links for 2008-02-26

"Dan Mattei complains that I have selected only pictures of Serbs who are 'ugly, unshaven and had no teeth' in contrast to the photos of 'young and beautiful' Albanians". Thoughtful post that says much more about how this plays in the Balkans than most.

"I am not going to either answer insults or justify this blog. I don't have the time or inclination to babysit this constant bickering. I AM CLOSING ALL COMMENTS UNTIL EVERYONE CALMS DOWN. This is the first time in 2-and-a-half years I've had to do this".

"I was really looking forward to seeing old friends. But I knew that I would have to spend time explaining 2 things. #1 - how in the world did a Northwest Kansas boy end up living in Virginia and #2 - What do you do for a living again?"

"Google replaced the BBC in the top spot". They may be hoarding all your private data and stealing ITV's ad revenue, but at least they didn't lie about the name of their kitten...

"Google's starting a beta feature in AdWords that finds accounts where budgets aren't being fully spent, then automatically matches ads in those accounts to whatever additional queries Google wants to in order to spend 100% of the budget". Trusted brand?

"They're offering to bleed every penny of your budget, advertising against keywords you didn't bid on. Sure, if I sell Adidas shoes, why wouldn't I want traffic from people who searched for slippers? It's not like I'm trying to turn a profit, right?"

"If you care about the social web, you should be alarmed. SEO professionals seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon & other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others questionable with the intent of building Google Juice & nothing more".

French album sleeve featuring 'robots' - "Ils jouent sur des instruments authentiques"