120 is the smallest 3-perfect (triperfect) number. The sum of its divisors is 360, which is 3 * 120.

Are you ready to upgrade from Vista to XP?

The best in programming profanity (thanks, Reg).

Or instead of swearing, just say Boo. An extensible language for the .NET Framework based loosely on Python (thanks, Arjan).

The true art of blogging? Jorn Barger (who invented the term “weblog” ten years ago yesterday) says it’s all about amping up the echo chamber (thanks, John Murrell). Naturally, Dave Winer claims prior art.

The many meanings of SEO. I like Mark’s own coinage best.

I unsubbed from TechCrunch months ago, mostly because I can’t respect Arrington personally. There’s more.

Me on TechRepublic: Top 5 programming languages (depends on how you rank them).

Me on Geeks Are Sexy: My Johnny Quest fantasy nears reality, the ultimate LOLcats, the Firefox detention hoax.

A couple of weeks ago, I was tagged by Tish on a meme that’s openly designed to promote your blog and multiply links to it via a pyramidesque chain-letter scheme.  While I’m always flattered to be tagged by Tish, something about participating in this meme didn’t feel quite right to me — so I put it off to think about it for a while.

Then the Great Google decided to alter its Almighty and Ineffable Page Rank Algorithm to penalize pages that appear to be linking just for the sake of linking.  Scoble thinks this is no big deal because PR as such does not really exist — it’s more topic-specific now, says Robert.  But the change in algorithm may affect searches for relevant content as well, and as Mohan points out it’s the smaller sites with fewer regular readers that rely more on search engine traffic who will be penalized the most.

I suspect that a post that’s almost entirely comprised of numerous links to blog posts, and closely resembles other posts on those sites, just might get caught in Google’s anti-splog crosshairs.  So I’m going to give that meme a pass, and I’d suggest that other bloggers avoid overtly gratuitous linking until we see how this all shakes out.

Incidentally, it appears that there is no etymological connection between the two meanings of the word “rank” used in the title — they come from different roots.

Memphis was the internal codename for the Windows 98 project.  Like the city, it’s a great source of the blues.

After my treatment of 95, I thought you’d see that one coming a mile away.

Louis Gray finds my “Linkin’ Green”-inspired analogy amusing, but not a laughing matter.  I like to trade links with people, but only when it’s associated with interesting content.  That’s why I didn’t join in on the viral tags experiments.  But I’m very happy to let Kent pick up some links from me, even if he won’t pick up a coin that’s tails up.

I thought I had read it somewhere before.  Interesting exchange in the comments between diogenes and apotheon about how the series developed, and the restrospective obviousness of an idea whose time has come.

Generally, I like MyBlogLog, but I agree with Avinash that their new community messaging feature is a bigger spam factory than any owned by Hormel.

Interesting questions to consider in the static vs. dynamic typing debate (thanks, Assaf).

I’m way past slinging babies around, but OK Randy.

Lauren Turner: “advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.”  Translation: “Money talks!“

More guest posts on [GAS]:  evidence of client-side spiders, and how to find your own personal center in the calendar.

Many of the Google faithful find their way to my site via the question “how to think of a title“, which invariably lands them here. Once again, my penchant for wordplay has led them astray from the straight and narrow search path of righteousness and into the perdition of offtopicness. So I will try to make restitution and answer the question that every blogger faces, sometimes several times a day: How do you come up with a title?

TDavid wrote a good post on this topic over a year ago, and his tips haven’t lost their relevance:

- write down two or three keywords that describe the content of the story and blend those into the title creatively
- consider using key (short) quotes within articles or stories you are writing about. For example, the quote from Google’s blog was so juicy I decided to use for the title (pictured above)
- play on words. For example, I combined the word accident and Adsense to make the word: accidense
- avoid getting too cutesy with titles and not summarizing the post body. If the title has nothing to do with the post it’s a big risk that is more likely to backfire than not. Readers don’t want to feel like they got suckered.
- when in doubt, be boring. If you can’t think up a good title, then just come up with something descriptive with no sizzle. It’s better than doing a “no title” or just having the date.

