Why Tolkien could not finish the Silmarillion takes a look at how research into creativity helps explain J.R.R. Tolkien's inability to finish The Silmarillion.
Update on John Carter of Mars movie recaps some of the recent news surrounding the Disney/Pixar film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars.
Horsham school used as John Carter set rounds up the latest John Carter news with an excerpt from a news story about a boarding school. This thread includes some pictures of the school.
If you know why the "John Carter of Mars" movie was being filmed there, I would be very interested in hearing about it.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Yahoo! Search Brand Now Officially Dead
Yahoo! and Microsoft finally won regulatory approval in both the United States and Europe for their radical approach to reducing competition in the Web search industry: Yahoo! is abandoning its search engineering capabilities and Microsoft is buying up as many Yahoo! engineers as it can get its hands on.
Yahoo! will replace its custom search results with Bing search results. Microsoft will replace its advertising network with Yahoo!'s advertising network.
The net result for consumers is that they will lose a distinctive search brand and algorithm that have provided them with choice for years. In fact, when word of the deal was first announced last summer Web marketers began mobilizing their resources en masse to start replicating their Google search results on Bing. That means that in another year or so what you find in Google you'll also find in Bing. When you don't find what you are actually looking for, you'll have to turn to other search tools like Ask and Cuil (AOL simply rebrands Google search results).
For the science fiction fan site community this will prove to be a hard blow because fan sites have already been pushed out of many relevant queries by commercial entertainment sites that publish relatively inarticulate fluff. These sites have the kind of "brand" value that Google feels searchers should find: minimal content, lots of advertising, and generally unoriginal thinking.
The science fiction fan site community will need to start looking at ways to promote content-friendly search services by using their tools and widgets for site search. Ask.com is the next leading search algorithm provider but truth be told fans may want to look at resources like Cuil.com instead, assuming Cuil gets its act together and starts promoting its service through search boxes and other tools.
If you want to know more about the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal hurts consumers and advertisers, then head over to SEO Theory and read Good-bye Yahoo! Search.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
Yahoo! will replace its custom search results with Bing search results. Microsoft will replace its advertising network with Yahoo!'s advertising network.
The net result for consumers is that they will lose a distinctive search brand and algorithm that have provided them with choice for years. In fact, when word of the deal was first announced last summer Web marketers began mobilizing their resources en masse to start replicating their Google search results on Bing. That means that in another year or so what you find in Google you'll also find in Bing. When you don't find what you are actually looking for, you'll have to turn to other search tools like Ask and Cuil (AOL simply rebrands Google search results).
For the science fiction fan site community this will prove to be a hard blow because fan sites have already been pushed out of many relevant queries by commercial entertainment sites that publish relatively inarticulate fluff. These sites have the kind of "brand" value that Google feels searchers should find: minimal content, lots of advertising, and generally unoriginal thinking.
The science fiction fan site community will need to start looking at ways to promote content-friendly search services by using their tools and widgets for site search. Ask.com is the next leading search algorithm provider but truth be told fans may want to look at resources like Cuil.com instead, assuming Cuil gets its act together and starts promoting its service through search boxes and other tools.
If you want to know more about the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal hurts consumers and advertisers, then head over to SEO Theory and read Good-bye Yahoo! Search.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
SF-Fandom supports Idealist.org drive for funds
Thousands of non-profit organizations pay full-time employees to perform the administrative functions and specialized tasks that often cannot be performed by volunteers. When those organizations need to hire someone with professional experience and training, they often turn to Idealist.org, a jobs network for non-profits.
This morning I learned that Idealist.Org is struggling to make ends meet because the Great Recession has forced non-profit groups to cut back on hiring. The commissions that Idealist earns on placement ads have therefore declined.
Although the non-profit world can surely find employees without a dedicated jobs resource like Idealist, I think it's important that people reach out and help an organization like this -- which is also a non-profit group -- keep its doors open.
