vali petcu blog

Is Rand Fishkin coming to Romania?

vali petcu — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:11:07 +0000

According to this badly written presentation, Rand Fishkin from SeoMoz will be present to an event called SEM Days in Bucharest on June 5th. Good for Romanian Search enthusiasts, they will have much to learn from him.

But, upon further research, he will not be present in person, but will answer questions via skype. OK, but the presentation site does not mention this anywhere, leading ticket buyers to believe Fishkin will be there in person.

And that, my friends, is a lie. Too bad the lie is backed up by people who claim they want to change the romanian internet for the better, like Gabriel Curcudel aka Krumel, who is a DMOZ editor among others.

update: in the program of the event it says he will be on skype

Google should move the money from doodles to search quality

vali petcu — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:35:53 +0000

Another search engine algorithm update, called “Penguin”, hit the web a few days ago. Webmasters are screaming and complaining their positions were lost. Some of them are asking if this is Google’s way of saying SEO is dead. It is, but…

Search Engine Optimisation is a very unfortunate term. Website Optimisation sounds much better, as people sould be more interested of their websites instead of keep checking what Google is doing. That is what i do. Get a higher score on SEO Doctor, try to respect what PageSpeed is saying and that it is. Keep adding content. Keep creating content.

Amazon leaks the name of the new iPad: iPad 3

vali petcu — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:27:09 +0000

Amazon.de published today a book that will appear on March 25. The book is about the iPad and reveals the name of the new iPad. It will nod be iPad2 HD.

The page is here.

Travelling to Romania? Here’s what you need to know

vali petcu — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:06:53 +0000

As a foreigner, you are vulnerable. People may be trying to take advantage of you, including policemen. This may not happen at all… but give yourself a pleasant surprise. This, of course, is not a legal restriction.

You are allowed to drink alcohol in public – in organized spaces like restaurants. All places selling alcohol are required by law to provide toilets. You are NOT allowed to drink in public except in these places.

Street walkers have absolute priority on marked street crossings without semaphores. You will not find ‘manual’ semaphores, when walking just wait for the green light.

If cycling you are required by law to use the bike path, although most are not usable (at least in Bucharest). Bike paths on sidewalks are shared with walkers, so avoid these streets altogether. If none is present, you are required to share the road, no sidewalk biking whatsoever. Note that drivers may not be aware of cyclist rights; also there are few cyclists, so you want to be VERY visible.

There are hours where you are not allowed to make loud noise in your home (I’m not sure what those are, ask your landlord. Something like 22:00 – 6:00 and 14:00 – 18:00.

I want my free stuff now! XviD vs. x264

vali petcu — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:28:46 +0000

A few days ago, the pirate scene rules have changed, changing video standards from .avi to .mp4 on the basis of using a better codec (x264) instead of the old one (xvid). Torrent users complain now (one, two) that their devices cannot play mp4 files and they ask the torrent uploaders to switch to good old avi, showing not only ignorance towards all these free video files come from, but also stupidity.

This hassle reminds me of early torrent days, when being an uploader on a torrent site was consuming time, bandwidth and hardware and users still were not happy with what they were getting. Not much has changed since, I guess.