Podiobooks which has a number of books on offer, both new and public domain.
For comedy sketch and short story, there's Firesign Theatre where you can browse the comedy albums (they've been making them for 40 years) and from each album download sample tracks. They also have a podcast.
For podcast short story and essay, there's The Seanachai. Patrick Mclean comes from advertising, I think, so he has some good writing chops. He has a series called "How to Succeed in Evil without really Trying." It's very funny.
And, pants down, the best monologist in the business is Joe Frank. A free membership on his site allows you to stream a number of full-length shows.
There's also Transom.org where hopeful producers submit stuff for NPR-type program directors to peruse. Much of it is downloadable, and it includes fiction.
Lastly, I shamelessy plug myself. Of course, if I could actually shamelessly plug myself and record it on podcast, I would have a lot more listeners. Pferdzwackur's Tin Man is exactly what the original post was asking for. Original serial fiction, with bells and whistles attached.
All of the major wireless carriers got to be as big as they are by buying small carriers, except Sprint. The idea that a company can buy Bob's Pretty Good Cellphone Service(TM) in Bohunk, Idakota, and then quickly, seamlessly integrate that service into a national billing, service system - this is not true. Verizon, Nextel, AT&T all have gone through downright terrible growing pains. AT&T started earlier, and can now be estimated to really have a national program. Verizon and Nextel are not there yet. Verizon and Nextel should be viewed as loosely aligned federations of little nickel-and-dime carriers, pretending to fly one flag.
Sprint makes you pay for roaming. If you KNOW that you'll stay within their digital per-city footprint, then go with Sprint. Otherwise, you'll be burning through your $50 in less than a week.
Voicestream is the largest GSM carrier in the US. They just bought most of Powertel in order to consolidate the Southeast. They want very much to be your national solution. Give them a year or two. Right now, their coverage footprints and roaming charges (can you say 69/min?) are even more restrictive than Sprint. GSM promises to have the best near-term wireless bitrates (or so they promise . . . ) but the coverage factor is going to be a deal-killer for most anyone who travels a lot.
Verizon is very solid on the east coast (Bell Atlantic Mobile before the merger with GTE). Their customer service is still, as I said, stuck in the balkanized stage of development. You can spend twenty minutes on the phone with Verizon Customer Service, to finally be told, "We can't help you. Try a different 800 number." Delightful.
AT&T has the best coverage, on average, throughout the US. Every city has a different winner in the coverage war. You want coverage in Washington DC? Use Verizon. You want wide coverage in Salt Lake City? Use AT&T. From a wide perspective of who-can-I-trust-when-my-phone-breaks, AT&T is the best answer. Their lowest National Plan Rate is $59.99 for 450 minutes. Every carrier has a comparable No-Roaming No-Long-Distance plan. But beware of Sprint, where they don't REALLY mean no-roaming. With AT&T and Verizon, the claim is for real.
Nextel is an Account's Payable Clerk's worst nightmare. The guy who originally designed their billing system has been fired. Flat out. The corporate reps for Nextel spend a lot of time apologizing for their billing system, and promising that "next year" things will be streamlined and on-track. That said, if you've just got your one cellphone, how many billing problems can you run into? There's really just one way to find out . . . buy Nextel.
Nokia makes good phones, and their 24-hour Fedex repair/replace program in the US (for the first year of the Nokia's life) is killer. Just call 877-746-9244 and they'll hook you up pronto with a replacement phone.
All of this is pure opinion. I don't want to bore anyone with a catalog of data to back up my claims. Here's my credentials: I manage a 900 cellphone fleet for a corporation. I am, essentially, a professional cellphone customer. Before this job, I traveled through the country (every week a new city) for two years, constantly using cellphones. I've seen first-hand the downtown coverage patterns of about the 90 largest cities in the United States. I like AT&T.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome.
Uhmm... Here's an H1 tag that's hidden, exactly the sort of SEO trick that google warns against.
And more relevant, perhaps, here's one from the "Your Mom Is So Hot" Target search.
