23 July 2010

Sailing Inspired SEO Blog

Sailing is the art of controlling a boat with large (usually fabric) foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to change the direction and speed of a boat. Mastery of the skill requires experience in varying wind and sea conditions, as well as knowledge concerning sailboats themselves.

While there are still some places in Africa and Asia where sail-powered fishing vessels are used, these craft have become rarer as outboard and modified car engines have become available even in the poorest and most remote areas. In most countries people enjoy sailing as a recreational activity. Recreational sailing or yachting can be divided into racing and cruising. Cruising includes extended trips, short trips within sight of land, and day sailing. Google is like one huge ocean and SEO is the navigation process that you use to have your captain or webmaster find your port of call. Like Google the sea has many currents and wave patterns which all work like a huge Algorithm and much like studying the climate and the sea we can study Google’s algorithm. In computer science, an online algorithm is one that can process its input piece-by-piece in a serial fashion, i.e., in the order that the input is fed to the algorithm, without having the entire input available from the start (much like sailing there are weather patterns as well as storm warnings). In contrast, an offline algorithm is given the whole problem data from the beginning and is required to output an answer which solves the problem at hand. (For example, selection sort requires that the entire list be given before it can sort it, while insertion sort doesn’t.)

Because it does not know the whole input, an online algorithm is forced to make decisions that may later turn out not to be optimal, and the study of online algorithms has focused on the quality of decision-making that is possible in this setting. Competitive analysis formalizes this idea by comparing the relative performance of an online and offline algorithm for the same problem instance. For other points of view on online inputs to algorithms, see streaming algorithm (focusing on the amount of memory needed to accurately represent past inputs much like wave patterns on the ocean), dynamic algorithm (focusing on the time complexity of maintaining solutions to problems with online inputs) and Online machine learning Absolute bearing – The bearing of an object in relation to north. Either true bearing, using the geographical or true north, or magnetic bearing, using magnetic north.

Sailing like SEO can be either competitive, as in collegiate dinghy racing, or purely recreational as when sailing on a lake with family or friends. Racing and Regatta’s are common group activities in the sub-culture of boaters owning larger (twenty-five foot plus) small boats and larger Yachts, and are frequently organized around a Yacht club or Marina organization Sailboat racing can be done on conventional family sailboats racing under one of the simpler handicap formulas or Performance Handicap Rating Formula is one such rule), or can be done on specialized boats with virtually no accommodation or compromises for comfort. Racing is generally either one design, where the boats are close to identical, or handicapped where the boats’ finishing times are adjusted based on their predicted speed potential.

Racing is further broken down into ocean racing, where boats start at one port and race in the ocean and back to the same port or a new destination, or buoy racing where boats race around prescribed courses and return to port at night. Several famous races cross oceans, like the Biennial Singlehanded TransPac Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, or the Newport-Bermuda Race from Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda. Other races actually circumnavigate the globe, like the Volvo Ocean Race or Vendee Globe Race. Weather you are a casual boater or an avid sailor getting ready to circumnavigate the globe Sailing like Google requires you to take time and read the currents and waves and the more time you spend on the water the better you become at reading the waves and this is just like optimization the more time you spend reading Google the better your optimization efforts will become. This Blog was inspired by Laurin Vroom who went sailing for the first time last weekend and loved it.

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.

George William Curtis

Nexonta Technologies Inc