A referral business email came in today from a friend. Apparently I had to drop everything to speak with my friends’ friend who had launched a brilliant business idea for the web.

Through a series of email exchanges I had requested from my friend to provide me with the web address of his friends new website. I mentioned to him that I would like to look at the idea before we actually spoke.

In response to my email asking for the friend’s website, I received a request that I first sign a Non Disclosure Agreement.

Taken a bit by surprise I responded with

Correct me if I am wrong but you have a friend who just launched a new website. You spoke with your friend and mentioned to him that I do Search Engine Marketing. In response your friend said he needs my help in getting traffic to his new website but in order for me to look at his site I need to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement.

Please inform your friend that my interest is to only look at the site, not to view his secret sauce formula. Additionally the NDA would be invalid if the materials are available to the public. If by looking at his site I can determine his secret sauce then there would be no use for the NDA. If his secrets are well hidden then there should be no need to worry.

-A

NDA’s were such a huge thing in the 90’s. We were all running around conferences with backpacks full of these things making sure we got people to sign them just before we revealed our billion dollar floppy ideas.

Over the past few years I have become jaded when someone wants to tell me about an idea they are working on but wont until I sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. When used correctly these agreements are fine but lately I find their use hinders the spirit of business.

Take the case I just mentioned. Here is a guy who has launched a new website. He hears from a friend that I know how to drive traffic to websites and this is something he needs help with.

The spirit of the process should be that party ‘A’ is need of help. Party ‘B’ understands party ‘A’s’ issues and knows of a party ‘C’ who could solve party ‘A’s’ problems. Party ‘B’ introduces ‘A’ & ‘C’ and if all goes well a business relationship is achieved.

But this does not happen. Party ‘A’ has a Non Disclosure Agreement and wants ‘C’ to sign it. Leaving ‘C’ wondering what Party ‘A’ has and of the possibility of having seen an idea similar to Party ‘A’s’.

What is the deal with people not sharing basic concepts of their ideas before getting signed NDA?

My theory is it’s the lawyers!

If the natural flow of business is interrupted or the spirit of the deal changes there is a good chance some lawyer screwed up the deal. I think in the late 90’s lawyers saw all the entrepreneurs running around making deals happen and they felt a little left out. So a few wise lawyers got everyone convinced NDA’s were needed before anyone could open their mouths.

When in fact, NDA’s were a means of protecting business parties when they actually were required to share confidential information (including unpublished patent applications, know-how, schema, financial information, verbal representations, business strategies).

You don’t need an NDA to show me a website that was just launched or to discuss concepts that are generally known by the public and can be looked up with a quick internet search.

When speaking with people about their business and the topic of non disclosure agreements is brought up I tell them several things

1. Chances are I’ve seen your idea.
2. Do you have a patent?
3. Why don’t you have a patent?
4. Can you discuss the idea without giving away any secrets?
5. If I could compete with you just from you sharing with me the basic idea, what value does the idea really have?

Every idea should have some sort of secret sauce where it would require a significant amount of work for the average person to figure out and solve. Then again, I saw on a television infomercial the other night a senior citizen took 4 flipped over Frisbees, stuck them under the legs of a large dining room table and pushed the table across a room.

The product had some gimmicky name for it, like Moving Men Furniture Sliders. But I digressed.

Going back to my email conversation, a few hours ago I received a response. They said we could skip the legal stuff and it was only brought up out of habit. They provided me with the web address to the brilliant idea.

It turns out his website was nothing more then a typical Affiliate site pushing dozens of common products. These types of sites only make up 90% of pages we see on the internet.

CIA - The World Factbook — Rank Order - Current account balance (Thanks Todd)

More information on Account Balance

(more…)

I am always skeptical when magazines come out with these “how to be successful” pieces in new emerging areas as I find it hard to believe the authors have any real experience on the topics.

I suppose Business 2.0 knows a thing or two about blogging as they run their own B2Day, the Business 2.0 Blog and it is good enough for me to have them on my RSS reader to follow everyday.

Erick Schonfeld seems to handle the blogging for B2Day and he writes some fun posts such as Here’s 20 Startup Ideas and $100 Million. What Are You Waiting For?