Here is an excerpt from The Daily Tell, which carried a story about Idealist's call for donations:
People like us can help with donations and/or by spreading the news that Idealist is looking for support from the large community of people who believe in giving to others. SF-Fandom is supporting the call through blog posts and a forum announcement.
I encourage you to at least do the same. Get the word out through your own blogs and forums, your mailing lists, even by telling people where you work.
This is a worthwhile effort. The non-profit organizations should have a reliable jobs network to help them fill critical staffing positions when the improving economy brings back their funding support.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
This morning I learned that Idealist.Org is struggling to make ends meet because the Great Recession has forced non-profit groups to cut back on hiring. The commissions that Idealist earns on placement ads have therefore declined.
Although the non-profit world can surely find employees without a dedicated jobs resource like Idealist, I think it's important that people reach out and help an organization like this -- which is also a non-profit group -- keep its doors open.
Here is an excerpt from The Daily Tell, which carried a story about Idealist's call for donations:
A large percentage of Idealist.org’s budget comes from small fees the website charges organizations for job postings. Not surprisingly, the economic meltdown of 2008 has had a devastating effect on this portion of Idealist.org’s budget. Nonprofit groups went through extensive hiring freezes, and cut back on posting job listings. As a result, Idealist found its budget nearly cut in half, leaving them in the red for $100,000 a month. For sixteen long months, Idealist.org has managed to survive on a leaner budget, but they are now at a fiscal breaking point.
Idealist.org is now reaching out to the community that they have assisted for more than fifteen years. The organization is calling on anyone whom Idealist has helped find a job or volunteer opportunity, or has simply been inspired to make a difference in this troubled world. Idealist has set a fiscal goal of $500,000 to stabilize the website. The team at Idealist is seeking to diversify its revenue stream so it will never face this fiscal crisis again. But Idealist cannot achieve this goal without your help. To date, more than 6,100 Idealist supporters have stepped forward, raising an impressive $200,000.
People like us can help with donations and/or by spreading the news that Idealist is looking for support from the large community of people who believe in giving to others. SF-Fandom is supporting the call through blog posts and a forum announcement.
I encourage you to at least do the same. Get the word out through your own blogs and forums, your mailing lists, even by telling people where you work.
This is a worthwhile effort. The non-profit organizations should have a reliable jobs network to help them fill critical staffing positions when the improving economy brings back their funding support.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
Friday, February 12, 2010
PageRank Sculpting is not good for your site
If you operate a fan Website and you try to practice search engine optimization, under no circumstances should you attempt to use the sham SEO technique called PageRank Sculpting.
PageRank Sculpting involves hiding your internal navigation links from search engines. Google announced to the search engine optimization community last year that -- because many Websites were hurting their search visibility by attempting to sculpt PageRank -- it had changed the way it calculates PageRank assignment to disable the technique.
Unfortunately, some people in the SEO industry decided to circumvent Google's fix. They have been preaching new methods for hiding internal navigation links from search engines that Google, Bing, and Yahoo! may not be able to detect and defuse.
I have written about this at more length in the Best SEO Blog article Internal Links SEO: PageRank Sculpting Hurting More Sites.
The bottom line for anyone in the SF community who is trying to learn or practice SEO: Don't resort to PageRank Sculpting. It will only hurt your site.
As far as I am concerned, any SEO who sells PageRank sculpting services or consulting is cheating people out of their money. I strongly advise against doing business with any SEO consultant who advocates the use of PageRank Sculpting.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
PageRank Sculpting involves hiding your internal navigation links from search engines. Google announced to the search engine optimization community last year that -- because many Websites were hurting their search visibility by attempting to sculpt PageRank -- it had changed the way it calculates PageRank assignment to disable the technique.
Unfortunately, some people in the SEO industry decided to circumvent Google's fix. They have been preaching new methods for hiding internal navigation links from search engines that Google, Bing, and Yahoo! may not be able to detect and defuse.
