http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/business/advertising/the-cheetah-girls-ticketnest.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/advertising/the-cheetah-girls-ticketnest.html Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500
The series of books features a story about a girl singing group who want to be discovered someone in the music industry and become famous overnight. They have big and sweet dreams in their young dreamy eyes about their future. And then fortunately they are discovered by a record producer when they were rehearsing for a school talent competition. The film is adapted and made few changes in the original story but the basic story is not being modified to keep the original flavor of the story in place.

The popularity of “The Cheetah Girls” film was the base of a hot pop band “The Cheetah Girls” that included three of the four lead actresses only excluding Raven-Symone. The band is also named “the Cheetah Girls”. Three members of the musical group are Adrienne, Kiely and Sabrina. Adrienne and Kiely are originally from 3LW whereas Sabrina was an actress; they all decided to continue the band. And that proved a very fruitful decision they produced several hit tracks and are rated as one of the most wanted pop bands of today.

After the band was formed just in two years it gained the biggest fan-franchise in the history of Disney (http://www.ticketnest.com) and in addition the band earned a multi-platinum soundtrack and a very high rated DVD release on charts. Wow! Aren’t you want to be a part of this fun, I am sure you want to see it once. The cheetah Girls debut their first song on DisneyMania 3, as a trio, covering the song “I Wont Say (I'm In Love)”. This followed by their next recorded song that was for the Chicken Little soundtrack, "Shake A Tail Feather".

And fortunately enough by the end of the year of 2005 the band was able to release their first beautiful album named as, Cheetah-licious Christmas. It was a Christmas album and it went as high as it ranked #74 on the billboard 200. The Cheetah Girls were requested to perform their single "Cheetah-licious Christmas (song)", at the ABC 2005 Disney Christmas Parade, and the 2005 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Cheetah Girls fan list include girls form 5-15 years of age and also their mothers. They are very good on stage. I happen to witness one of their shows and God knows they have a lot more experience than their age. It was some performance. Just like felines they filled the stage with their presence the tracks were mind blowing with beautiful and almost flawless dance moves. These girls are able to plague the audience with their thrill and the energy they exhibit is irresistibly contagious. They are very aware of their impact on audience and kept on doing continuous effort to improve their tracks and dance move along with a lot of variety. Their best songs include "I don't wanna be like Cinderella... I'd rather rescue myself" and also "Shake Your Tail-Feather" well this one is my favorite too.

The energy these cats show on stage is unimaginable and so exciting. And the best part is that it is fun and safe family music all the members can enjoy. In such a short time they are escalating to the heights of popularity. And still they have a long way to go. This now a cult pop-band is destined to be a constant hit for ages.

For more information about Cheetah Girls visit: http://www.ticketnest.com/concert-tickets/The-Cheetah-Girls/index.php


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Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer (http://www.sofizar.net ) working for Carlsbad, CA based web-metrics company Sofizar. He is a member of the team developing a click fraud(http://www.sofizar.com/click-fraud.php) detection software, ZarTective. While not writing expose’s on the darker side of the web, he plays with his cat “Mano” and watches “Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/fake-pagerank-checker.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/fake-pagerank-checker.html Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500
There is a vast and growing market for text links. A lot of highly ranked sites think of outgoing links as a way of monetizing their site (supply) and businesses that need visitor/search engine exposure buy the links(demand). While the purists may look askance at such a market, supply and demand is what the market makes.
Even the Garden of Eden had a serpent, and one would be surprised if all was as it seems in the text link market. Indeed scams abound, ranging from “no follow tags”, pages removed from navigation, or included in robots.txt file. But, there is a scam that gets almost everyone, except the truly paranoid. This scam is “Fake page ranks” or URL jacking.