So what does Sahelis, S.R Datta’s of Business 2.0 feel are the top 7 habits of highly effective blogging and how does ShandyKing rate these?

1. Focus intently on a narrow niche, ideally one whose audience has a predilection for high-margin products. That will appeal to advertisers.
   

   Sure, or you just have fun and write about whatever’s on your mind. Creating content solely to appeal to advertisers was so Web 1.0.

2. Set up your blog so that each post gets its own permanent URL, or permalink, and its heading becomes part of its permalink and page title. Write descriptive, keyword-heavy headings, and be sure the homepage and all archives have links on every page.
   

   This is a wise thing to do and thankfully blogging software such as Wordpress has this as a standard feature. In addition Wordpress has a Post slug feature that allows you to customize your URL strings from the actual post title. This is handy if you’re really keyword sensitive.

3. Think of your blog as database , not a newspaper-like collection of dispatches. Your archived posts should be easy to find through Google and Technorati, so cite authors and publications by name, and use tags, categories and keywords consistently.
   

   I agree 100%. Always cite your sources. There is nothing more annoying then reading a great post on someone’s blog and they don’t cite their sources. This is English 101. Citing your source only takes a second and adds creditability to your ideas.

4. Blog frequently and regularly -if possible, at least half a dozen posts every weekday before lunchtime, when many readers take a break from work and check out the blogosphere.
   

   This actually does matter if you’re a traffic junkie. For those that live on the west coast of the United States , write your posts in the late evening the night before so the folks on the east coast can read them first thing in the morning. If you live in Australia , I am not sure what you have to worry about.

5. Use striking images in your posts. They liven up the page and attract readers, and if you use captions, you’ll gain additional traffic by making it easy for Google Image Search and other visual search engines to index your illustrations.
   

   Be careful here! Your readers do pull traffic from your servers and each one of those pictures can cost you money. If you’re going to show pictures, perhaps you should think about keeping the image source on someone else’s server. Just make sure it’s on a server that has little downtime otherwise your pages wont load correctly.

6. Enable comments and interact with readers; cultivate your audience-that’s what advertisers will be paying your for.
   

   Comments are great but there are plenty of spammers. I have my comment settings to allow anyone to post but their first post his held in moderation. Once I approve someone the first time they will then have permission for future posts to go live as soon as they make their comments.

   To protect myself from Spam I am using Akismet . But I have recently spoken to someone who can even bypass this.

7. Make friends with other bloggers, online and off. Link to their posts and they’ll return the favor. Other blogs may well send you most of your traffic.
   

   For the first few months the majority of traffic on this blog originated from other blog referrals. Now the majority of my traffic comes from Netscape, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

   When starting out it can be difficult to get people to link to your new blog so do your best to create fresh unique content and once you have enough content for other to get a feel for your writing it should not be that hard to get links.

   There is this unwritten rule about not asking people to link to your blog. I think this is a lame rule, especially when starting out. As reported in Blogging for Dollars, Business 2.0 there are 50 million blog’s with 2 new ones being added each second. I see nothing wrong with asking those that you know to link to you to help you stand out a bit. Then again, if you find your not generating links organically over time this could be a good sign
   your blog sucks.

I’ve got to add just one more to this list:

Spelling Spelling Spelling – I am probably the world’s most awful speller. Trust me when I say I literally see certain words backwards and when writing sentences such as this one, my mind has already completed the sentence while my fingers are working on the first word.

Still, readers hate to read poorly writen articles. I write all my posts in Microsoft Word and by the time I am done the sheet looks like it has the chicken pox. I take a break from my writing and come back to correct all my mistakes.

Unfortunately Microsoft Word does not know how to correct all my grammatical mistakes as I often mix up my meanings.

I do think if people are going to take the time to write a post for the public to read they should take a few extra minutes to clean up the grammar. If your not going to correct it when you’re a public writer, when will you?

There are certain things being worked on in this world that could have dramatic significant importance for our future and I think every educated person should at least have an understanding of it.

In this post I plan to discuss the ideas behind one of the hottest topics being debated in physics for the past 30 years, String Theory. I plan to explain it in the most elementary way I know how including an explanation of one of the theories off shoots, the concepts of multiple dimensions.

