Mike Nott » Search

Ayima World Domination Plan – Step 2

Mike — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:07:31 +0000

The past 2 years have been pretty amazing for Ayima – growing from a small, few-man consultancy to one of the leaders in the UK search market.

During this time, we have been working hard to develop and stabilise our processes, infrastructure and execution, which we believe are now some of the best in the world. This now means that we are ready to expand, and the logical next step for us is to move into the huge US market by opening a new office in North Carolina.

One of the key requirements for us to do this, was to find a man on the ground that was both an exceptional SEO specialist and a friend with whom which we can entrust the Ayima brand. There was only one person that we could think of that fullfilled these two criteria – Mr Tony Spencer, also known online as “notsleepy”.

Tony Spencer - Ayima US

I first met Tony at PubCon Las Vegas in 2004 and he has since become one of my closest friends. Tony was also the second person that I hired to join my search team at PartyGaming and was a key part of all our SEO strategies and implementation.

Tony has an exceptional standing within the SEO world and is one of the true SEO’s SEOs. Unkown to most, he is often actually the “go-to guy” for many of the more public SEO experts when they need help.

Unfortunately for all you Americans this of course means that you’ll have to put with us being in town a lot more. So you’d better stock on beers as Rob is booking his tickets already.

So again, I just want to give a very warm welcome to Tony, the newest member of the Ayima family.

Me & Tony - PubCon New Orleans 2005

SEO Ninja

Mike — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:00:03 +0000

As a few friends/colleagues know, I decided to join a Shotokan Karate club back in August. I’d been looking for a regular exercise regime for the last few years, and as my wife and daughter had been attending and enjoying the club since January, I thought I’d give it a try.

It turns out that Karate is one of the most addictive things I’ve ever tried, as now I can’t stop talking about it and practising constantly (I got called an evangelist).

We were first introduced to the Westwood Karate Academy by Janette’s friend Marites Tomlinson and her son Chris who are both currently part of the ITKF England team. We are actually so lucky that we have one of the country’s top clubs in Southend, and our Sensei Alan Parrish, is also currently the head coach of the England squad.

Anyway, the reason for this post, apart from to spread the word about how great Karate is, is that last Sunday I had my first grading.

All in all, for me personally it was quite a strange experience as I had jet lag due to flying back from PubCon Vegas the day before, so was quite tired. During the practice session beforehand, I consciously felt crap and weak as I’d had no proper training during the previous week.

But as soon as I was called up to grade, my mind actually went totally blank like everything around me just disappeared and all I could actually hear was my pulse pounding in my head. I can’t really remember many of the actual details of the grading as I seemed to do everything without thinking.

My daughter Mya during her grading

Once everyone had finished their grading, Sensei announced the results and told me that I had passed and said “that was good” instead of the usual critique, so I was over the moon.

So now I’m an ‘orange belt’ (9th kyu) and my wife and daughter also passed their gradings – Janette has her ‘yellow belt’ and Mya a ‘red belt’. But it never stops as we only have 4 months to train for our next grading at Easter.

Btw, am only joking about the ‘SEO Ninja’ part, ‘SEO Karateka’ is more accurate.

I Hate Monkeys, Especially the Evil Green Ones

Mike — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:24:54 +0000

Now I know monkey’s aren’t famed for their intelligence, but I am really amazed how little our evil green one understands about the meaning of ‘low-profile’.

He knows what I think about SEO Celebrities and that I ‘ve enjoyed my relative anonymity for the last 8 years within the industry. Yet when the conference he’s speaking at tomorrow called to say one of their speakers had pulled out, Rob didn’t hesitate to put my name forward – the bastard.

So it seems that after not only losing my soul earlier this week, I am now going to be speaking at an SEO conference. Thats the second of the two thing’s I’d swore I’d never do, done within 7 days! What the hell is going wrong with my life?

So if you want a good laugh at my expense, then get on down to the Kensington Close Hotel tomorrow for the Mad Presents Search Engine Marketing conference. The £595 entrance fee will be worth every penny.

