Create Custom Google+ Circles

The Default G+ Circles Aren't Very Useful, Create a Washington DC Circle, if they have a pulse, a twitter and are located within DC, they're eligible.

Connections Are Currency

Your local DC company is running for office, it is elected into office by your local DC social signals, those people are your constituency.

A Local Business Wants To Create Local-To-You Cirles

Anyone with A)a Pulse, B) a G+ account C) a twitter and D) Resides within your zipcode

Save Your Blogs RSS feeds To Your Google Reader Account

You want to create a Google Reader account with your main Google acct. Google likes it when you use their products, use as many as you can.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

DC Police Building Biggest Location Database Based on Licence Plates

Police Tracking Your Every Move With License Plate Readers


Police Tracking Your Every Move With License Plate Readers
Josh Wolford | Staff Writer

Is a law enforcement aid worth sacrificing personal liberties?

Privacy. It's on everyone's minds these days. A couple of months ago it was Apple and Google that were drawing the ire of consumers with the storing of location data. And of course, Facebook is always mentioned when people discuss their concerns about online privacy. But as technology gets better, and the tools used to capture information and the databases used to store and disseminate the information become more capable, the lines between online and offline privacy continue to blur.

On that note, let's say that you are having a Sunday afternoon picnic with your child. The weather's good, you've been running around and playing -- but now it's time for lunch. You open up the cooler, only to discover that you've left a couple of the sandwiches in the car. The car's just a few yards away, so you quickly run to grab the sandwiches.

And in a split second, you look back to see that your child is gone. You catch a black sedan speeding away and you are barely able to catch the license plate. Because you caught that license plate, police are able to search a giant database of plate captures and track the movements of the kidnapper.

A classic question: What is more important, public safety or personal freedom? What are you willing to sacrifice? Let us know in the comments.

Ok, I know this whole scenario seems a little bit Without A Trace or Lifetime movie-esque, but the point is that police were able to use an ever-expanding database of data culled from license plate snapshots in order to generate real-time location information. That's a reality, and it's happening in our nation's capital, among other places.

The Washington Post is reporting that police in D.C. are beefing up the area covered by license plate cameras. More than 250 cameras in D.C. and its suburbs are constantly hard at work, grabbing license plate numbers and sticking them into databases. The police aren't exactly doing this quietly, but it's being done with "virtually no public debate."

The highest concentration of these plate readers in the entire nation exists in D.C. (one reader per square mile), so that means that District police are building the biggest location database based on license plates in the whole country.

Let's take a brief look at these license plate readers.

First, these are apparently different types of cameras than the cameras cities have been affixing near stoplights and other places to catch people running red lights or speeding -- the "here's a ticket 2 weeks later in the mail" cameras.

These plate readers cost about $20,000 each and can snatch images of numbers and letters on cars traveling nearly 150 mph and across four lanes of traffic. These plate readers in D.C. take 1,800 images per minute, every one of which is stored in a database.

Basically, these plate readers have made it possible for police to track everyone's movements as they move across the city.

These plate readers and the subsequent database of image captures has tipped the privacy concerns of some -- notably the American Civil Liberties Union. One of their main concerns is naturally the privacy implications.

In the District, laws are in place that limit the amount of time that surveillance camera footage can be kept. The images must be dumped after 10 days, unless there is an actual investigatory reason to keep them. But right now, there is nothing keeping data from the plate readers from being stored for years.

The ACLU says that this database is storing the location data of innocent people. And they are right. The plate readers are casting an all-inclusive net, grabbing license plate numbers indiscriminately.

Clearly this technology is rapidly approaching the point where it could be used to reconstruct the entire movements of any individual vehicle. As we have argued in the context of GPS tracking that level of intrusion on private life is something that the police should not be able to engage in without a warrant.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

How To Leave A Google Places Review Now That Google Changed The Process

by ApexPredator on 2010/05/05

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

How to leave a glowing review of the quality services provided by Gordon's Transportation LLC on Google:

Google Maps Review Step 1


Step one: you must have a gmail account  AND a Google account. (it is possible to have one but not the other)
If you don’t already have a gmail account, please go here http://gmail.com and signup for one
it’s a good idea to list a secondary email that you use frequently to have the password sent to you should you forget it.

Google Maps Review Step 2

Step two: once signed in to gmail, click on Google account in the upper right corner of the page
Before Google changed the process it was easy: all you had to do was hunt for where it said: "write a review"... doing so took you here:


Google Review Box

step three, please type in the following: airport transportation frederick md
that will take you here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1264&bih=533&q=airport+transportation+frederick+md

there will be 2 “yellowish colored” listings at the top (paid or sponsored listings)

The search results below them with the reddish tear drop are the local business listings
Google just changed the name of this service from “Google Local Business Listings” to “Google Places”
As of this post (Memorial Day Weekend 2011) Gordon's Transportation is currently in the #c position (or #3 in Google Places)
Google Places Review How To

Google used to make it easy: There used to be a "write a review" button... Big G hid that in favor of something else, now there's 2 ways of looking at this: if Google made is "easy", too many people would abuse it, by making it harder... it's that much more valuable to you, the business owner. Cuts down on cheating, the harder it is, the more Google will "value" the review

Google Places Review How To Step 2



Google Places Review How To Step 3



iGoogle Places Review How To Step 4



Google Places Review How To Step 5


Google Places Review How To Step 6


Google Places Review How To Step 7


Thank you very much for taking the time to jump through all these hoops!

Note to any business owner reading this post: If you cheat, Google WILL FIND OUT. You aren’t the first person to attempt to leave fake reviews. Google knows how many pieces of toilet paper you used to wipe your butt… any fake reviews will be “lost” when the algorithm discovers that the email address used for the review is owned by the business owner or if said fake review was published from the business owners IP address… every possible way to cheat the system has already been attempted and Google engineers have rewritten the code that runs the algorithm to screen out false reviews.

What happens if you do cheat?
Purgatory


Your listing will be degraded (not rank high) until the spam filter determines if those reviews are real or not.
You have no idea how many business owners call me to get their ranking back because they were overzealous in attempting to boost their own rankings. Frederick Web Promotions can pull your fat out of the fire with the Google Powers That Be for $2400.00


David Bruce Jr
Google Places Consultant Frederick Web Promotions
240 397-9804
Local Google Advertising Strategist David Bruce Jr of Frederick Web Promotions
240 397-9804
Free 1 Hour of SEO Consulting For Facebook Fans of Frederick Web Promotions
Blog Directory