According to this article in Computerworld 10Million$. Yes 10 fucking million.

During a SEO conference in London, Rand Fishkin, president of a SEO firm recieved an offer from a poker site owner. The offer was simple, get a search ranking in the top 5 using white hat methods for an online poker or gambling site and we will buy that site from you for $10 million. Needless to say Fishkin was blown away. He spoke to other gambling site owners and the response was even more surprising. They said if a site can really rank there we will buy it for more than $10 million.

To understand why site owners are willing to shell out so much is because a single online gambling customer brings in atleast $1000. Its easy to see why site owners would pay so much. It seems that being at the top of Google is the most important part of the marketing plan of such sites. Imagine you are running a e-commerce site and you had the option of paying a certain amount to appear on the top of Google results, how much would you pay?

While surfing I stumbled upon a contest being organized by Slideshare. Its the best World’s Best Presentation Contest. Users upload presentations and a panel of judges decide. The panel includes people like Guy Kawasaki. There are cool prizes, 1st prize is an Alienware desktop with Vista. I was flipping through the entries when I found this presentation. Its about 25 Styles of Blogging. The presentation is actually pretty cool. I think I am a combination of a lot of types.

What about you? Download ppt here. See here. I am unable to embed it right now.

This isn’t a rant or something like that. Everybody who reads my blog knows that I switched to OS X sometime back. For the past few days I have been using Vista Ultimate on my macbook pro and now I am seriously considering that to switch to windows again.

Ofcourse the fact that Vista’s aero graphics run super smooth on my macbook pro is an added advantage. But just a shiny UI isn’t enough to persuade me. Some pressing reasons are as follows:

1. I feel that my Mac learning curve is far longer than Vista’s. Tiger does everything for me but I do not control the system. In Vista its more like I am running the show. Its not that Tiger cant be fully mastered, just that mastering Vista is a lot faster.

2. MS has really sharpened the interface and the general functionality of the system from XP. One can always say that Vista can still improve but the same can be said of Apple. If Tiger was really fantastic why would Apple introduce Leopard. Vista is a pleasure to use not just because its new but its beautiful to look at.

3. MS has provide excellent backwards compatibility in Vista. None of my previous software has had a problem working with Vista till now. And I like that. No more looking on the internet for mac solutions.

4. Tiger is more secure but Vista isnt bad either. On my XP laptop, I hardly faced a corrupt disk or crash due to a virus or something simply because I was alert. Vista makes my job easier with new functions such as UAC. Vista isnt immune but I doubt I would face a serious problem while using it.

5. Several people find the UAC annoying but I think its the best part of Vista. I had it disabled for some time but found that its better if I had kept it running so that atleast I know whats happening in my system.

6. The biggest advantage is that I can take full advantage of the Live Experience that Microsoft is trying to provide users.

I am sure people would disagree with me and thats why I want to know why would a windows user switch to Mac OS X and not Vista.