On the upside though, they are offering a free 3 course carvery lunch (and hopefully Ayima will get some clients out of it)

We Sold Out

Mike — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:19:23 +0000

As you may have read, earlier this week Rob and I threw off any ounce of credibility in the SEO industry that we may have had, by selling out and exhibiting Ayima at Ad:tech London.

The thing is though, it really was far more successful than I imagined, and we got loads of great leads out of it. I definitely wouldn’t recommend Ad:tech to anyone as an actual SEO conference, but as a sales opportunity it was perfect.

Anyway here’s some photographic proof to ensure that we never forget how low we fell:

The Launch of Ayima

Mike — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 08:04:41 +0000

I would hereby like to officially introduce you all to the future of SEO consulting – Ayima Search Marketing!!

Ayima was born out of the frustration felt about the poor reputation of the UK SEO industry, caused mainly by the low quality of the UK’s mainstream agencies.

We really feel there is a gap in the UK market right now for a REAL high-level SEO consultancy/agency.

Ayima currently consists of Mike Nott, Rob Kerry (evilgreenmonkey), Mike Jacobson & Tim Webb. However we already have our next couple of team members lined up (announcements coming soon) and look to keep growing in the future.

Well, the future’s looking bright and rosy right now and I’ll be giving you company updates here soon.

Next LondonSEO Meet Anounced

Mike — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 13:50:06 +0000

Finally a date has been decided upon for the next LondonSEO pubcon pissup – Thursday, 9th February.

Venue: The Legion, Old Street, London.

No time frame specified, but most people will probably be there 6-7pm onwards.

No fees, registration or any of that hassle needed!

Just turn up, drink + chat.

V7ndotcom Elursrebmem

Mike — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 17:06:47 +0000

[note: this page is not in the contest]

As anyone in the industry will know, there is currently an SEO contest going on, started by John Scott at V7Network and improved on by Greg, Todd & Mike Grehan.

Rather than trying to pocket the change, Graywolf has done the respectable thing and is donating any winnings to charity.

I decided to help out – luckily I got to Wikipedia before any other spammers did and created the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem page. If this page happens to rank at the end, all winnings will be passed on to Graywolf for the charity.

[update] Looks like my wikipage on the contest is turning into a bit of a heated debate in itself – very funny [/update]

Google Datacenters

Mike — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:57:29 +0000

For all those wanting to check the rollout of the BigDaddy update, here’s a list of 116 Google Datacenters:

64.233.161.98 64.233.161.99 64.233.161.104 64.233.161.105 64.233.161.106 64.233.161.107 64.233.161.147 64.233.163.99 64.233.163.104 64.233.167.99 64.233.167.104 64.233.167.106 64.233.167.107 64.233.167.147 64.233.171.99 64.233.171.103 64.233.171.104 64.233.171.105 64.233.171.106 64.233.171.107 64.233.171.147 64.233.179.99 64.233.179.104 64.233.179.106 64.233.179.107 64.233.183.99 64.233.183.104 64.233.183.107 64.233.185.99 64.233.185.104 64.233.185.106 64.233.185.107 64.233.185.147 64.233.187.99 64.233.187.104 64.233.187.106 64.233.187.107 64.233.189.104 66.102.7.98 66.102.7.99 66.102.7.104 66.102.7.105 66.102.7.106 66.102.7.107 66.102.7.147 66.102.9.99 66.102.9.104 66.102.9.106 66.102.9.107 66.102.9.147 66.102.11.99 66.102.11.104 66.102.11.106 66.102.11.107 66.249.81.99 66.249.81.104 66.249.81.106 66.249.81.107 66.249.83.99 66.249.83.104 66.249.83.106 66.249.83.107 66.249.85.99 66.249.85.104 66.249.85.106 66.249.85.107 66.249.87.99 66.249.87.104 66.249.89.99 66.249.89.104 66.249.89.106 66.249.89.107 66.249.93.99 66.249.93.104 66.249.93.106 66.249.93.107 72.14.203.99 72.14.203.104 72.14.203.106 72.14.203.107 72.14.205.99 72.14.205.104 72.14.205.106 72.14.205.107 72.14.207.99 72.14.207.104 72.14.207.106 72.14.207.107 216.239.37.98 216.239.37.99 216.239.37.104 216.239.37.105 216.239.37.106 216.239.37.107 216.239.37.147 216.239.39.98 216.239.39.99 216.239.39.104 216.239.39.105 216.239.39.106 216.239.39.107 216.239.53.98 216.239.53.99 216.239.53.104 216.239.53.105 216.239.53.106 216.239.53.107 216.239.57.98 216.239.57.99 216.239.57.103 216.239.57.104 216.239.57.105 216.239.57.106 216.239.57.107 216.239.57.147 216.239.59.98 216.239.59.99 216.239.59.103 216.239.59.104 216.239.59.105 216.239.59.106 216.239.59.107 216.239.59.147 216.239.63.99 216.239.63.104