I have written about this at more length in the Best SEO Blog article Internal Links SEO: PageRank Sculpting Hurting More Sites.
The bottom line for anyone in the SF community who is trying to learn or practice SEO: Don't resort to PageRank Sculpting. It will only hurt your site.
As far as I am concerned, any SEO who sells PageRank sculpting services or consulting is cheating people out of their money. I strongly advise against doing business with any SEO consultant who advocates the use of PageRank Sculpting.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Scientists create crate-sized waste water treatment
This is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Wired is carrying a story about a bacteria-driven waste water treatment unit designed at Sam Houston State University. Two units are being sent to Afghanistan and another may be sent to Haiti.
These crate-sized units use common ground bacteria to clean waste water in about 24 hours without producing any toxic byproducts. Modern waste treatment plants don't even come close to that kind of efficiency.
Once commercial production begins for this technology, it will probably be used on planes, trains, buses, ships, and in remote outposts. But it could also be combined with other technologies such as drawing water from humidity that harvest moisture even from desert air. Desert communities and homesteads can be built that work somewhat like Star Wars' "moisture farms" on the arid planet Tattooine (where Anakin Skywalker was born and his son Luke was later raised in secret by Owen and Beru Lars).
Numerous proposals have been put forward for decreasing salinity in salt lakes and using waste water treatment to produce electricity. Water desalination and treatment is expensive, time-consuming, and requires a lot of energy.
Solar-based and bacterial initiatives may help reduce the costs of producing or recovering potable water from waste and salty water sources (lakes and seas). The military and disaster-recovery markets will probably lead the way as they have high demand for low-cost water production and management technologies, but eventually there will be industrial, residential, and even perhaps ecological benefits from the technology.
I believe firmly that we should be transforming our deserts into habitable lands for ourselves and wildlife. Southeast Australia, one of the greenest areas of the southern continent, began drying out 15 years ago.
In a matter of decades, environmentalists will no longer be charged with preserving natural desert habitats -- they will be mandated with creating new habitats to keep our ecosystem alive. That transformation cannot begin until people change the way they think about the environment and how man can and should interact with it. We're not going away any time soon (I hope), and we are part of the environment, not outside of it.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
These crate-sized units use common ground bacteria to clean waste water in about 24 hours without producing any toxic byproducts. Modern waste treatment plants don't even come close to that kind of efficiency.
Once commercial production begins for this technology, it will probably be used on planes, trains, buses, ships, and in remote outposts. But it could also be combined with other technologies such as drawing water from humidity that harvest moisture even from desert air. Desert communities and homesteads can be built that work somewhat like Star Wars' "moisture farms" on the arid planet Tattooine (where Anakin Skywalker was born and his son Luke was later raised in secret by Owen and Beru Lars).
Numerous proposals have been put forward for decreasing salinity in salt lakes and using waste water treatment to produce electricity. Water desalination and treatment is expensive, time-consuming, and requires a lot of energy.
Solar-based and bacterial initiatives may help reduce the costs of producing or recovering potable water from waste and salty water sources (lakes and seas). The military and disaster-recovery markets will probably lead the way as they have high demand for low-cost water production and management technologies, but eventually there will be industrial, residential, and even perhaps ecological benefits from the technology.
I believe firmly that we should be transforming our deserts into habitable lands for ourselves and wildlife. Southeast Australia, one of the greenest areas of the southern continent, began drying out 15 years ago.
In a matter of decades, environmentalists will no longer be charged with preserving natural desert habitats -- they will be mandated with creating new habitats to keep our ecosystem alive. That transformation cannot begin until people change the way they think about the environment and how man can and should interact with it. We're not going away any time soon (I hope), and we are part of the environment, not outside of it.
SF-Fandom is a moderated, fan-run community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. SF-Fandom was founded in 2001 and is part of the Xenite.Org network. Free registration is required to post. Please be sure you read our Posting Guidelines.
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