The mechanics for spoofing the page is extremely simple and the results are awe inspiring. Using this technique, one can get any page rank they wanted…even PR-10. So, the burning question of how to do it? All one has to do is to obtain a throw away domain and do a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file on it to a page with PR. You want PR-5 ( http://www.ixs.net) to make it more credible, or with your boundless ambition, you want a PR-10 page…the choice is yours. Let’s assume that you chose the latter…and you can point to Google.com itself and inherit it’s PR-10. After Google PR update happens, you can detect Google bot and selectively forward it to Google.com itself. Everyone else gets to see your site and its fancy PR-10 rank.

So far so good. You have done nothing illegal, immoral, unethical etc. Things can go downhill from here though, if you attempt to sell the domain, or sell links from this website based on it’s PR—sheer fraud, in other words.
The webmaster who plays with 301 redirects is actually losing out in the end. His rankings will not rank higher…in fact the site won’t even get cached by Google.
For kicks we did a case study and picked up a domain from expiring domains that purported to be a PR-7. We chose a subject near and dear to our collective hearts(NOT!)…Michael Jackson. We gave this Micahel Jackson tribute site, http://www.mjpromotions.com/ kind of a snazzy look, quickly wrote some content for it.
We also wrote a tool which allows you to check to demonstrate that the page rank is completely fake. http://www.sem-faq.com/fake-pagerank-checker.php .

Acquiring domains or website or even purchasing links is a risky process, fraught with all kinds of frauds. During the process of due diligence, we propose that you consider a Fake PR Checker as a tool to avoid getting conned by URL Jackers.


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Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer working for Carlsbad, CA based web-metrics company Sofizar Search Engine Optimization. He is a member of the team developing a click fraud detection software, ZarTective Click Fraud While not writing exposes on the darker side of the web, he plays with his cat Mano and watches Rocky Horror Picture Show for the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/entertainment/wicked-tickets.html http://www.articletrader.com/entertainment/wicked-tickets.html Mon, 15 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Wicked is based on one of the best selling novels, "Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witches of the West", written by Gregory Maguire. Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at the land of the Oz the same way again. In many ways, it's a contemporised', satirical commentary on Oz. Ignoring the obvious ones like a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens. Or the short Munchkins who seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man who becomes a victim of domestic violence. We focus on the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West. The Wicked witch is a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil. The story grows more interesting and to enhance your interest, we have some hot seats for you in all theaters. Get discount on wicked tickets for all theaters hosting this play. We have tickets for wicked that you are looking for. Whether you are looking for tickets for wicked in Chicago, wicked tickets Pittsburgh, wicked Kennedy center tickets, wicked Boston tickets, wicked tickets Denver or simply looking for broadway tickets for wicked, in that case, you are at the best site that offers wicked discount tickets for all theaters.

An astonishingly rich re-creation of the Land of Oz, this book retells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who wasn't so wicked after all. Taking readers past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world rich with imagination and allegory, Wicked just might change the reputation of one of the most sinister characters in literature. Check out the details of wicked tickets Chicago and buy the wicked Broadway tickets now. Also check out: we offer you Houston, TX tickets to any wicked performance. Wicked has enthralled millions of spectators in every theater, if you want to be one of them, than buy tickets to Wicked now, and be a part of the crowd. Moreover, we offer half Price Wicked tickets to our customers. Purchase tickets to wicked to any theater in your area or get hold of a wicked tickets Broadway to watch the engrossing performance.

Maguire's story begins with a moral about understanding and appreciating differences among people and then becomes a cautionary tale of people in power creating monster villains to distract from their own misdeeds. In the course of the story, he shows that what is a monster to some is a humble, self-sacrificing hero to others. "I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too" is what we all remember from the movie. Wicked twists this tag line, and manages to change our perspective. It is hard not to fall in love with Elphaba, and not start dreading her fate. A fate that we all know well from the movie!

Check out the hottest theaters that are hosting the exotic play. We present wicked's Chicago tickets, Bushnell wicked tickets, Kennedy center wicked tickets, theater tickets for wicked Florida, Boston Opera house wicked tickets, wicked tickets NY as well as wicked tickets in Philadelphia.