Here’s a quick dirty script that will check the number of each rank for a site on all datacenters:

[code lang="php"]
function singlethread_crawl($url)
{
$agent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)";

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOPROGRESS, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $agent);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$html = curl_exec($ch);

curl_close ($ch);

return $html;
}

function multithread_crawl($urls, $timeout)
{
$agent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)";

$mh = curl_multi_init();

foreach ($urls as $i => $url)
{
$conn[$i] = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL, 1);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_NOPROGRESS, 1);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $agent);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 1);
curl_setopt($conn[$i], CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $timeout);

curl_multi_add_handle ($mh, $conn[$i]);
}

do
{
$mrc = curl_multi_exec($mh, $active);
}
while ($mrc == CURLM_CALL_MULTI_PERFORM);

while ($active and $mrc == CURLM_OK)
{
if (curl_multi_select($mh) != -1)
{
do
{
$mrc = curl_multi_exec($mh, $active);
}
while ($mrc == CURLM_CALL_MULTI_PERFORM);
}
}

if ($mrc != CURLM_OK)
{
print "Curl multi read error $mrc\n";
}

$res = array();
$e = 0;

foreach ($urls as $i => $url)
{
if (($err = curl_error($conn[$i])) == '')
{
$res[$i]=curl_multi_getcontent($conn[$i]);
}
else
{
echo "error: ".$url." (".$err.")\n";
}

curl_multi_remove_handle($mh,$conn[$i]);
curl_close($conn[$i]);
}

curl_multi_close($mh);

return $res;
}

function googleresults($ip, $search, $num){

$url = "http://".$ip."/ie?q=".urlencode($search)."&num=".$num;

$html = singlethread_crawl($url);

preg_match_all("/\" href=(.*)>/iU", $html, $links);

$urlarray = str_replace("","",$links[1]);
$urlarray = str_replace("","",$urlarray);
$urlarray = preg_replace("/>.*$/i","", $urlarray);

return $urlarray;
}

function googleresults_multi($ips, $search, $num){

for ($i=0; $i < count($ips); $i++)
{
$urls[$i] = "http://".$ips[$i]."/ie?q=".urlencode($search)."&num=".$num;
}

$html = multithread_crawl($urls, count($ips)/2);

for ($i=0; $i < count($ips); $i++)
{
preg_match_all("/\" href=(.*)>/iU", $html[$i], $links[$i]);

$urlarray[$i] = str_replace("","",$links[$i][1]);
$urlarray[$i] = str_replace("","",$urlarray[$i]);
$urlarray[$i] = preg_replace("/>.*$/i","", $urlarray[$i]);
}

return $urlarray;
}

function removehttp($url){

if ((substr($url,0,7) == 'http://') || (substr($url,0,8) == 'https://'))
{
$url = substr($url,7);
}

