Moving to WP

This blog is now on my own domain, The Dude Dean Please update your bookmarks and rss readers.

DISM #thenewefficiency

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Win 7 deployment enhancements #thenewefficiency

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Do You Know What Your Facebook Privacy Settings Are?

I was doing some long overdue maintenance on my Facebook requests this last weekend trying to clean up group invites and application requests. Something bugged me as I was clicking around those application in the wee hours of the morning and I couldn't place my finger on it. I kept on seeing my social media friends in the ads inside of the applications and it didn't dawn upon me until I saw one friend in particular, Yvette (who I know has a thing for her privacy), Ines, Agustina, Maria, Tami and my own avatar in one of those ads. Two years ago I thought I had fixed this issue with Beacon and then it hit me, Facebook is invading our privacy.






From Facebook Principles (Privacy Policy)
1.You should have control over your personal information.
2.You should have access to the information others want to share.

OK sounds good, like Facebook is on your side. Not that facebook is trying to take advantage of Your Good Name, Your Image, Your Avatar, Your Personality and/or Your Online Reputation. Sounds good in theory. In practice however Facebook doesn't at any time along the way prompt you to lock down your privacy settings nor does it say they are going to use Your photo in ads on their popular Facebook applications throughout the site. Nor does the privacy policy say anything about compensation for use of said images. Read a little bit deeper into the fine print of the Facebook Privacy Policy:

Sharing Your Information with Third Parties

*(Bullet point 4) If you, your friends, or members of your network use any third-party applications developed using the Facebook Platform ("Platform Applications"), those Platform Applications may access and share certain information about you with others in accordance with your privacy settings. You may opt-out of any sharing of certain or all information through Platform Applications on the Privacy Settings page. In addition, third party developers who have created and operate Platform Applications ("Platform Developers"), may also have access to your personal information (excluding your contact information) if you permit Platform Applications to access your data. Before allowing any Platform Developer to make any Platform Application available to you, Facebook requires the Platform Developer to enter into an
agreement which, among other things, requires them to respect your privacy settings

How do you opt out? Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the log out link. Select PRIVACY. Then select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes.



Think your out of the facebook ads? Think again, because I thought I was. "How long have you had your privacy settings on facebook locked down?". Since Day 1, including the Ads setting. And I check it (and my other privacy settings), every time Facebook does an overhaul. "Am I imagining this? "You may opt out of appearing in your friends' Facebook ads." http://bit.ly/k0gp6" Very interesting, so if Yvette has her account on lock down and I though I had my account on lock down. Then why am I seeing her avatar image along with mine in one of those pesky facebook application ads?

Here's the kicker! Remember Bullet Point Four Above? It goes on;

"Before allowing any Platform Developer to make any Platform Application available to you, Facebook requires the Platform Developer to enter into an agreement which, among other things, requires them to respect your privacy settings and strictly limits their collection, use, and storage of your information. However, while we have undertaken contractual and technical steps to restrict possible misuse of such information by such Platform Developers, we of course cannot and do not guarantee that all Platform Developers will abide by such agreements. Please note that Facebook does not screen or approve Platform Developers and cannot control how such Platform Developers use any personal information that they may obtain in connection with Platform Applications."

So basically Facebook has a rule that they aren't able or willing to enforce. Facebook could phrase it such that they can and will delete applications in breech of their privacy policy but that goes against Facebook wanting to have more apps and more clicks on their social network. I informed Yvette of the bad news and she has some interesting counterpoints; "This is wrong, on so many levels. I have not formally endorsed a single commercial product, voluntarily... And, ethically, if I agreed to product endorsements in the FB TOS, I should be informed of what they are. False advertising. And, what if I am morally or contractually prevented from endorsing this or that product, then what? Troubling."

So Basically it falls on the end users to police Facebook and the application developers if they are breaking the Facebook privacy policy and using your images and likeness to sell their wares. Facebook claims these are "rumors" but they are not. But realistically if the setting for this was off by default, would you want to turn it on?



