marketingstrategies

According to a recent article in the August 2009 issue of Popular Mechanics, forensic science may not be as reliable as we would like to believe. “The Truth About Forensics” goes into lengthy detail regarding the very shaky ground upon which the science of ballistics, finger printing, fiber analysis, and more, currently stands.

While hundreds of thousands around the world watch TV shows like CSI and NCIS, knowing full well we are watching television shows, unfortunately many of us are taking our television watching “skills” seriously and into the jury room with us. The idea of “reasonable doubt” can and does go out the window too often because we are conditioned to believe that forensics is the “god of rightness” - proof beyond the shadow of a doubt that “this fingerprint proves that person did this.”

Unfortunately, there is no scientific data to suggest or refute that fingerprints don’t change over time. No study has ever been conducted. We are taught each fingerprint is unique, yet no scientific data exists to back that claim up. The same goes for ballistics; the bullet may have come from a Glock but is it really that Glock?

To further gum up the works, “forensic science was not developed by scientists.” Guided mostly by a sense of common sense, forensics is the birth child of cops themselves. Here’s just a small section of this amazingly enlightening article:

“A 2006 study of the University of Southhampton in England asked six veteran fingerprint examiners to study prints taken from actual criminal cases. The experts were not told that they had previously examined the same prints. The researchers’ goal was to determine if contextual information - for example, some prints included a notation that the suspect had already confessed - would affect the results. But the experiment revealed a far more serious problem: The analyses of fingerprint examiners were often inconsistent regardless of context. Only two of the six experts reached the same conclusions on second examination as they had on the first.”

Alarming in the extreme. The article includes several examples of the wrong person sitting in prison for more than a third of his or her life while the real criminal continued/continues to carry on “business as usual.” However, there is one area of forensics that is not in dispute… “techniques that grew out of organic chemistry and microbiology have a strong scientific foundation.”

DNA, yes that double-helix structure that forms each human being, goes beyond human interpretation to true science.

For the pros and cons, it is highly recommended that you pick up a copy of this magazine’s August 2009 issue and read up. You never know… the information it contains may be your saving grace.

Today we discovered a great little (automatic) Wordpress plugin designed to shorten those long titles in your permalinks.

Optimizing your blog for the search engines just got a whole lot easier. This new plugin allows you to name your titles any length you like, but changes your perma link into a keyword-driven one, ideal for hot market searches directly from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and more.

The SEO Post Links Plugin has been developed by keeping in mind all the shortcomings of the default Wordpress configuration. To put it briefly, this plugin makes your blog post link short as well as optimizes it for search engine.

Enjoy!

If you stayed home today, good for you

More than 8 out of 10 shoppers will be looking for discounts on Cyber Monday and 69% will be searching for free shipping according to a survey by Shopzilla.

“Cyber Monday has become so famous for its good deals that many consumers prefer waiting until Monday to shop online rather than heading out to the stores for the traditional Black Friday deals,” says Shopzilla. “Even the browsers - not shoppers - are using Cyber Monday to strategically prowl the web for promotions and savings.”

Shopzilla reported that the majority (83.7%) of retailers will have special promotions for CyberMonday, up from 72.2% last year.

So while some(?), most(?), many(?) of us wait for Monday in the quiet comfort of home or office, here are few worthwhile Firefox addon updates of note:

Click here to read more

We were tempted to leave the “Hello World” entry in place since it seems an appropriate way to begin a new blog. However, it’s slightly boring, and that’s not the direction or plan for this blog.

We’ll begin by introducing ourselves - “Diane Scott” is actually the persona of two individuals (one female, one male), great friends, and industrious business partners.

Our goal over the past 10 years or so has been to help others find successful ways of advertising and marketing online. This blog will often point to our most recent entries over at Online Internet Marketing Strategies.com.

(Believe it or not that is the domain name with hyphens. Yes, we bought one of the longest tail keywords around LOL!)

For tonight, we’d just like to call your attention to our recent post about the rise and fall of the famous Google PR , with quotes directly from Matt Cutts of Google. Our most recent post validates what we’ve known for years - it’s traffic not little green bars that should be sought after - whether you’re coming from it as an advertiser or the website/blog builder.

So for now we’ll sign off, but please do make a point of visiting often. We research, test, and share marketing strategies that work (and warn you away from those that just waste your time and money).

Again, it’s a pleasure to start this “2nd blog.” We look forward to its future