My wife picked up the applications and helped her answering the questions. It's all so new to her. She got them turned in and went for her first interview at the skating rink, which, I'm told, went fantastically. She's got another interview scheduled for next week at the gym. Before I know it, my little girl will be texting her friends once again. Even better she'll be learning about real-life responsibilities, and what it takes to "survive" in the real world. All it took was a little motivation.

Put feeling into your words

Motivation is a funny thing. You can try to encourage people by telling them the benefits of this, that or the other, but sometimes it's just not enough. You've got to make them "feel" it. If you craft your message right, you can do just that using words only. This is true whether you're dealing with a child, spouse or a customer over the Internet.

Fast food restaurants use words (and pictures) to make you feel hungry. Non-profits raise money by making you feel sad and/or that you can make a difference. Employers motivate by making their employees feel valuable. Is this all just lip service? It shouldn't be. Feelings only last so long as the actions behind them support it.

In advertising and marketing you can illicit feeling in your words and pictures. You can stir feelings of pain, anger, relief, desire, attraction, want, hope, satisfaction, love, etc., etc., etc.. And if you really want to close the sale, you have to make people feel like what you are selling is going to meet their wants or needs.

When you're words convey feeling, then you are motivating them to take the action you desire. Essentially you're helping them make the decision because they'll know they'll feel good about the result. This helps them feel confident and comfortable that they are doing the right thing.

You can talk to your customers and try to explain why they need what you sell. Or you can use words to motivate them by making them feel the emotion that will make them want to buy. The difference is, by merely talking to them you are leaving the decision up to them. When you motivate your visitors by using feelings, you've actually done them a favor. You've helped them solve a need. Now they are just not your customer, they are your friend.

As for my daughter, I obviously didn't motivate her enough with my words. But cause and effect is a wonderful motivator as well!

1. All is well; your website is www.xyzname.com and it is currently listed in the top 10 in Google for 'xyz'.
   
   
2. A hacker comes along and decides that your listing for 'xyz' needs to be removed (perhaps for competitive reasons or out of spite). So the hacker gets Google to spider your website through a proxy. The address that Google would be given to index might look like this:
   www.proxysrus.au/proxy/www.xyzname.com/
   
   
3. When Google indexes this new URL it looks legitimate and Google's filters will soon recognize that the content being indexed is exactly the same as www.xyzname.com. As a result, in the cases that have arisen so far www.xyzname.com loses its ranking and the freshly indexed proxy URL has effectively eradicated the competition.

1. When the proxy URL is requested the server would have to provide the search engines with zero suspicion that a proxy was delivering the information. This includes URL syntax, URL length, server header information and latency.
   
   
2. The proxy URL would have to appear authoritative.
   
   
3. The proxy would need to be able to thwart the proxy hacking prevention measures that Dan has laid out within his informative article. At this time it appears the only proxies that are having some success are the ones that strip all browsing information so that the 'hack proof' sites cannot tell whether the traffic is legitimate or not. If they can't tell then they will not know to block Google from spidering their site through the wrong URL. Again even that attack has been rebuffed by Dan and his team by enabling noindex and nofollow tags on his client's sites UNLESS a verified search engine is visiting.

"We have not, by default, opted for acquisitions as part of our strategy ... but we don't count them out either," he said. "In general, though (we focus on) smaller deals, we are open to large acquisitions.

News reports last Friday that Microsoft has once again approached Yahoo for a potential merger. Ballmer declined to comment whether he was interested in acquisitions in the $40 billion to $50 billion.

"I don't think you should expect that most of our growth should come from buying large companies and taking costs out," Ballmer said, adding that such cost-reduction strategies are useful in slow-growing, more mature industries, but not software.

"Things are changing so fast we thought a blog focused on this topic would be the best way to communicate with you, both about our products and about the overall development of geo on the web." John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps said.

Here is a list of all other features they've added:

• Historical prices: View and download historical end-of-day prices for any U.S. or Canadian company
• Portfolios: You can now download the latest portfolio performance and transaction details from your portfolio
• News feeds: Stay on top of the news using your feed client such as
  Google Reader, Bloglines, or as part of your iGoogle

You can read more about it at the Official Google Blog.