I'm really not sure how long dmoz is going to last it is hard to get motivated with the latest news going around Hoping the editors will care enough to clean the mess
Ever since I started talking about DMOZ I got so much feedback that editors are tired of senior editors messing with their results and so on and so on. I do believe DMOZ will die from within, seriously. Not trying to start anoher war but from what I see and hear it has become more headache than what it's worth. Funny thing, I am moving up on msn for " DMOZ " , page 4 now
btw I am an editor at JoeAnt, there is no pressure, do as much or as little as you want. JoeAnt has no major impact but the people and head editors are cool to work with and I actually learn something thru them.
I was at JoeAnt and GoGuides that was because I felt sites from my little island country often went unlisted wanted to help get them exposed
I can only hope that Yahoo finally list my site Happy Birthday Yahoo (don't make me hate you again) I have an update on the Print Edition today's did not have a TECH Feature at all... So no Hot Sites listed The Weekend or Sunday Paper maybe
I had never been in the sandbox before. My site domain was purchased in late January and Google let me play in the SERPS for about 2 weeks before they dumped me into the sandbox. I am hoping the YAHOO referrals can expedite the process. BTW, I got your PM stephemunday. I'll respond soon.
Ah. That is too bad about your trip to the quicksandbox. My site was first spidered in Sept when it was in Beta. (That is the normal version of Beta, not the Google 5 year Beta lol) I am hoping that having had some great links recently and getting into DMOZ as well might pull me out. Yahoo is helping me out in the meantime. I thought MSN would too, but I am not having as much luck with them as other people have. Looking forward to your PM
Every natural linking process will help and not hurt. There are 3 things to look for: Importance, relevance and amount of links. USA Today is an important site. It is only natural that more small links will follow. The USA Today link will add so much weight to the domain name that the site is going to move up and possibly leave the sandbox very very soon. Same with a DMOZ or Yahoo! directory link. Let's think logically for a sec: a web site of significance considers you important enough to link to. Doesn't it make sense that you will be validated for that?
Very very cool. Wondering how you made it. Removing vowels to extract phonems then mapping them to katakana ? Very very cool. Could we lose the real player and have a windows media player instead. Wondering if the sounds are from a cute japanese girl or some guy . Very cool... I am going to sending some traffic to you from nippondenso to add to that from usa today
Thanks guys. Sorry, sadcox66, I can't reveal too much about how it is done, lol. But, basically, it first searches a database of names (about 2,000 first names and 1,000 family names.) The first names give us coverage of about 90% of the US population and the last names about 50% coverage - according to the US Census data. If it does not find the name already translated it then tries to work it our phonetically using basically English pronunciation rules plus some tweaks we have added (like "sch" being pronounced "sh" as in Schmidt). Between the two of these our tests (on US names) have shown that it can get over 95% accuracy for first names and over 90% for last names. BTW, it does not use Real Player or Windows Media player. I decided against either of those as they will pop up a separate window when playing the audio. It actually uses Flash as this gives the most seamless user experience. You may find your firewall blocks it (as mine does) so you will need to play with the settings. I think Flash is the best application for the purpose simply because it plays right in the browser and does not require another application to open it. The user gets the sound right away, which is what they want. Thanks for the traffic! We actually have several Denso offices near where I live and work here in Okazaki and Anjo area of Aichi. Just remind your Japanese colleagues that if they put in their Japanese names, they will end up with an Anglicized pronunciation! (A number of Japanese bloggers have complained that Japanese names do not come out right. Well, of course not as it is designed to take Western / English names and translate them into Japanese.)
Hey stephenmunday, thanks for the tip on USA Today. I gave it a go as well and got a glowing review from them too hehehe . Gotta love some free publicity !!
Wow! That's great. I count three sites now that have been listed since I posted the USA Today Gmail address here.