Day: November 3, 2011

Geek Software of the Week: Tynt!

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TyntAs a web site admin I am always looking for cool things to improve my web sites, especially my web sites search engine availability, and other technologies that will help folks find, and use, my sites. I had seen this tool in action on other web sites, and looked at those site’s source code to see what they were using to do what I was seeing. What was I seeing? Well, if I copy some text from a web site, boom! I see the site URL pasted with the text (at the bottom) into my document, notepad, etc. Very cool! Here’s what you need to do it! And it is FREE!

Tynt – Web Site Publisher Tools

“Drive Traffic to Your Site

Every time someone pastes content from your website into an email, blog or website, Tynt automatically adds a URL link back to your site’s original content. When someone clicks that URL, they are directed back to the original web page to see the content in its entirety. This action drives incremental traffic back to your site every time your content is shared – without disrupting the user experience.

Improve Your Search Ranking

The most important signal used to determine your ranking in natural search is the quantity of relevant links associated with your site. Tynt SEO leverages the copy and paste functionality to significantly improve your search rank. Each time readers copy and paste content, our attribution link goes with it, thereby generating hundreds of quality organic backlinks that enhance your search ranking. A higher ranking increases your Web presence and the likelihood that your content will be discovered by new users.

Keep Users on Your Site Longer

As users read your content, they often find topics that they’d like to learn more about. Once they copy a phrase into a search engine and click the search button, they bounce from your site – and you’ve lost them.

Tynt Keywords identifies the words and phrases that compel users to leave your site. Publishers can now get real-time feedback on these information gaps, to see what content users value most. Once you understand how people respond to the content on your site, you can adjust your strategy to publish information on the topics your users engage with the most.

Tynt Keywords tracks both inbound and outbound search terms, so publishers can identify what users were searching for when they arrived at their site and compare those to the keywords that caused them to leave. If the incoming keywords are similar to the outgoing keywords then your content may be difficult for users to navigate. If the incoming keywords are different from the outgoing keywords then you may have gaps in your content or your SEO/SEM strategy isn’t bringing in the right type of users to the right content.”

Also, you can “roll up” all your web sites into one Tynt account, get email reports of keywords used in search engines, etc. Very neat stuff!

How Cool is This? NASA is Working On Tractor Beams!

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Star Trek Tractor BeamYou know I am a HUGE Star Trek fan! So, this is right down my alley! Tractor Beams! Awesome!

NASA Studying Ways to Make ‘Tractor Beams’ a Reality

“Tractor beams — the ability to trap and move objects using laser light — are the stuff of science fiction, but a team of NASA scientists has won funding to study the concept for remotely capturing planetary or atmospheric particles and delivering them to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft for analysis.

The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) has awarded Principal Investigator Paul Stysley and team members Demetrios Poulios and Barry Coyle at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., $100,000 to study three experimental methods for corralling particles and transporting them via laser light to an instrument — akin to a vacuum using suction to collect and transport dirt to a canister or bag. Once delivered, an instrument would then characterize their composition.

‘Though a mainstay in science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, laser-based trapping isn’t fanciful or beyond current technological know-how,’ Stysley said. The team has identified three different approaches for transporting particles, as well as single molecules, viruses, ribonucleic acid, and fully functioning cells, using the power of light.

‘The original thought was that we could use tractor beams for cleaning up orbital debris,’ Stysley said. ‘But to pull something that huge would be almost impossible — at least now. That’s when it bubbled up that perhaps we could use the same approach for sample collection.’

With the Phase-1 funding from OCT’s recently reestablished NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program designed to spur the development of “revolutionary” space technologies, the team will study the state of the technology to determine which of the three techniques would apply best to sample collection. OCT received hundreds of proposals, ultimately selecting only 30 for initial funding.”