The Wicked fairytale is brought to life by the Academy Award winner, Stephen Schwartz's music and lyrics and the musical staging by the Tony Award winner Wayne Cilento. The direction of, by 2003 and 2004 Tony Award winner, Joe Mantello, has made the Wicked one of the spectacular plays of the year. Wicked Tickets are in high demand!

With a cast led by Broadway legend Ben Vereen, TV icon Rue McClanahan and breakthrough stars Shoshana Bean and Megan Hilty, there's never been a better time to visit the Emerald City! The twists and turns in Gregory Maguire's incredibly imaginative back-story to ‘The Wizard of Oz' makes the audiences literally gasp with delight. But not only that, Wicked is a truly heartfelt story of friendship and love. As Richard Zoglin of ‘Time Magazine' put it, "If every musical had a brain, a heart and the courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place!"

The plot focuses on the witches of Oz prior to Dorthy's arrival from Kansas. The Wizard (Joel Grey) believes in "The Big Lie" and he practices what he preaches, making everyone believe that the show's heroine, the Wicked Witch of the West, is evil. Wicked is an ambitious musical intended to satisfy both adults and children, with strong themes in a surprisingly complex book by Winnie Holzman. Throwaway lines that get big laughs are peppered throughout the script.

The scenery and costumes of the Wicked spring forth in fairytale colors, allowing children to enjoy the show also. Parents can enjoy the comical dialogue and masterful lyrics. The fairytale is complete with cameos by the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion, while The Wizard, acts as the catalyst that ultimately turns the former friends into the witches that they become. The process of bringing "Wicked" to stage was no easy engineering feat. Costing 14 million dollar, the play's production involved over 150 people and took almost two years to become a reality. Built in Calgary, Ontario the show's complex set took over a year and a half to design and had to travel over 1,500 miles to the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

Wicked the musical is not Wicked the novel. While the novel is its source, the musical presents only pieces of it, in a much simplified form, and often diverging wildly from the novel's narrative. One might be tempted to think all this destroys the work; but in the end it enhances it. Wicked the musical puts the spot light on the story's numerous ironies and interlaced levels of social commentary. The fiesta continues for 2 hour 30 minutes of utter magnificence. You can't bear to blink your eye during the whole gala, for fear of missing some of Wicked's glory!

Fans of Gregory Maguire's novel "Wicked" may criticize the changes made by stage adapter Winnie Holzman. She finds a way to send Elphaba and Fiyero into a bittersweet sunset together, and she establishes several reference points to the familiar ‘Wizard of Oz' film that are not in the Maguire book. But most theatergoers will find Wicked well worth the big ticket price. It's an astoundingly good show that puts its politics front-and-center, all wrapped up in a big, entertaining package. A pre-Broadway run was opened in San Francisco at the start of 2003. It was not appreciated very well by the locals. In the original cast, Idiana Menzel acted as Elphaba, Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda and Robert Morse played the role of The Wizard. With extensive significant changes, it was reopened later that year at Gershwin Theatre in New York. Morse was replaced by Joel Gray. There were assorted reviews initially but the general mood became a lot more appreciative. The tide completely turned when "Wicked" got the acclaim it really deserved. Wicked was nominated for ten Tony Awards, including the award for the best Musical. Menzel got the award of the Best Actress in a Musical. The cast also nabbed a Grammy Award for the Best Musical Show Album.

This fantasy-filled musical was the winner of three 2004 Tony Awards including prizes for Best Costume Design and Best Scenic Design. Wicked also had the privilege of being the winner of 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical Award! The uphill effort and zealous exertion of Joe Mantello has made Wicked a true spectacle for the eyes and ears! The popularity of this musical results in long lines to buy Wicked show tickets! The only element of the production that isn't consistently first class is Schwartz's songs. The tunes are a mixed bag, with several bland and forgettable power ballads included with his more distinctive and finely crafted songs. Most of the music rides on the same middling tempos, and little stands out melodically.

