January is half over but there's still plenty of events to catch. In the next two weeks, London, San Francisco and Amsterdam will be home to a variety of tech-related seminars and conferences. Keep up to date with ReadWriteWeb's weekly events guide by downloading the entire calendar in iCal format or importing it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

20 January 2010: London

New Digital Revenue Streams Seminar

Madgex and Abacus e-Media are hosting a free seminar that will offer advice and case studies from media organisations that have successfully created a direct impact on profit margins. The event is supported by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP)/> [...]

Sat Jan 16, 2010 11:00 am

As most SEO professionals know, the main factors in off-page optimization are the number and quality of inbound links to your site. According to an article in New York Magazine, inbound links are an 80% accurate predictor of traffic to your site too. That means if you want to rank in the search engines for your primary keyword phrases, you should focus on getting as many quality inbound links as you can.

These days, social media is more important than ever for getting inbound links. With several companies focusing on real-time search results (Google, Twitter, OneRiot), you can’t ignore the social aspect of SEO any longer. Here are 12 ways you can get more inbound links using social media:

Network with Blogs in Your Niche

Blogs are still the bread and butter of the social sphere. Search for blogs about your topic on Technorati and Alltop and provide valuable content those groups can link to. But don’t expect people to find you - make it happen!

• Submit your best articles to blog carnivals - Blog carnivals are lists of related links that a blogger (the blog carnival host) posts to his or her blog. Go to http://blogcarnival.com to browse subject listings.
• Start your own link round-up - Saturday is a good day to post the best links of the week along with short summaries. Not only do you look resourceful, but you are helping your busy audience.
• Provide incentive for backlinks - In your round-up, you can include a section about people who have mentioned you or your blog. If you don’t do a round-up, start a press page and put every legitimate blog on there, big or small.
• Comment on other blogs - Most comment systems use a ìrel=nofollowî tag which tells search engines not to count the link in determining page rank; ho/> [...]
  
  Sun Apr 18, 2010 18:05 pm

  ---

  Google Adds to Google Maps Suggest Feature
  Share |
  
  

  Google recently launched Suggest for Google Maps in several countries, and has now expanded the availability of the feature to ten more domains. The feature has also gotten some improvements.
  
  The suggestions in Google Maps now include more information like the address of the business or the district that a place is in. "This extra information helps you find and select the exact business or location you're seeking," say Engineer Steffen Meschkat and Product Manager Peter Lidwell.
  
  "As a team based in our Zürich office, we understand the importance of getting information that is locally relevant," the pair says. "We've built this knowledge into Suggest for Google Maps so that you get the most useful suggestions depending on where you're zoomed into on the map. For example, if you search for 'Mandela' in San Francisco, you'll see items such as Mandela High School and businesses in nearby Oakland."

  

  Those who are signed into their Google accounts and have their web history enabled can also see their personalized suggestions, based on past searches.
  
  The suggestions feature is currently available to Google Maps users in China, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, United States, and the United Kingdom. Google says it's looking to expand it worldwide soon.

  [...]
  
  Thu Apr 22, 2010 08:45 am

  ---

  Rethink Every Assumption

  Share |

  
  

  Richard Florida posted about The Great Car Reset, talking about how America’s passion for cars might be waning a bit. In another story, with video, Florida talked about how we should rethink home ownership (the video is below – click through if you can’t see it). He’s not wrong in either case, or rather, it’s something to consider.

  I grew up thinking home ownership was the goal. I have a loft in northern Massachusetts that’s about 955 square feet, with a wife and two kids and two cats in it. It’s a wee bit small. So, I’ve been thinking about homes and clicking the occasional real estate link that Kat sends me. But do I want to own?

  We use to think homes were important places to store equity. Wow, that sure didn’t work out for a lot of people in the last few years. Even if a home stores equity, you can’t actually get at that money until you sell, so it’s money that’s not being used. In essence, it’s not earning you anything if it’s just sitting there in the home, still. So, a home as a simple residence isn’t exactly a great investment these days (at least by some people’s thinking).

  What about cars? Cars depreciate the moment you buy them. They rarely go up in value. They require maintenance, parking fees, etc. And we usually own cars when we live in the suburbs, but that brings us back to the real estate question, and whether or not we even want to be in the suburbs any more. If we reurbanize, if we rethink our cities, if we rework how we work, would we need to throw $20,000 or more into something that just moves us from A to B?

  I’m just throwing this all out there to talk about, to think about. The video is interesting, too. What do you think?