$url = trim($url);

return $url;
}

function rank($arr, $item){

for ($i = 0; $i < count($arr); $i++)
{
if (eregi($item,$arr[$i]))
{
$result = $i+1;

break;
}
}

return($result);
}

$ips = array("64.233.161.99", "64.233.161.104", "64.233.161.105", "64.233.161.106", "64.233.161.107", "64.233.161.147", "64.233.163.99", "64.233.163.104", "64.233.167.99", "64.233.167.104", "64.233.167.106", "64.233.167.107", "64.233.167.147", "64.233.171.99", "64.233.171.104", "64.233.171.105", "64.233.171.106", "64.233.171.107", "64.233.171.147", "64.233.179.99", "64.233.179.104", "64.233.179.106", "64.233.179.107", "64.233.183.99", "64.233.183.104", "64.233.183.107", "64.233.185.99", "64.233.185.104", "64.233.185.106", "64.233.185.107", "64.233.187.99", "64.233.187.104", "64.233.187.106", "64.233.187.107", "64.233.189.104", "66.102.7.99", "66.102.7.104", "66.102.7.105", "66.102.7.106", "66.102.7.107", "66.102.7.147", "66.102.9.99", "66.102.9.104", "66.102.9.106", "66.102.9.107", "66.102.9.147", "66.102.11.99", "66.102.11.104", "66.102.11.106", "66.102.11.107", "66.249.81.99", "66.249.81.104", "66.249.81.106", "66.249.81.107", "66.249.83.99", "66.249.83.104", "66.249.83.106", "66.249.83.107", "66.249.85.99", "66.249.85.104", "66.249.85.106", "66.249.85.107", "66.249.87.99", "66.249.87.104", "66.249.89.99", "66.249.89.104", "66.249.89.106", "66.249.89.107", "66.249.93.99", "66.249.93.104", "66.249.93.106", "66.249.93.107", "72.14.203.99", "72.14.203.104", "72.14.203.106", "72.14.203.107", "72.14.205.99", "72.14.205.104", "72.14.205.106", "72.14.205.107", "72.14.207.99", "72.14.207.104", "72.14.207.106", "72.14.207.107", "216.239.37.99", "216.239.37.104", "216.239.37.105", "216.239.37.106", "216.239.37.107", "216.239.37.147", "216.239.39.99", "216.239.39.104", "216.239.39.106", "216.239.39.107", "216.239.53.99", "216.239.53.104", "216.239.53.106", "216.239.53.107", "216.239.57.98", "216.239.57.99", "216.239.57.103", "216.239.57.104", "216.239.57.105", "216.239.57.106", "216.239.57.107", "216.239.57.147", "216.239.59.98", "216.239.59.99", "216.239.59.103", "216.239.59.104", "216.239.59.105", "216.239.59.106", "216.239.59.107", "216.239.59.147", "216.239.63.99", "216.239.63.104");

$query = array("porn", "pills", "casino");

$num = "100";

for ($i=0; $i < count($query); $i++)
{
echo $query[$i]."\n";

$numrank = array();

// $serps = googleresults_multi($ips, $query[$i], $num); //for multithreaded

for ($j=0; $j < count($ips); $j++)
{
$serps[$j] = googleresults($ips[$j], $query[$i], $num); //for single threaded

$pos = rank($serps[$j], "www.mattcutts.com");

if (empty($pos)){$pos = 0;}

if (empty($numrank[$pos]))
{
$numrank[$pos] = 1;
}else{
$numrank[$pos] = $numrank[$pos]+1;
}
}

ksort($numrank);

foreach ($numrank as $key => $num)
{
echo $key." - ".$num."\n";
}
}

[/code]

Single threaded (default) is very very slow. If you change the comments as shown above to multithreaded, then it will be much faster. But be prepared to get your ip temporarily banned by Google.

[tags]Google datacenters, bigdaddy[/tags]

Referer Spam

Mike — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 23:16:58 +0000

Good to see some of the old techniques still being used:

[courtesy of this blog's stats]

Google 2 RSS

Mike — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:06:11 +0000

On ThreadWatch yesterday there was a thread about rank checkers, and I couldn’t believe that some SEOs don’t use them. We use our own heavy duty mega serp scraper to fully analyse any industry we are working in. Anyway, Graywolf mentioned how he would love a Google RSS or XML feed – I having been waiting for this for a long time, as their SERPs are so dirty it would make things a bit easier. And to only offer 10 results per page in their API is shocking!! Come on Goo, catch up with MSN + Yahoo.

