Welcome to the latest of my monthly collections for the Engine Group of five links that you shouldn’t miss.
Putting 404 error pages to work: “Page not found, and neither is this person” http://bit.ly/OyMTDu
A clever idea putting to good use those pesky ‘404 Page not found’ error messages which come up when you try to visit a page that does not exist. Use them to help find missing people.
AuthorRank: how to keep ahead of Google’s next changes http://mz.cm/OyNjd6
What is AuthorRank? Why does it matter? How do you influence it? There are no certain answers, but this piece gives some sensible speculation.
Crowdsourcing replaces travel agents in search for lower fares http://nyti.ms/OyMml5
It used to be the case that you went to a travel agent, told them your preferences and they worked out the best combination of tickets, times and prices for your journey. Then online price comparison websites got in on the act – but they still leave lots of juggling of different priorities to the user to try out. Now Flightfox is trying something different: you register your preferences, other users then try to find the best and cheapest combination of tickets to meet them and the best one gets a cut of the ticket commission.
How does the US’s security chief keep her email secure? http://bit.ly/OyLH3d
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has a simple if severe way of keeping her email secure. No complicated encryption. No clever password strategies. Instead, she just doesn’t use email at all.
Myspace: it’s back http://bit.ly/Qv4Lya
Hello again old friend.