The first and third bullets best describe my usual strategy. I think of synonyms for my main subject with which I can make a neologism, a pun, or an alliterative or rhyming phrase. I’m sure that thereby I often stray into the path of the fourth bullet (too cutesy to be useful), which leads searchers to my post who are looking for something they don’t find there. But sometimes I’m willing to sacrifice reader satisfaction to the worship of my own cleverness. Sorry.

Generally I avoid quoting others in the title, though that can certainly be effective. And I try to avoid the bland — to what degree of success can only be measured by my readers.

Another approach to creating a title: make it a question — one that the post answers, or one that it raises. The difficulty with these titles is that you often find you want to add them to the text of the post instead. But sometimes, for effect, they’re better left only in the title. Titles scream out, and screaming questions attract attention.

Jessica Hagy, author of the popular and insightful blog indexed, seems to offer her titles as additional commentary on her posts. You should really read them after digesting her diagrams, and I’m pretty sure that’s how she composes them. But in a way, reading them first adds a puzzle aspect to each post, and at the end the meaning of the title clicks.

Humor makes any part of a blog post better, and some of the best humorous titles can be found at Good Morning Silicon Valley. Some recent good ones: New Vonage on-hold music: “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, It’ll be just like YouTube, only with less You, and It’s a computer, too? We just thought it looked nice in our Zen garden. These titles are kind of like outtakes from each post. There’s another good strategy: imagine something that could be said somewhat tangentially (or even mistakenly) on your subject, and convert it into a quip.

If you really want to get attention, say something startling. Kathy Sierra asks: Is your app an ass-kisser? Tell me you didn’t go look at that one. Distill your post down to its most controversial point, then ask a provoking question or make an alarming statement based on it — even if it’s essentially a misunderstanding of your opinion. You can set them straight in the text of your post after they’ve come charging into your readership with phasers set on flame. For instance, if I wanted to write a post on the failures of the present US administration, rather than giving it the transparent title of “Bush: worst president ever”, I might call it “Bush: greatest leader of all time?” and then let the content tear the title to shreds. It would attract many more readers, pro and con — especially from the search engines.

How do you think of a title? Do you employ any techniques other than those listed above?

Now, to think of a title for this one…

OK, OK — I don’t want to get revoked either.

Whatever happened between Amanda and Andrew, it’s just sad. That’s all I have to say.

I’m certain that apotheon’s aside concerning touch typing was aimed at me. We had an IM discussion a couple of days ago about the fact that I never learned that skill. I protested that my huntin’ and peckin’ has over the last 28 years gotten almost as fast as Roy Clark’s pickin’ and grinnin’. Or at least I thought so, until this typing speed test crossed my aggregator today (thanks GMSV).

I typed at 62.83 words per minute, with 3 mistakes corrected. I’m sure apotheon will be able to beat that by a Colorado mile. So maybe I should learn touch typing after all. On the other hand, I have a certain attachment to my own story and style. Or it could be, as my wife says, that I’m just plain stubborn.

Of course AT&T cares first and foremost for its customers. That’s why they’re now offering DSL service without requiring a voice line, at a cost savings of…a whole DOLLAR! (thanks GMSV)

Actually, they were required to offer this service as an FCC condition of their merger with SBC. AT&T paints the minuscule monthly discount as a virtue — that is, their bundled service with the voice line included only costs $1 more.

These are the bandits that want us to trust them to man the toll booths on the information superhighway.

Trade in their Italian suits for Kids R Us cargo pants. Judge Gregory A. Presnell of Orlando, tired of the childish inability of opposing counsel to agree on anything without his intervention, ordered them to decide on the location of a deposition via the time-honored playground arbiter: rock, paper scissors (thanks GMSV).

He could have ordered a coin toss, but I guess that manly tradition would have unduly honored their dispute.

No word on whether the winner would also enjoy the traditional right to lick two fingers and smack the loser’s wrist.

Yes, John, I am worried (Thanks RexWorld). Really worried.