Anyway, I got a bit bored today and knocked up a quick Google2RSS php script for those who are without (being xmas season)

Warning – this is very quick, dirty + crude code (in other words – not the best)

[requires PHP5 + cURL]

[code lang="php"]

header("Content-type: text/xml\n");

echo google2rss("spam", 10);

function google2rss($query, $numres)
{
$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.google.com/search?q=".$query."&num=".$numres."&hl=en&safe=off");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$html = curl_exec($ch);

curl_close ($ch);

$html = str_replace("\r\n", " ", $html);
$html = str_replace("

", "\n

", $html);
$html = str_replace("

", "

\n", $html);
$html = str_replace("View as HTML", "", $html);

preg_match_all("/

(.*)(.*)<\/a>(.*)

$items['url'] = $matches[2];

for ($i=0; $i < count($items['url']); $i++)
{
$items['title'][$i] = strip_tags($matches[4][$i]);
$items['title'][$i] = str_replace(" - [ Translate this page", "", $items['title'][$i]);
$items['desc'][$i] = strip_tags($matches[5][$i]);
$items['desc'][$i] = preg_replace("/^ ]/i", "", $items['desc'][$i]);
}

$rss = "\n";
$rss .= "\n";
$rss .= "\n";
$rss .= "\t\n";
$rss .= "\t http://www.google.com/search?q=".$query."&num=".$numres."&hl=en&safe=off\n";
$rss .= "\t".$query." - Google RSS search results

Spammer’s Xmas Lists

Mike — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:36:27 +0000

Tony has written the best christmas blog post this year!! He has done some investigating and found the Amazon wishlists for a number of people in the Search industry. Included are: Jim Boykin, Andy Beal, Aaron Wall, Jensense, Matt Cutts, Todd Malicoat, Chris Pirillo, Sergey Brin & Jeremy Zawodny.

Funniest items have to be Jason’s “SEO for dummies” and Zawodny’s “The Clitourist : A Guide to One of the Hottest Spots on Earth”!!

Matt Cutts – Private Detective

Mike — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:28:29 +0000

Newsflash!! – Matt Cutts, everyone’s favourite Google Engineer and PR supremo has been moonlighting as a Private Detective!!

Is this his new method of tracking down spammers? Or has he returned to his Government Intelligence roots?

Or maybe Earl Grey is just canonicalizing Matt & Newsweek for finding his spam network.

2005 Search Blog Awards

Mike — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 11:15:54 +0000

Search Engine Journal are running a Search Blog Awards.

My scores (out of 5):

Best Search Engine News Blogs:

Pandia – 4
MarketingPilgrim – 3
SearchEngineBlog.com – 2
Search Engine Lowdown – 4
Search Views – 2
John Battelle Search Blog – 3
Search Engine Watch Blog – 4
Threadwatch – 5
Google Blogoscoped – 3
Search Engine Roundtable – 5
Research Buzz – 3
Top Rank Blog – 2

Best SEO Blogs:

StuntDubl – 3
FishSEO – 2
SEOMoz – 4
SEO SpeedWagon – 2
TextLinkBlog – 3
SEO Black Hat – 5
SEO by the SEA – 2
Jim Boykin’s Blog – 4
Link Building Blog – 2
Stepforth SEO Blog – 1
Matt Cutts Blog – 5
Greg Boser’s WebGuerrilla – 5
SEO Book – 4

Best Search Engine Owned Blogs:

Yahoo Search Blog – 4
Ask Jeeves Blog – 2
MSN Search Weblog – 3
Google Blogs – 3

Matt vs. Jeremy : Which Search Employee Most Likely to Flame You For Spamming? – Zawodny

Best Search Engine Marketing and Contextual Advertising Blogs :

AdRants – 2
Did-It Frog Blog – 3
Got Ads? – 2
JenSense – 4
Google AdWords & AdSense Blogs – 3
Marketing Vox – 2
ProBlogger – 3
Traffick.Com – 2

And the Best Blog Search Engine Blogs :

Topix.net Blog – 2
IceRocket Blog – 1
Daypop Weblog – 2
Feedster Blog – 3
BlogDigger Development Blog – 3
blogpulse Newswire – 3
Blog Search Engine – 3
Technorati Weblog – 3

Community Search Blog Showdown : Threadwatch or Search Engine Roundtable? – ThreadWatch

In case one of the blog owners reads this and takes offense, in total honesty I would only give my own blog a 1

I Am God

Mike — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 11:24:27 +0000

Well, seeing that Andre is flexing his muscles on personal rankings, I thought I’d check out some of my rankings:

That targeted anchor text really can pay off

London SEO First Meetup

Mike — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:32:53 +0000

Last night we had the first meetup of London SEO – our new monthly/bi-monthly SEO networking social event.