In this case, there are no actual promotions available from Target about "Your Mom is So Hot," which means, I think, that it's expressly deceptive. And here are some hidden links on the page as well.
These links cannot be seen in a regular browser. Dunno if this qualifies as nefarious or black-hat, but it's definitely, obviously hidden links. Of course, any site with a dropdown menu has hidden links on it, but these hidden links on the Target.com page don't even qualify for that. Perhaps they show up if you have javascript disabled, or browse from text-only browser. The point is, in a regular browser, they are hidden links. I suppose I'm responding to an AC troll. But I do find it interesting that Target.com can get away with clearly deceptive hidden H1 tags. That's like the definition of amateur black hat SEO.
Tom Stoppard used to tell an anecdote in his interviews about how, at an earlier point in his life, he used to feel guilty for getting away with being an Artiste. Which is to say, ditch diggers work hard, sysadmins work hard, but Stoppard lucked out and got to frit about with his imagination and a pencil, and thence be paid.
But Stoppard eventually assuaged his guilt by posing the following question: What if we lived in a world with plenty of material satisfaction (good food, jet-skis, cozy houses) but no art? His contemplation of this question led him to feel okay, generally, with the prospect of spending all his time & effort on the seemingly useless pursuit of making plays and movie scripts. And he felt okay being the lucky one who gets the leisure, indeed gets PAID to do it.
Stoppard is all famous and horribly clever and whatnot, but I think he missed the mark with his argument. There's no reason that being a creative genius means you ought to get PAID for it, or that you DESERVE the time and money to Make Your Precious Art. Because even if you stop paying all the artists, stuff will still get made. Some of it will get popular. We will still have fads and trends and cliques and identity groups and that-about-which-to-get-obsessed. In short, we will still have everything that Big Content presently commoditizes for us in tidy artificially expensive packages. There is a world out there, one that exists without the high-dollar-cashflow content machine, and it has plenty of Art in it.
There's an analogue already existing in the academic world. Scientists, some of them, are freaking Brilliant. And even in a landscape where scientists don't regularly reap fantastic cash awards, they still doggedly pursue their craft. The landscape has shifted in the last decades, with universities rushing to cash in on the patentable discoveries that percolate up from their laboratories. But this has not yet (totally) changed the culture of the academic scientists, who don't pursue their science just for the Huge Bucks lurking in the next Petri dish.
I sure would like to be a Super-Billionaire-Artiste, sucking up cash and bidding my minions prosecute the latest artificial-bottleneck-du-jour. But if I ever achieve such a thing, I won't kid myself and pretend I deserve it. It's like any other privelege inherent in living in the upper middle class of the Western world. Whenever I think about my comfortable cheap clothes made at the expense of near-slave-labor, I feel a twinge of guilt, and then return to cheerfully slurping my Diet Coke(tm), and I forget about it. Same with profiting from Copyright Persecution. Sure, it's a privelege and a pleasure to profit from fake scarcity. But it's a GUILTY pleasure. And it's going away.
When I read a book, there is a kind of copy of that book in my brain. It is not digital. It is not accurate. I recently read "Babel Tower" by A.S. Byatt. I remember the story of that book, much to the chagrin, I suppose, of Ms. Byatt. The Imperfections of my memory-copy do not mitigate the fact that I have stolen the book. I am an IP Pirate. I could get on the phone with my friend Nate, and retell to him sections of "Babel Tower". This is called Peer-To-Peer Network Evildoing. Thank goodness there is a profound moral difference between copies that are Analog (nice) and copies that are digital (evil).
Were I to memorize passages of the book, those passages would be effectively exact. I have memorize some poems, and I can type them out word-for-word and comma-for-comma, years after I memorized.