When you catch an app you don't think isn't playing by the rules remove and report it. Also Facebook didn't bother to carry over my setting for Beacon from the older version of Facebook. If Facebook can carry over all the information, apps, pictures from the older version Facebook can remember my Privacy setting for Beacon. We shouldn't have to protect our privacy EVERY TIME Facebok does an update to their social network.

Facebook's got you covered! Don't worry, we'll leave beacon on FOR you.


Facebook Updated my Privacy Settings for me. Notice its OFF (Or set "Only My Friends")
Do You Know What Your Facebook Privacy Settings Are?

Open Letter to Wired and Ars - Reddit Sponsors

Dear staff at Wired and Ars,

Long time reader, love your stuff, its all good. Been reading you guys for a very long time, arstechnica since 1999. I along with others submit Your(meaning Ars and Wired's) stories on Social Bookmarking sites.

For example:

• Samsung Fields Green, Ultra-Slim LCD TVs (Wired | Digg Front Pager | Made popular 9 days ago 424 Diggs) PR 4
• Ars Cracks TV Fringe Code (Ars - Digg Front Pager | Made popular Apr 8, 2009 | PR 4 | 726 Diggs)
• Avant-Garde Cellist Zeo Keating (Wired | not a Front Pager but a solid showing of votes)
• Ma.gnolia Suffers Major Data Loss, Site Taken Offline (Wired | Made popular Jan 31, 2009 | 514 Diggs)
  

However I have to let You (meaning Ars and Wired) know whats going on over at one of these Social Bookmarking sites: Reddit. Reddit just recently banned a bunch of users on their social media site. No reasons were given, no warnings were issued. I guess My Grammar needs to improve( a joke from Ben's post about this issue, see below). Now I tried (Unsuccessfully) to contact reddit about this issue and received no response. This leaves me no recourse but to get in touch with You, Reddit's sponsors aka "Sister Sites".

You are going to rectify this situation. You are going to explain to Reddit just how the internet, community and social media work. You are going to teach them how to play fairly and nicely. And most importantly how to build a community. Reddit is going to restore accounts, apologize and send us Hoodies (if they don't have hoodies explain to Reddit why people on the net like them) and Schwag (and I want LOTS of Schwag, maybe an Ars and Wired Hoodie XXL).

This is going onto Digg and Twitter, so I am certain you will find this VERY quickly. The lesson here is not to mess with the Social Media Elite. By that I mean people that are Digg Elites and "Twitterati" who used to Digg your stuff and Tweet your stuff to 1000s of friends and in some cases 10,000s of friends. Consider this a very clear and transparent message. I am turning the tables on you. But unlike Reddit, I am letting You know that You are now black balled.

As "Sister Sites" of Reddit, I am certain you will quickly resolve this issue. I am sure my schwag; Hoodies (XXL remember?), Wired Subscription, T-Shirts, Wired Subscription, Mugs, Wired Subscription, hats, Wired Subscription, and Red Swingline Stapler are already in the snail mail.

Yours Truly,
The Dude Dean

PS Style, Epicurious, Concierge you guys are next.
PPS Digg and Mixx crew, Don't sub these two sites, I am declaring a "No-Fly Zone", if you see noobs subbing from these domains please Bury until reddit, wired and Ars make this right to G-Man, Ben, myself and all the others that were unfairly banned.

**Update**
@arstechnica Good bye Ars! @TheDudeDean Bye! Where are you going? :) @arstechnica I posted this 17 days ago and tweeted it to you: Open Letter to Wired and Ars: http://digg.com/d1sO8V?t @TheDudeDean Oh right. Bye! :)
Open Letter to Wired and Ars – Reddit Sponsors

Useful Twitter Tools

In this post I am going to round up some useful twitter tools for either the twitter noob or the twitter elite (twitterati) to use. These twitter tools are just informational, analytical and in some cases slightly funny. Instead of giving you a massive list of all the sites that are about twitter, I am giving you a useful list that you can use to help you with Twitter SMO.

