The agenda for the show was:

- Microsoft “creative” adons to the new IE7 - apparently recommending spam tools too!http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6407

- SEO No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament - Who will bet for Dave? http://seoblackhat.com/2006/04/27/seo-no-limit-texas-holdem-poker-tournament/

SES Toronto - report
- Organic Forum
- Dynamic Session
- My SEM Toolbox

The Google Bashing Corner …

- Washington Post flame Google! Rightfully?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042900279_pf.html

- Google mes up with curencies …
Jensense: http://www.jensense.com/archives/2006/05/major_currency.html

- Google hires two new chefs … Talk about meaningless PR!
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060428-092131

- Google Spam notification service. Good or bad?
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/notifying-webmasters-of-penalties/

Google Maps live in Europe!
Finally some good news …

Matt Cutts - Miss USA 2006? It really looks like family to me …:)
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/miss-kentucky-wins-miss-usa/
http://www.demib.dk/billeder/google/matt-cutts/matt-cutts-miss2006/
When is “evil” not evil?
- Google redefining the “Do No Evil” statement …?

Download the MP3 file or go to the Strikepoint archives

In brief we discussed Google adwords targetting and how they get it sometimes badly wrong…. more details on my blog
Jason also brought up a good point that if BigMouthMedia have been removed from Google for spamming how come that they are still an Adwords professional?

Plus we discussed how easy it is these days to spam Google… with the 85% domain name, 15% link rule.

DaveN

Maybe it was because it was two weks ago that we did the last show or maybe we are just messed up in general. I will let others decide but in any case we had one really good show today talking about last weeks search engine strategies show, the $90 million Google settlement on click fraud, Googlepages and a bunch of other stuff …

As promised, here are a few of the links used in the show:

Googlepages
Will Google be able to make a “cleaner” network than the “crap-networks” of the past? Apparently not, judging from what we already see in the index, such as this one: http://buy.viagra.cialis.googlepages.com/

- nice, right

SES
Check out the extensive coverage at: http://www.seroundtable.com/

The best tip of the week goes out to all the exhibitors at the SES confences: We don’t want you monster trucks and large scale merchandise! We want T-shirts! LOTS of T-Shirts!! And, to make it even easier on you, you can just pack a bunch and send it ahead of the conference to Dave and me. That way we say an awful lot of space in our bags going home to Europe. Thanks.

Speaking of T-shirts … We decided to make some cool Strikepoint T-shirts. We should have them ready for the great SES show at San Jose in August. So, you should come there! We probably won’t bring one for each of the 5-6,000 participants so be quick, go to the WebmasterRadio booth and get your T-shirt. Just keep in mind, we may ask you to do something “weird” in order to “win” the T-shirt - here is a cartoon from a recent even …

Download the MP3 file or go to the Strikepoint archives

Anyway, I lost this pst file and anyone working on Outlook knows just how much of a nightmare that can be - so I’ll tell you about my experience and how I got most of it back with the magic of my recovery-fingers …. and a hammer …

Last Sunday I was checking emails (again) and as a mail came in from my good friend Anne Kennedy my Outlook just froze. I am not saying it has anything to do with Anne – it would probably have frozen anyway. Outlook freeze up now and then – that’s just part of the “joy” of using Outlook and we all live with that. Restart and move on. But not this time. It was more bad than usual. Outlook would (after some pst file scanning time) open but I was not able to read all mails, it was incredibly slow and I could not send or receive anything. What now …

First thing I did was trying to move the pst file from my old Dell to my new super nice IBM Thinkpad T43p that I just got. It just did not work. I got some strange error message about some “cyclic” thing – and what do I know? A geekier friend of mine explained that I probably had some “bad sectors” - whatever that is. Bad, bad , bad.

Then I tried exporting my emails from the Outlook on the Dell to a new file. However, I just got the same “cyclic” error saying it could not access the file.

After a bit of research I found out that Outlook comes with a little (well hidden!) tool called Scanpst that can be used to recover bad pst files. If you want to find it on your computer do a search for “scanpst.exe”. After a few hours of scanning the result came in: Error: Scanning not possible because of bad sectors (or something like that) – run Scandisk. Shit!