I have memorized the poem "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" by Wallace Stevens. It's one of my favorite poems. Sadly, Mr. Stevens has not been dead long enough, nor written his poem early enough, so his copyright is still in effect. It is too bad that Wallace Stevens didn't get all his poems written before 1923. He had the bad grace to write poems AFTER Walt Disney arrived, which means that Wallace Stevens' immortal legacy will never, ever enter the public domain. At present, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," published in 1923, is set to enter public domain in the year 2017. The likelihood if this happening is, I fear, meagre. The ministrations of The Walt Disney Corporation will see to it that we never get the benefit of this poem. Because if we DID get it into the public domain, that would mean that other Obviously Important Proprietary Things (Mickey Mouse) would also pass into the public domain. And we can't have that. It is interesting, at least to me, that "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" was published in 1923. This is the magic cut-off date as the law now stands. Before 1923 - belongs to the world. After January 1, 1923 - belongs to "The Right Noble Estate of Whomever is Willing to Sell it to Disney." Were I to dig up some biography history of Stevens, and discover that he had published the "Ice-Cream" poem in some literary magazine BEFORE it appeared in "Harmonium" (1923) then... voila. The wide world (the public domain) would own "The Emperor of Ice Cream." Indeed, it is likely (though I haven't dug it up) that most of Stevens' famous poems were published in magazines prior to 1923.
How sad for the estate of Wallace Stevens that he did so much of his well-known work at the beginning of his career. If only Stevens had known how copyright law would unfold, he could have jealously guarded his art, and released it in the safer regions of the post-1923 universe.
Let us imagine that tomorrow I start writing a short story. Let us say that my story is influenced, dominated by the cadences, rhythms and ideas in "Emperor of Ice-Cream." Let us say, more scandalously, that my story is similarly influenced by "Babel Tower." (O come swiftly year 2081, where I should be released from my Copyright Bondage to Ms. Byatt!) When I have finished my new story, it will be a Derivative Work. Unless I pay royalties to Ms. Byatt (and to every other influence on my literary style) I am a Pirate. I have stolen their Intellectual Property, made copies of it in my head, and then created Derivative Works based on their hard-won Authorship.
The only Legitimate authors and musicians in America are those who have never seen, read, nor heard anything except pre-1923 material. Show me those people. They are not pirates.
Ahh. I just discovered that "The Emperor of Ice Cream" was published in "The Dial," uly 1922. So ignore everything I said about its copyright. That poem belongs to everybody.
I think the immediat parent is onto some of the thickest, thorniest issues. What happens to the songwriter who doesn't sing, but still wants to earn cash on songs? If copyright goes away, they get a day job. Or, they get a salary from some Music Making House.
In the video game industry, there are TONS of artists who just get a salary (and bonuses, stock options, etc.) They have given away, before the fact, the copyright to all of their beautiful digital imagery. Also true with sound effects, and music made to hire for video games. So we already have structures in place for paying artists who don't get copyright to their work.
Of course, the video game scheme is also founded on copyright. If a production house could go and steal the images and ideas from their favorite competitor, they could cut a lot of the art direction budget of video games, movies, etc. Oh wait. They already do that. What are we saving with the present copyright scheme?
What about novels? How is a novelist, a good one writing worthwhile stuff, supposed to earn the money, and the time, to write more? What does a world look like where all the market-driven 3rd-grade-reader-level crap has fallen away? I am not convinced that the present Oprah made-for-TV novel market is particularly conducive to good writing, or particularly beneficial to good writers. I have some favorite authors who are writing today, and I wouldn't want to take away their livelihood. But I suspect there are more good writers who gave up on the cheez-o market, and stopped writing. The artificial bottlenecks, the content monopoly, the capital-intensive machine that runs, I sh8t you not, the world of ideas. How broken can you get?
Artists, presently making money, don't want the rug pulled out from under them. They have a way of life. They have traditions, and institutions, which have produced glorious stuff. I can see no way forward, away from tight copyright, that would keep them completely safe.
Of course, it's easy for me to write them off. I am more of the embittered, untalented wannabe who never made any money from art. But the real, paid artists have a lot to lose if we tip the apple cart over. The plantation owners of the southern United States were in a similar predicament, when those pesky northerners pulled down their entire system of wealth. They were screwed, royally. Nowadays, we think of emancipation as a step forward. I do think that somewhere in the Star Trek future, people will think it's disgusting that we used to try to "own" ideas.