String Theory or Super String Theory as some people like to call it is by no means an easy topic to understand and the math supporting it is only really understood by a handful of the smartest brains in the world. Unfortunately the author of this post is not one of them but luckily for us the concepts behind the theory can be understood without having to know mathematics.

Before I begin and go on to explain String Theory I should point out that ideas like the Big Bang Theory are concepts that have not yet been proven. The physicist’s working on these large concept ideas hopes to one day prove the theories so it is important to understand that for as popular an idea these are, things like the Big Bang Theory and String Theory are just grandiose ideas thought up by some very smart people.

In Time Magazines The Unraveling of String Theory they explain the concept of String Theory as

There were good reasons for the theory’s appeal when it first emerged in the late 1970s and early ’80s. At the time, physicists found themselves facing a crisis: the two most important ideas of 20th century physics, relativity and quantum theory, were known to be fundamentally incompatible. Quantum theory describes the universe as intrinsically discontinuous: energy, for example, can come in bits just so small, but no smaller. Relativity treats time and space and gravity as a smooth, unbroken continuum. Each theory has its purposes, and they usually don’t overlap. But when dealing with very large masses or time periods that are infinitesimally small, like the core of a black hole or the first moments after the Big Bang, neither quite works.

The above explanation is good but I believe I can simplify String Theory by saying that we have mathematics that can explain thing which is large in the universe. Large things can be anything that is not at the atomic level. We use these types of mathematics every day from shooting astronauts into space to calculating the size and weight of just about everything.

We also have another type of mathematics that explains things which are extremely small. Things on the atomic level are as small as the universe is large. We call the smallest of smalls at the atomic level the quantum level or quantum mechanics.

Now having an understanding that we have a mathematical framework for all things large and one for all things small we realize that that when thinking about other big concepts such as the Big Bang, where the mass is infinitesimally large but the time frame and size are infinitesimally small all our underlying mathematical frameworks break down.

String Theory, or as others like to call it “The Theory of Everything” tries to create some underlying mathematics that is one level smaller then the Quantum level and the Relativity level which could tie the two together.

If these two theories were tapestries the little dots on the smallest level is what string theory would be trying to explain.

Over the past 30 years some of the smartest brains in the world have flocked towards studying String Theory and the mathematics behind it is showing concepts you would only expect to see from Star Trek episodes.

One such concept found when unveiling String Theory is the idea behind multiple dimensions. The concept of higher dimensions beyond the 3^rd (which we are used to) in itself is extremely difficult to grasp. The fact is, very few people can truly understand or vision the ideas behind another dimension apart from our own because the human mind is not equipped to handle such thought.

I’ve heard a handful of scientists try to explain the concepts behind dimensions and I found Carl Sagan in his 13 hour long series Cosmos explain it the best.

In his first example Sagan uses little packets of sugar that you can find on a restaurants coffee table next to the condiments. Sagan goes on to lay several sugar packets flat out on table and explains that the packets represent the human species and the table is a represent of the world the sugar packets occupy.

This is a two dimensional world and you can imagine the sugar packets are able to move right left, forward and backwards. They are not able to move up and down.

Let’s just say you were a sugar packet and you stood before all the other sugar packets to explain to the crowd that there is something more to life then going right, left, forward and backwards. You explain that there is also an up and down. The fact is, none of the other ‘regular’ sugar packets would get this concept as it is impossible for them to grasp.

In the sugar packet world things are only two dimensional and understanding yet let alone visioning a third dimension is beyond their comprehension.

Another example of explaining the concepts of understanding a higher dimension is the use of drawing a 3d square on a piece of paper. When we were all in grade school we learned how to draw a 3d box. When looking at the 3d mockup on paper the model looks really nothing like having a real 3d box sitting in front of you. When drawn, the 3d square has been converted to 2d and the image is shown flat with distorted lines representing the real 3d model to the best of our ability.

Going back to our sugar packet world, you can see that these people would have no problem drawing a 2d model of a three dimensional square but they would never be able to create or see an actual 3d square as their physical universe prohibits it.

For years now that mathematics coming out of the ideas from String Theory are showing we live in a world that has 10, 11 or even 26 dimensions. Perhaps our brains can conceptualize 4d, based on a 3d model but how can we possibly conceive a world with 9 dimensions or 20 dimensions?