Twitter Grader - This one gives a stab at giving you the secret twitter ranking (not 100% accurate but pretty close). It lacks any charts or graphs, but gives you; a tweet cloud, a top ten list of likeminded users and lets you search by city. Example tweet: @TheDudeDean got a Twitter Grade of 99.7/100 The first time I ranked myself I was a 93

TweetStats - This Twitter tool is just raw stats with the best charts and graphs and a tweet cloud.

Follow Cost - This Twitter tool is very useful, it tells you how often your new twitter follower tweets broken down in milliscobles This is a very handy for spotting those extra chatty tweople. They also break down follow cost by putting "follow cost, @aholic follow cost (my current level), nuclear follow cost" on top of the user profile page so you clearly know what you are getting into. Follow Cost also breaks down Political Tweets and Replies. Example tweet @TheDudeDean has a follow cost of 349.95 milliscobles.

Retweetist - This Twitter tool gives you a bar graph of the last 30 days worth of your retweets. Using this tool can reveal how much social influence a user has or doesn't have.

Friend or Follow - This Twitter tool lets you know who you are following, but they're not following back and it has a list of your "fans" that you chose not to follow.

Twinfluence - Twitter Influence Analyzer - This twitter tool measures your twitter rank (like grader, its a best guess), your Twitter Reach, Velocity, Social Capital and Centralization

Example: TheDudeDean's Rank: #1,157 (96%), Velocity: 4,610 second-order followers/day, Social Capital: 2,337.1 +1.3 High, Centralization: 9.98% / +0.2 Average - Resilient

Twitturly - This Twitter tool lets you see what links your prospective twitter follower is tweeting.

Twitter Counter - This Twitter tool is analytics for your follower count. Twitter Counter also lets you compare three users. Twitter Counter also has a top 100 list.

Useful Twitter Tools

Google Has Major Malfunction

It's a rare day when you can honestly say Google messed up. Today is that day. If you click through on a SERP today and get; "Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!", don't worry about it. All results are getting this Malware warning.





There is no word about this issue on the official Google blog yet so stay tuned. I will update this post with more info.

This issue seems to be resolved and Google admits its human. #Googlemayharm

Google Has Major Malfunction

The Bush Legacy - Miserable Failure 2.0

Why am I blogging about George W. Bush and The Bush Legacy on my humble little blog about SEO and SMO? I am bring back Miserable Failure to the internet. Miserable Failure is the real Bush Legacy.

Today Barak Obama was sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States of America. As PotUS44 he has a brand spanking new White House web page. As a patriotic American, I was looking at the new site while watching the Inauguartion and I went browsing for GW's bio page on the new site and got first Digg on his page and for good measure, I also put it on Newsvine, Reddit, Mixx, and Current.

The terms; "Miserable Failure", "The Bush Legacy", and "worst President ever" do not appear on this page. The opportunity cost on all these social media sites, for the most part, they only let you post a link if you do it first. So let's all bring back Miserable Failure to George W. Bush. He deserves it. Spread the word and give him a vote on your favorite social media site. While you are at it give it a retweet as well:

RT @TheDudeDean: Let's send Bush off in style. Please digg, fave and RT http://tinyurl.com/82p2ns #miserablefailure2.0

The Bush Legacy – Miserable Failure 2.0

The Busy Brain Twitter Debacle

Did you get a bunch of followers on the 20th? Wonder where your new twitter followers came from? Thank The Busy Brain.

The story begins for me when I posted my Twitter Grade. Then last Sunday (Oct 19th, 12:45AM), I get the following email in my twitter filter in Gmail, TheBusyBrain is now following you on Twitter! I check him out, profile looks good, friends are pretty even, I think nothing of it. I follow him back.