For podcast books there's Podiobooks which has a number of books on offer, both new and public domain.
For comedy sketch and short story, there's Firesign Theatre where you can browse the comedy albums (they've been making them for 40 years) and from each album download sample tracks. They also have a podcast.
For podcast short story and essay, there's The Seanachai. Patrick Mclean comes from advertising, I think, so he has some good writing chops. He has a series called "How to Succeed in Evil without really Trying." It's very funny.
And, pants down, the best monologist in the business is Joe Frank. A free membership on his site allows you to stream a number of full-length shows.
There's also Transom.org where hopeful producers submit stuff for NPR-type program directors to peruse. Much of it is downloadable, and it includes fiction.
Lastly, I shamelessy plug myself. Of course, if I could actually shamelessly plug myself and record it on podcast, I would have a lot more listeners. Pferdzwackur's Tin Man is exactly what the original post was asking for. Original serial fiction, with bells and whistles attached.
All of the major wireless carriers got to be as big as they are by buying small carriers, except Sprint. The idea that a company can buy Bob's Pretty Good Cellphone Service(TM) in Bohunk, Idakota, and then quickly, seamlessly integrate that service into a national billing, service system - this is not true. Verizon, Nextel, AT&T all have gone through downright terrible growing pains. AT&T started earlier, and can now be estimated to really have a national program. Verizon and Nextel are not there yet. Verizon and Nextel should be viewed as loosely aligned federations of little nickel-and-dime carriers, pretending to fly one flag. Sprint makes you pay for roaming. If you KNOW that you'll stay within their digital per-city footprint, then go with Sprint. Otherwise, you'll be burning through your $50 in less than a week. Voicestream is the largest GSM carrier in the US. They just bought most of Powertel in order to consolidate the Southeast. They want very much to be your national solution. Give them a year or two. Right now, their coverage footprints and roaming charges (can you say 69/min?) are even more restrictive than Sprint. GSM promises to have the best near-term wireless bitrates (or so they promise . . . ) but the coverage factor is going to be a deal-killer for most anyone who travels a lot. Verizon is very solid on the east coast (Bell Atlantic Mobile before the merger with GTE). Their customer service is still, as I said, stuck in the balkanized stage of development. You can spend twenty minutes on the phone with Verizon Customer Service, to finally be told, "We can't help you. Try a different 800 number." Delightful. AT&T has the best coverage, on average, throughout the US. Every city has a different winner in the coverage war. You want coverage in Washington DC? Use Verizon. You want wide coverage in Salt Lake City? Use AT&T. From a wide perspective of who-can-I-trust-when-my-phone-breaks, AT&T is the best answer. Their lowest National Plan Rate is $59.99 for 450 minutes. Every carrier has a comparable No-Roaming No-Long-Distance plan. But beware of Sprint, where they don't REALLY mean no-roaming. With AT&T and Verizon, the claim is for real. Nextel is an Account's Payable Clerk's worst nightmare. The guy who originally designed their billing system has been fired. Flat out. The corporate reps for Nextel spend a lot of time apologizing for their billing system, and promising that "next year" things will be streamlined and on-track. That said, if you've just got your one cellphone, how many billing problems can you run into? There's really just one way to find out . . . buy Nextel. Nokia makes good phones, and their 24-hour Fedex repair/replace program in the US (for the first year of the Nokia's life) is killer. Just call 877-746-9244 and they'll hook you up pronto with a replacement phone. All of this is pure opinion. I don't want to bore anyone with a catalog of data to back up my claims. Here's my credentials: I manage a 900 cellphone fleet for a corporation. I am, essentially, a professional cellphone customer. Before this job, I traveled through the country (every week a new city) for two years, constantly using cellphones. I've seen first-hand the downtown coverage patterns of about the 90 largest cities in the United States. I like AT&T.