OK, so I went on with Scandisk. It took forever – several hours, well into the next day. Finally it was done – but with errors. Some bad sectors was apparently not repairable. Now what …
I went on with a defragmentation hoping that bad sectors might be moved to better sectors on the disc. Wow! I don’t think I have ever seen such a fragmented disc. There was one big red (fragmented) block taking up almost 1/3 of the disc. I guess that must have been my pst file. The defragmentation took forever. When it was done the report said that there was a few files it could not defragment – including was (off course!) my pst file. Damn!

After some more research I found a company that looked trustworthy with a solution for recovering pst files. Great! They even had a demo that could do the scan, to check if files could be recovered, and then I could pay the $129 the software cost. With all the time I had already spend $129 seemed like a good deal. So I downloaded it an started scanning. And I scanned, and I scanned. For 3 FULL days (over 70 hours!) it scanned away. Then I got suspicious …

The progress bar was moving fine but every time it got to the end it just started over, there was not button to stop the scanning and I was afraid what might happen if I just killed the application. So I wrote to the support of Stellarinfo. Shortly after (thanks for that!) they wrote back and told me that the software doesn’t work for Outlook 2003 and I should just kill the application. Fuck!

I do have a backup of my pst – but it’s 6 month old. I know, I know, I know – I should have made more regular backups but please be honest with me: Do you have everything perfectly backed up? OK, great for you!

So, I finally gave in and copied my 6 month old pst file to my new IBM Thinkpad. In a last attempt to recover, at least some of my emails, I tried to do another export from Outlook of specific and important folders. WOW! Somehow, between and the Stellar-scans, Skandisk scans, defragmentation and Scanpst something must have happened – even though they all said it did not work. Now I could suddenly export most of the folders I wanted: Inbox, sent box and my client boxes. I only got a few errors – it said some files was missing, but it did finalize the export. Now, the big question was: Are they valid and can I import them on my IBM?

YES! I got them in! Not everything is recovered but the far majority and just about everything important. I have absolutely no idea how I did it – only that it took me a little over a week.
Now I am going to reorganise my pst, make a backup on then – from now on, get a more regular backup schedule set up for my Outlook pst file. That’s for damn sure!

So I thought … well, one person that really deserves a place of honour here at the Strikepoint blog, is Daron Babin. Daron and Brandy Babin founded WebmasterRadio.FM – the home of Strikepoint. Brandy, however, I will get her own picture page here at a later time … This one is for Daron.

Looking through piles of pictures of Daron, and a few more friends to come up soon, I realized just how many of the thousands I have is … well, lets just say “not suited for public use” … Amazing. We sure know how to have fun in this industry. 

Daron at work - the WebmasterRadio.FM booth at Search Engine Strategies 

Don Daron - nothing more to say, really … 

That is one great sandwich - from the famous Carnegie Deli in New York

We to be honest, it’s not really a “The Greatest” show but we had a problem with a somehow lost person. We where sort of short of one. Now, I am not going to rat out on my good buddy Dave. All I will say is that ONE of us got lost. That’s it!

Anyway, our great show engineer, Eddie, fixed us a rerun of one of our more popular shows – the one about BMW and such. This is a good reminder to thank Eddie – again, for all the great work he does for us. You guys have no idea what goes on behind the scenes during show time – Eddie running around trying get a decent stream out of the mess Dave and I creates. Thank you Eddie!

Hope you all enjoy Search Engine Strategies in New York this week. Next week we will talk about what went on for everyone that didn’t go …

Check out the Strikepoint archives

The pimps rock!

Yes, it’s true - now TV is re-publishing, what we do on the Web! Amazing. They apparently feel that what we do on the web is so cool and trendy that they need to bring it on TV to keep the audience. Interesting …

Maybe it’s time for the the real SEO Pimps of SES to get their own show on the air! Time to market should be just about right …  

PICTURE: The Pimp SEO Team at the recent SES Conference in Chicago (December 2005)

Mikkels computer breaks down, but he puts everything in order for the show. Dave also helps Mikkel celebrate his 40th birthday! We tackle such topics as Chinese Search Censorship, Big Mouth Medias dissapearance, and excitement over the upcoming SES Conference in New York!!

 
Download the MP3 file or go to the Strikepoint archives