We decided to start this, as there’s a lot of great SEOs in the UK and it seemed crazy only meeting up when Pubcon or SES is in town.

So, after a nice Vietnamese meal,

we headed down to The Legion, Shoreditch to start the social (drinking). There were only 11 of us, but we drank enough for 50.

The best part of the evening was that N-I-K, the normally very reclusive and secretive black hat spammer showed up! Tony even managed to get a sneaky close-up photo of him (the first I believe and only because he was too drunk to argue):

So the next London SEO (which was drunkenly renamed Search Pimps) gathering will probably happen in January, and this time is an open invitation, so keep an eye out for details.

Mobile SEO & Google Finally Validates

Mike — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 21:50:49 +0000

Google, who for some reason choose NOT to bother making their site and SERPS fully standards compliant, finally have a results serlvet that does validate – http://www.google.com/xhtml

From the DocType it can be seen that this is intended for mobile platforms:

[code lang="html"]

[/code]

Also selecting Mobile Web (Beta) shows some interesting results. Could be time to starting thinking about Mobile SEO.

Easy Google RSS Scraping

Mike — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 11:49:09 +0000

So, for all those of you that use G Y M to scrape for URLs to ::ahem:: study, and are forced to use their normal messy SERPs because their API only allows 10 results per query (or even those that use /ie or /palm).

I just noticed that on their Blog Search, Google allow you to grab an RSS feed of the results.

So now a simple little:

[code lang="php"]
preg_match_all('/ (.*)<\/link>/i', $url, $arrayoflinks);
[/code]

will get a whole load of URLs very simply.

Blogs also tend to have more content than web pages, which is even better for ::ahem:: studying.

But of course, it would help is Google was to have an XML feed of their normal SERPS like Yahoo & MSN do.

Tabke Splashing Out

Mike — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:38:39 +0000

Brett Tabke is obviously making more than enough cash from WebmasterWorld and his Pubcon conferences – he’s just moved the company into plush new offices.

WebmasterWorld Moves into New Offices in The Prestigious River Place Pointe Corporate Park in Austin, Texas

WebmasterWorld Inc., the leading online search engine and Internet marketing forum and producer of PubCon conferences, has outgrown its offices and is moving to larger premises at the River Pointe Executive Corporate Office Park, Austin, Texas.

From http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2005/04/04/story1.html:

River Place Pointe is a seven-building complex on nearly 48 acres in Far Northwest Austin, between River Place Boulevard and FM 2222. The building is roughly 70 percent occupied by tenants such as SBC Services Inc., Polycom Inc. and Tousa Homes Inc.

The 600,000-square-foot office park was developed from 2000 through 2002

It’s a trophy property

Save The White Hats

Mike — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:23:18 +0000

Absoutely fantastic, funniest thing I’ve seen for a while – The White Hat Appeal

By giving to the White Hat Appeal you can help ensure that one less White Hat turns to the dark side.

Many white hats are struggling to retain their holy glow; in fact for some it’s becoming a taste of do spam or eat spam.

The White Hat Appeal aims to help needy White Hats keep the righteous path.

These poor SEO’s need your help urgently.

PayPal donations are going to donations@whitehatappeal.com (in UK Sterling so must be a Brit)

Shame the Whois is private – someone should take the credit.

Secret Pubcons

Mike — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 14:43:08 +0000

Just taking a look at Tabke‘s list of upcoming Pubcons, and there’s a couple missing from his number sequence:

So what happened to numbers 12 & 13?
Will one of them be the summer conference at a similar time to New Orleans last year?
How is Brett gonna squeeze in 2 conferences between February (Oz) and Spring (Feb/March/April – Boston)?
What about the normal London event, or will they name it .5 llike before?