If you find this topic interesting and would like to learn more I highly recommend watching The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. It’s a 3 part Nova series that does an amazing job explaining many of the concepts I briefly mentioned here.

I was asked a few months ago what could possibly come of all these smart physicists spending their time studying things such as these theories of everything. I explained that at one time studying ideas on the quantum level were unknown and no one really knew where that science would go.

We can thank those physicists back in the 1920’s for their ground breaking achievements in quantum physics as this led to the evolution of the electronic circuit which in turn is allowing you to read this post.

As my closest friend is completing his rabbinical studies and having just returned home from spending a year in Israel I am finding myself thinking a bit about God again.

He is at a point developing a closer relationship and understanding with God and I am having some serious doubts of Gods existence. Over a brunch yesterday the two of us spoke on the subject of religion and I addressed my feelings with him.

I am currently struggling with two religious issues. First is the concept of Group Think and how everyone during services appears to me as a flock of sheep following the herd.

For the past couple of years while attending services I have caught myself looking around a standing congregation who are lively singing and reading prayers from the bible. I’ve become a bit jaded at the idea of everyone with their books in hand saying things like “Amen” in unison.

I’ve been attending services my whole life and still to this day I find most of the prayer to be ambiguous. Does it make sense for me to be saying things like “Amen” which has the meaning of “so be it” if I do not really understand what it is I am reading? Additionally, if I find the concepts of the bible so unclear and feel uncomfortable with the blind agreement then how is it that everyone around me can say Amen with such certainty?

Thinking about stuff like this during a service makes me aware of whom I’m standing with and starts to freak me out a bit.

The second issue I am having with religion is the concept of belief. For me to believe in God I would have to admit to myself that there is an existence of God.

For the sake of going along with the belief by getting over the elementary fact that I have never actually seen God and to just accept the biblical studious explanation which is that there were a congregation of people with Moses on the mountain, who had all claimed to witnessed God with their very own eyes.

If I was to admit that there is a God then I must question his force. Is God malevolent? Why appear to a small group of people over 5,000 years ago and not show yourself to a modern world of people begging your call?

If God existed, why play such a trick on the human species? Think of all the possible things a modern day appearance would solve! The diversifications of religions in this world are not capable of coexisting with each other and since the dawn of time people have raged massive war’s killing millions of innocent people all in the name of God.

I figure, if God made an appearance once why not do it again? Obviously I don’t think this would ever happen as I have doubts God ever made that very first appearance.

Another wise friend of mine once said perhaps the reason why things are the way they are in this world is because the human race is not ready to accept god for who he really is. It is up to the human race to solve the problems of mixed religions on their own and when that happens they will see God.

I have expressed all these ideas with my rabbinical friend and I was delighted to hear that after 5 years of dedicated religious studying he continues to struggle with the same thoughts as me and that this is not something he could simply address in a short period of time.

I have setup plans to meet with my friend and to go over what we have spoke of. The reason for writing these ideas here is I wonder how others who are not religious students will address my concerns.

Have you seen this commercial yet? Ford has come out with a “bold” campaign and their Free Style commercial had me and my wife rewinding our Tivo to re-watch it over and over again.

The first time I saw this commercial I was not quite sure if I caught it correctly but after playing it back a few times I was sure I got the point.

This is definitely a bold move for a major advertising company and not your typical commercial. Could this be the start of a new trend in television advertising where companies are now recognizing that the American nuclear family has changed?

It makes me now wonder how big of a market there is for Ford to go after the divorced male. On the flip side how many of us will now start to associate male drivers of Ford cars with this guy in the commercial?

I was reading Todd Malicoat’s Blog this morning, How a Best Posts Page Will Increase Your Blog Subscribers and he explained how a Blogger could write so many different types of blog posts. With the way Blogs work a new reader could come to your Blog just when you’ve written something less then stellar thus a new visitor may not feel the Blog is worthy of a second visit.

Todd recommended the idea of putting some of the best Blogs written in a place which would allow new visitors to see what’s been going on in the past without making them hunt around for it.