The next day(Oct 20th) it hits the fan. I get around 40 new follow requests on twitter in one day. Most of them are very spammy accounts and all mostly fresh meat looking noobs. I was wondering what the hell was going on and I caught a tweet linking to my new Pal, The Busy Brain's Blog and I quickly figured out where the twitter noobs were coming from.

The Busy Brain spent some time and figured out how to game the twitter system a bit. He found some Tweople that some might be considered "Twitterati", people that are active on twitter, that read their email alerts and have a high chance of following back. So he did do some homework on his little Social Media Optimization Experiment.

The Busy Brain failed in at least two ways with his Social Media Optimization Experiment. First he didn't let the victims know what they were in for. If you are going to have a Social Media Love in, it is only fair that everyone knows they are going to be participating in the Social Media Love in. Secondly the space monkeys he got were all random people in addition to being noobs on twitter and a few of them were down right spammy. The idea behind Social Media Marketing (SMM) is to NOT be spammy, your goal should be to engage people that want to hear about your brand, your products or your ideas. The goal should be to get people to follow you for your content or insight.

The Busy Brain ended up seeing the error of his ways in less than a day and apologized. Next time you get followed on twitter, maybe you should sleep on it instead of following back right away. Now I have some extra pruning to do on my twitter list this week.

The Busy Brain Twitter Debacle

SEO Advice - The Horse Pill

The other night I had a lady ask me how to solve a tricky SEO problem she was having with a competitor and she asked me because a friend of mine told her I am an SEO Consultant.

She told me her SEO problems and I gave her a solution that was a bit outside of the box and she didn't understand that it was the solution to her SEO problem. She kept on saying here is the problem, here it is and I told her just to remove it. Sometimes you have to let go. But above all, sometimes you have to listen, then you understand.

When you know your competitor is your superior at SEO or worse yet is a SEO Consultant with far superior SEO knowledge, SEO Experience and link energy than you possess. It is time for you to get your own SEO Consultant and then LISTEN to him. Sometimes the answer is going to be a horse pill you aren't willing to swallow, but like a rip tide, if you fight it the wrong way you are always going to lose. So if your way clearly isn't working and you have wasted two years doing it your way. Listen to good SEO advice when you ask for it and try it another way for six months. What do you have to lose when you have already lost? Nothing, right?

SEO Advice – The Horse Pill

Legend of the SEO Champion

Last Thursday I was at the August Presentation Style South Florida SEO Social Meetup and I got to hear about the SEO Champion at SES, basically a crazy guy that showed up at SES, crashed a private Microsoft event and caused all sorts of mayhem.

The SEO Champion's legend (infamy?) is spreading like wild fire around the blogosphere and some people even think the SEO Champion is legit.

I have some tips for The SEO Champion's next event:

1. Don't go drunk
2. If you are on meds, take them
3. Don't start any fights
4. Don't wear a chicken suit
5. Don't try to sell SEO Services at SES to legitimate SEO Consultants. (that is just like selling snow, ice and a refrigerator to an Eskimo)
   

Anyways this guy is sort of smart because he is being linked and talked about quite a bit. Maybe all the crazy clients will find him.

Legend of the SEO Champion

User Experience Design and SEO

What does user experience design (UX) have to do with SEO? EVERYTHING!!

Usability and user experience design can help improve your conversion rates, but this takes time and effort. Bad design can lead to a poor user experience. Tweaking your website's UX can have big time payoffs for your SEO efforts, leading to more conversions and an increase in your bottom line.

A good UX design incorporating business and marketing goals while catering to your end user's Experience isn't easy and it doesn't happen over night. The template and graphic tweaks can take a week to do and roll out. Then you have to wait a month to see test the results of your new UX design tweaking. One of three things will most likely happen: nothing will improve; your stats and conversions will remain steady (+/-3% on your conversions); you will have a modest gain in conversions (maybe 3-9% more conversions, which is a pretty good gain in conversions) or you will have a substantial gain in conversions (over 10%, up to 30% increase in conversions)

The key is patience and being able to afford tweaks and changes on your website. Who does User Experience Design and SEO tweaks on their website(s)? How about Google for starters. I recently listened to one of their podcasts and they had a 30% gain on conversions for one of their products, Picasa. Want to know why Google does so damned good? They spend time and money on good UX. And if Google doesn't get the UX tweaks right the first time, they do UX tweaks again until they get the bump that they need.

