Best of the Web American Idol: Going to Greensboro was a gamble for the pop TV show American Idol, but one that has paid off in spades for tart-tongued tornado Rhonetta Johnson, who is billed as a "terrible singer but with a mouth straight out of a pool hall and an ego bigger than Alaska." Rhonetta, who sports a rap sheet as long as her blonde wig, claimed she would become famous, and with the aid of the blogosphere and web sites such as rhonettajohnson.com, she has delivered on her promise, even gaining the attention of Entertainment Weekly, and going overnight from zip to in excess of a hundred pages on Google.
posted to MetaFilter by nlindstrom at 12:51 PM on January 27, 2006 (21 comments)

Blackhat Search Engine Optimization Techniques. Through the use of a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint, you can have competing web sites thrown out of Yahoo's search index. If you file a DMCA report against a site, Yahoo will quickly remove the "offending" site, leaving no trace of the site in its index. This has led to a rise in so-called "Blackhat SEO," wherein one seeks to become the leading search result not by improving one's own site, but by having competing sites removed through the DMCA.
posted to MetaFilter by nlindstrom at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2005 (15 comments)

NASA says shuttle is ready for July 13 launch, but doubts remain. With two catastrophic failures marring the Space Shuttle's safety record, many people fear that the coming launch of the shuttle Discovery could turn in to a billion-dollar fireworks display. While NASA is optimistic about the coming mission, an independent panel of aerospace executives, academics and former astronauts are not. They concluded that NASA has failed to fully implement three of the fifteen return-to-flight recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in August 2003. While we wish the astronauts a safe and uneventful journey, serious doubts remain as to NASA's competency to continue carrying mankind to the stars. Perhaps our best hopes now lie with private ventures such as Scaled Composites?
posted to MetaFilter by nlindstrom at 12:03 PM on July 1, 2005 (20 comments)