"Wicked" earned back its entire initial investment by December 21, 2004. In its first year it grossed more than 56 million dollar. The show has been playing to capacity crowds for almost every recent performance and grosses more than a million dollars every week. The show had a 14 million dollar capitalization. The show set out for extensive national touring in 2005. Successful tours were made to Toronto, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Los Angles, Fort Lauderdale and Hartford. In late June of 2005 a permanent production of "Wicked" separate from the national tour, opened at Chicago's Oriental Theatre with an open-ended run. "Wicked" will be the first show in decades to run on a permanent basis simultaneously on Broadway and in Chicago's North Loop theatre district. The show also has a heart, a brain, and the nerve to have opened on Broadway. Wicked is a must see show.

Wicked co-producer David Stone reported that the show, which plays the 1,800-seat Gershwin Theatre, had a 26 million dollar advance. "The advance and the weekly grosses are now higher than they have ever been," said Stone. The musical took in 1,196,658 dollar more than any show on Broadway! No surprise, given it's popularity among the literati and the glitterati. And the relative difficulty in obtaining tickets. Don't forget that we are offering cheapest wicked tickets online, providing you with an opportunity to get hold of broadway tickets to wicked in your own city. Also check out wicked Dallas tickets, wicked tickets Houston, wicked tickets Toronto, tickets to wicked in St. Louis, wicked tickets Florida, wicked tickets Atlanta, GA, or even if you are looking for cheap tickets to wicked in Denver, we have got that for you as well.

The fall of this year is fully loaded by "Wicked" shows all over the United States. Atlanta, Saint Louis, Dallas, Hartford, Tampa, Denver and San Francisco are some of the metropolitan areas where people are looking forward to see one of the most popular shows of the year. The Canadian fans too are really anxious to witness such an astonishing fiesta. Most of the fans have already booked their "Wicked the Musical Tickets". What? You haven't got a ticket yet? Then what are you waiting for? Order at Ticket Nest for the discounted wicked tickets and have the flavor of the memory that will last a lifetime! Wicked is being played all over American theater. But no matter where you are, we have tickets to wicked for you. Check out the details as we offer Wicked tickets in Chicago, Denver wicked tickets, wicked tickets New York, wicked tickets in Houston, as well as Wicked tickets Boston in our magic box.
For more information about wicked ticket visit: http://www.ticketnest.com/theater-tickets/wicked-tickets/index.php

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Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer working for Carlsbad, CA based web-metrics company Sofizar. He is a member of the team developing a click fraud detection software, ZarTective. While not writing expose’s on the darker side of the web, he plays with his cat “Mano” and watches “Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.



Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/search-engine-marketing-korea.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/search-engine-marketing-korea.html Fri, 12 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500
Quick overview of US Search Engine Market:

To Search Engine Marketers operating in North America and UK, the process of finding information is relatively straightforward. Go to Google or Yahoo, type in a query, look at the results. There is a choice between “organic” and “sponsored” listings( yahoo paid inclusion not withstanding), and most people pick one of the top few.

Eons ago, web designers in US wanted to show off their skills and had graphic heavy sites. Unfortunately for them, their bosses who were more interested in using the website as a sales tool, soon found that the fancy graphic sites took so long to load up on Jane’s dialup connection that she just went to the competitor to buy that widget. The content sites, who wanted to maximize their CPM revenues also wanted fast loading pages. Fast load, more page views, more money. “Substance” reigned supreme over “style”. “Minimalism” was the order of the day, and given the deep emotional scars people carry from the dial up days, to a large extent it still is an issue. It worked off to Google’s advantage—it is vastly easier for Google to evaluate the text and tags of a page for relevance to a query than to see if that cute flash is providing value to the user.

Korea is different:

You just have to see the Korean mobile games to see what I am talking about—Craigslist is “out”, Hello Kitty is “in”. The average Korean user is a little like a power gamer in the US. Bring on the bandwidth! Net Café is a booming business, and well, we all heard the story of a Korean gamer who dropped dead after playing 50 straight hours of online games (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4137782.stm ). Heart failure, stemming from exhaustion, was the official cause for this 28 year old.

