Like many people I’ve recently bought an iPhone 4S and as you probably know one of the features it has is the personal assistant Siri.

To be honest I’m a bit mixed about Siri because on one hand he (I’m using the British English version of Siri which is a man’s voice) on one hand works great for setting an alarm clock or calling a phone number then on the other hand he doesn’t really work very well when I’m trying to find information on the Internet.

I’m constantly been told by him that I can only use a function if I’m searching in US English looking for U.S.-based businesses and one thing that I can’t get it to work at all for is to remind me to do something when I arrive or leave a place and keeps telling me that he can do it but I can’t get it to work.

One thing that I’ve also found Siri’s good for is dictating notes. He seems to get the dictation pretty much spot on which is a good thing definitely. Recently though I had the idea of using, Siri or at least testing Siri, as a new workflow to create content.

The workflow goes something like this::

Create mind map
Dictate article to a text document
Save document to Dropbox
Edit article the following day on a computer
Submit article to Article Samurai

While that sounds like a pretty good workflow to test I’m not sure that Siri’s up to it. And I also had the idea that since I’ve got the WordPress app on my iPhone I would be able to dictate an article to Siri like I’m doing at the moment, and then edit the article before submitting or submitting the article in draft mode before the editing it later on the computer and that’s what I’m just testing at the moment.

I’m going to post both what Siri thinks I said as well as the edited article and you’ll be up to judge yourself at least in this first iteration of the process.

Be interesting to see how it turns out, I’ve got a feeling that it’s not hearing me, it’s not understanding.

And I’m not sure whether it understands my accent very well, I am not sure why.

Above: quick edit of text dictated to Siri. Normally I’d edit it more to create a better article, but this should give an idea of what I (think) I said. And below: what Siri THINKS I said.

Like many people I’ve recently bought an iPhone for S and as you properly know one of the features it has is the personal assistant Siri.

To be honest I’m a bit mixed about Siri because on one hand he bracket I’m using the British English version of Siri wouldWhich is a man’s voice) on one hand he works great for setting an alarm clock or calling a phone number then on the other hand he doesn’t really work very well when I’m trying to find information on the Internet I’m constantly been told by end of I can only use that function if I’m searching in US English forward U.S.-based businesses and one thing that Ican’t get it to work at all for is to remind me to do something when I arrived will leave the place and keeps telling me that he can do it but I can’t get it to work.

One thing that I’ve also found series could fall it is dictating notes. He seems to get the dictation pretty much spot on which is Sir a good thing definitely. Recently though I had theidea of using Siri or at least testing Siri it as a new workflow to create content.

The weather Phleger something like this.

Great mind map
Dictate article to a text document
Save document to drumbox
Eddied article the following day ona computer
Submit article to article samurai

While that sounds like a pretty good workflow to test I’m not sure that series up to it. And I also had the idea that since I’ve got the WordPress app on my iPhoneI would be able to dictate an article is to Siri like I’m doing at the moment, and then edit the article before submitting or submitting the article in draft mode before the editing it later on the computer and that’s what I’m just testing at the moment.

I’m going to post both what Sirithings I said as well as the edit article and you’ll be up to judge yourself at least in this first iteration of the process.

Dinnerhouse can return out I’ve got a feeling that it’s not heating my it’s not understanding

And I’m not sure whether it understand stand my accent very well I am not sure why.

OK, I think the result isn’t bad, although I struggled to work out what I’d said in places and could have done with the audio to double check.I’ll be testing this during this week and see if I can improve on the results as I can rattle a 300+ word article in no time at all using this method.

Google says it has made significant changes to the way in which their algo works to favour fresh content, which they say will affect 35% of searches. The official Google announcement says: 

We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.

You can check out the entire article by clicking the link below and see how it’ll affect you.

Read “Giving you fresher, more recent search results” at Official Google Blog

I remember when I first signed up for AWeber and it seemed like a long uphill struggle to get names onto my mailing list. Well, this report from Dan Raine will kickstart your list by using the power of Facebook. At 29 pages long it goes into details and it doesn’t cost a dime!

This free report will show you how you can build massive mailing lists quickly without spending a dime on advertising or having to do any joint ventures. Grab yourself a copy now.

Grab A Free Copy Of The Viral List Building Report

Back in February 2010 I spent a weekend in Valencia to meet up with Graham Hunt and Dom Goucher, two fellow Brits living in Spain who I’d met at Ed Dale’s “Coming Come” conference in Manchester the previous November.

The weekend was partially social (Arctic Monkeys gave a free gig) but partially about brainstorming some new business ideas, especially since we were lucky enough to join Ed’s mentoring program for a year.

When brainstorming some ideas for a new business we struck upon the idea of promoting Market Samurai to Spanish internet marketers, and soon set up a website with information about find profitable niches – Market Samurai España.

While the version of Market Samurai you download is still in English, Graham put some videos together in Spanish to explain how to use it to Spanish speaking internet marketers.