I thought this was an excellent idea and I have made some cosmetic changes to the layout of my Blog with the addition of the “Get Recent Comments” and “Most Commented Posts” Wordpress plug-ins. You can see this new change by looking to the right of this post, in the middle column.

I’ve been messing around with these plugins and now I have some color issues to contend with. I like how the two columns work with each other on the right side of this Blog but the hyperlink colors seem off to me. Perhaps someone with a good eye can send me some color ideas. Even better if someone could send me some CSS style code #’s.

Currently this is what I am using:

#sidebar a {
color: #DC5E04;
}

#sidebar2 a {
color: #0875F0;
}

Also, I am interested in your feedback if you like the new look.

Below is a commentary by Irwin N. Graulich of the Conservative Voice.

Let me get this straight. You allow one of the largest terrorist organizations in the world to set up shop throughout your country. You permit them to completely take over the entire southern third of Lebanon and you claim to have seen nothing.

You allow the terrorists to build sophisticated, fortified bunkers and you did not see any heavy equipment building them. You allow the Hezbollah terrorists to move into many of your towns and villages, including the complete takeover of one of the largest neighborhoods in Beirut, where they proceed to build numerous, complex command and control centers…and then you claim ignorance.

You allow Hezbollah to store weapons, bombs and rockets in your basements. You turn a blind’s eye when they carry arms into your restaurants, stores and buildings, yet you call yourself an “innocent civilian.”

You watch the Hezbollah parades with hundreds of thousands of participants including children screaming, “Jihad. Death to Israel, Jews and Americans,” burning American and Israeli flags, while goose-stepping soldiers with Nazi-like salutes receive your cheers–and all of you “innocent civilians” did not see a thing even though you were captured on videotape. All this, while Koffi Annan and much of the UN insist that “we should not believe our lying eyes about the innocent civilians.”

There are giant posters of the terrorist leader, Hasan Nasrallah, all over Lebanon with headlines declaring the imminent destruction of Israel. Yet you choose to elect this terrorist party to your government–and all of the so called “innocent Lebanese” do not know anything about anything.

Twenty thousand rockets and launchers are shipped into your country along with other military equipment by plane, truck and ship, and the government industrial complex knew absolutely nothing; and neither did all those “poor, innocent civilians” who are now crying.

So you allow the “Devil” into your homes and into your lives; you take the devil’s money, food and medicine; you sleep with the Devil…and get a serious evil disease. And then you blame the Jews, of course! Well, there is no sympathy for the devil…or his helpers!

The Lebanese “knowingly allowed (aka aided and abetted)” murderous terrorists to proliferate in their sovereign nation. Like spoiled teenagers, they now refuse to take any responsibility. Of course there are some truly innocent civilians, but there were hundreds of thousands of beautiful German babies and mothers in Dresden and Berlin who were blown to bits. If an attack emanates from your country, the entire country is responsible. That is how life works and it is sometimes unfair.

I hate when people lie to my face and expect me to believe their vile fabrications. Does the Muslim world really think that the vast majority of Americans are that foolish?

Last weeks trip to the Search Engine Strategies conference was quite the trip. For those who don’t attend these events I must ask, why don’t you?

Team WebGuerrilla flew into San Jose on Sunday starting the trip off by grouping with the Webmaster Radio Crew in the bar along with a few folks I met last April in New York.

From there it was non stop networking with amazing people. Imagine a large group of people who are obsessed about the same things you are but with drinks in hand. That’s SES. Sure, the sessions are amazing and I always learn a few things from each one I attend but the real excitement is the after hours.

I’ve gone to dozens of conventions over the past 10 years but nothing can stand up to the folks who make up the Search Engine community. You can feel the energy around the convention center as the white hats mingle among the black hats.

If you have not gone to one of these events and are working in the community I suggest you just attend. This was only my second event and I have already made a few friends for life.

New pictures added…

Picture credits go to:

Greg Hartnett, Shoemoney, Marcus, ChrisC and Barry Schwartz

Sunday I will be heading out to SES in San Jose and will be there all week. I am sure you will find me hanging out in the bars with WebGuerrilla, Dax and the Oilman so please feel free to come up and introduce yourself to me.

I am looking forward to catching up with all the new friends I met in New York. Oh, if there are any underground poker games taking place count me in!