Here in the US, we tend to think of glitz, flash and overdose of pictorial icons on a website as a glorified neon billboard. Superficial, been there, done that, not worth the bandwidth. We also use an alphabet to form words and to communicate and get information—the pictures and the “rich interface” is distracting for us. The Asian culture, on the other hand has traditionally used “characters” or pictorial representation of whole words to communicate. As a result, a text only representation seems inadequate and therefore a sign of lack of technological prowess. I had a hard time convincing some of my Korean counterparts that Google is actually very popular despite it’s simplistic look. The one fact that helped my case was the stock price of Google and it’s market capitalization—120 Billion dollar is well, 120 Trillion Korean “Won”. Unarguable!

The Korean Search Engine Market is dominated by naver.com. Much more so, than even Google dominates the US. To understand why naver is so successful, let’s go into the details of how things work in Korea and how things differ from the US market.

When we are looking up something that interests us, we “google” it. “Googling” , a recently coined verb, basically means feeding some keywords in a omniscient benevolent search engine to get some results. Higher ranking usually means relevance to the query and therefore exposure.

In Korea, things work in the way Ask Jeeves wanted to work, but never managed to hack it. And they work well.

Why is Korea a “winner take most” search engine market:

The best way to describe Korean Search Engine users is “trolling FAQ’s”. The portals have a knowledge base, organized by questions. Wikipedia, DMOZ, Usenet and Google Answers, while great projects, pale in comparison to the “knowledge iN” of Naver. The system revolves around asking the portal a question, and there is a high likelihood of a lot of answers to that questions by people who cared to write on the subject. The user gets a ranked list of answers and can either choose to read the answers, or a list of similar questions. She navigates through the questions and answers allowing her to refine her search efficiently.

Naver has the most extensive database of questions, and therefore, it is logical for people to use it to get their answers. To get the most exposure, people tend to contribute there the most. Network Effect--giving naver a 75% share of the “question answer” market.

Downtown Seoul is a small place:

One would think that people who want to promote their products, thoughts would swamp the system with SPAM answers. Fortunately, they have some in built safeguards. All users must be registered to provide answers and their answers are rated by the community. The best answers rise to the top, and for widely asked questions it’s a more reliable way to rank than the “back rub” Google algorithm. Furthermore, the person who is rated high on a few answers gets a higher “rap rating”.

This is a very important point in the Korean culture. People want to be seen as ethical, wise and helpful. No one wants to be caught dead, seen as a spammer, self promoter etc. since everyone knows everyone else. The “reputation” and “prestige” is important, as it is in any “web community” including (say) Usenet. Usenet, it takes a while to gain reputation in a certain group. The Naver ranking software allows faster and more permanent feedback on the ranking of the person.

Problems of Naver’s model--Monetization and homogeneity:

If you are looking for “organic” listings on naver, you would be shocked. Hard to find, since there are so many “sponsored” links. The sponsored listings often blanket true results which in my opinion takes something away from the value of the portal. Furthermore, Korea is much smaller than the English speaking base of Google and has a much more homogeneous culture. The cacophony and diversity of opinion in Google’s index is sometimes missing from Naver’s iN. These facts lead us to believe that Google may manage to rise from it’s anemic 10% market share eventually.

Sofizar will be working in partnership with ILcorea, in order to provide US companies a presence in Korea. Furthermore, ILcorea will be working with Sofizar to provide Korean companies a search engine presence in North America and UK.
For more information about Search Engine Marketing in Korea visit: http://sofizar.net/search-engine-marketing-korea.php


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Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer working for Carlsbad, CA based web-metrics company Sofizar. He is a member of the team developing a click fraud detection software, ZarTective. While not writing expose’s on the darker side of the web, he plays with his cat “Mano” and watches “Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>