The interesting thing about this process was finding out how to go about SEO in Spanish. If you’ve ever followed the 30 Day Challenge (or The Challenge, as it’s now branded) you’ll know about the “symphony of four parts” and while that is directly applicable to the Spanish speaking market we did find a particular problem with link building.

There are thousands of article directories, web 2.0 properties and blog networks to post content in English. However, the opportunities to do the same in Spanish are far smaller, the tools to enable easy backlinks just don’t exist.

The preferred keyword tool of many internet marketers is Market Samurai, which is only available in English, although it can target any linguistic/geographic market. There don’t seem to be any keyword tools (or herramientas de palabras clave in Spanish) actually in Spanish, which is where our website helps out, and it has been relatively successful in doing so.

By working on this website we aim to have the best information on finding profitable keywords – palabras claves – in Spanish despite none of us being a native Spanish speaker and from there see what other tools can be applied to the Spanish market place.

When I first read about this I assumed it meant that Google was doing away with the keyword tool, but it turns out to be affecting Google Analytics. This update will mean that organic keywords used to find a webpage will only be logged by Analytics if a user is NOT logged into a Google account, or in Google’s own words:

How will this change impact Google Analytics users?

When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google “cpc”.

Does this make any sense? Google is arguing privacy, but it’s never bothered me that analytics tracks my keywords and I can’t imagine Joe and Jane Public cares that much either. I guess it will affect tech-focued niches more than non-tech as those users are more likely to have a Google account, but if Google Plus does take off then it could be a general problem of losing an important metric.

The answer? Switch to another analytics package that does provide the search data. I’m not going to make any changes until I’ve seen what impact it actually has on my niches.

Read “Making search more secure: Accessing search query data in Google Analytics” at Google Analytics Blog

I noticed a drop off in traffic from a three websites last Friday (14th October) and upon investigaing found the rankings for two of those websites had dropped a few places but remained on the first page of Google, but for a website I’m currently working on getting ranked in a highly competitive market it dropped from the third page to the 12th – a really big drop.Search Engine Roundtable is reporting a lot of frustrated webmasters at the moment, suggesting this was more than the minor update mentioned by Matt Cutts:

The thing is, the level of complaints and forum posts, as well as comments on my post, is at a level that seems to be more than “minor” by our standards.

I’m not too concerned as none of my major websites has been affected, and I’ve seen some improvement in rankings on other sites anyway. And anyway, it may be that Google will revise this update soon to downscale the number of website adversely affected. Whatever happens I’ll just have to keep adding good content and wait for an improvement, frustrating as that may be.

Read “How Large Was The Google Panda 2.5.2 ‘Minor’ Update?” at Search Engine Roundtable

I noticed yesterday that Google’s toolbar PR was showing a grey bar for all websites I visited. While it’s well known that Matt Cutts would be happy to kill toolbar PR, it appears that its death has been exagerated and it’s simply a matter of Google changing the URL used to access the data. Once tools like SEO for Firefox are updated we’ll get that info back.

UPDATE: It turns out Pagerank is not dead after all. Google has simply updated the URL which is used to query it, which has caused various toolbars and websites to stop reporting the number. Dave Naylor spotted the update and has subsequently updated his own tool, which is now once again reporting PR accurately. The original article was as follows…

Read “Google PageRank is NOT Dead” at WhatCulture!

Interesting article on creativity published on Copyblogger today talking about two types of creativity. I’m sure you’ll recognise these two architypes if you look around little, I know I certainly do.

I was reading Jonathan Fields’ new book Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance this weekend, and one of the insights that struck me the most was his breakdown of the two types of creativity.

Because analogies help us learn, and because Firefly is the best show that has ever been on television, I’m going to call the two types of creativity Mal Reynolds creativity (insight, vision, and brave new ideas) and Zoe Washburne creativity (actually getting something done).

Read “Shiny: The Firefly Guide to Producing More Creative Content” on Copyblogger

Yes, this is very irritating, glad to have switched this option OFF.

To hide your currently playing music from the Facebook ticker, just head into Spotify’s Preferences and scroll down to the “Facebook” section. Uncheck the “Get personal recommendations by sending music you play to Facebook’s Open Graph” box, and that’s it—your music will no longer show up anywhere on Facebook. There’s no need to disconnect Spotify from Facebook, and no reason to wade around through Faceobok’s privacy settings.

Read “How to Stop Spotify from Posting Every Song You Listen to on Facebook” on Lifehacker

Looks like Google’s new (ish) +1 button is being rolled out more widely with the news that it’s being added to AdSense. It’ll be interesting to see how much difference it makes.

Starting in October, the +1 button will begin to appear on display ads on your site. With a single click, people will now be able to endorse specific ads and make them more likely to appear to their social connections.  We believe that these recommendations could lead your readers to notice ads on your site more, leading to more clicks and higher returns for you over time.

Read “+1: Now making Display ads more relevant” on Inside AdSense