Don't just think you are going to make a website and get the user experience design right the first time. This is never the case. Every website is always in Beta, it just might not say it on the logo. If you care about keeping a healthy defensible competitive edge on your competition keep user experience design in your mind and your budget. Defending and improving your Defensible competitive edge like this can be dangerously awesome for your bottom line.

User Experience Design and SEO

Cost of Winning A Macbook Air - The Whuffie Factor

I was talking to a designer friend of mine at Superstarch yesterday and Marcus asked me, "How much effort did you put into winning the Macbook Air?" I thought that was a really good question, so it needs a really good answer. How much is a $1800 Macbook Air worth? How much was the Whuffie Factor?

The answer to his question is simple, yet very complex. First I took a look at what the contest was and decided to throw my hat over the wall, join the site and invited some friends. Very quickly I put myself in the a position to get in the running for it by having the most referrals on the site, having the Most Followers, and being the Most Commented. I also had a ton of content from the services that Second|Brain supported.

Once Second|Brain choose me as one of the Six it was all downhill from there.

I took a look at the other competitors none of them had the network or Social Media empire that I have. I was very thankful that someone like Scoble wasn't in on the Contest and later when they turned it into a vote I knew the Macbook Air was mine, unless all the people on Second|Brain voted against me, I just had more Social Capital then everyone else.

What is social capital? My 474 friends on Myspace, my 320 friends on Multiply, my 309 followers on Twitter, my 146 Followers Plurk, my 538 friends Iconbuffet and my 234 friends Facebook. This is the Whuffie Factor I had in my favor. 1547 or so people (some are dupes), that is about a dollar a person. All my years of social spelunking paid off in the form of Whuffie.

The cost of time was about five extra hours a day between my misc tasks over the course of six days. One of the days I even took off and helped a friend fix up his new house. The real cost was social momentum; one year on Iconbuffet, four years on Myspace, four years on Multiply, one year on Twitter, one month on Plurk and two years on Facebook. All that time spent on these social networks was what won me the contest. I just had more social capital then anyone else in the running. Who knew having a giant SEO Social Media network could pay off so well?

The Whuffie Factor = $1,749.95
The mere fact that I won the Macbook Air in the Second|Brain Contest - Priceless.



Cost of Winning A Macbook Air – The Whuffie Factor

Second Brain - Vote for Me!

I am in the running for a Macbook Air on Second Brain, join up, follow me and vote Dude FTW! Contest Ends on the Third!
http://secondbrain.com/contest
http://digg.com/apple/Vote_for_the_Top_SecondBrainer
Contest ends on the 3rd

Joomla Growing Pains

Wow what a month for Joomla! Joomla is going through some Growing Pains. The long awaited Joomla 1.5 was release last month, along with three other updates (Joomla 1.5.1, Joomla 1.14, Joomla 1.15) all in one months time! These updates address security vulnerabilities and a few bugs fixes.

The last two updates were six months apart. Joomla! 1.0.13 hit July 07 and Joomla! 1.0.12 was Dec 06. So its a bit refreshing to see all these updates and fixes all in one month.

Joomla 1.5 (which has been in beta since Oct 06) seemed like it was never going to come out! I am glad its out of beta. I am going to start using more of the beta software in test domains to stay ahead of the curve from now on.

Joomla Growing Pains

Google update - Jan 08

Google just updated last week. For most web sites nothing special happened but for others Google took away some of their precious page rank on their web site or blogs. I am not talking about one or two point page rank reductions, this Google Update took (and the last one as well) took away 3 points or more. And in some cases a few sites lost all their Page Rank.

Some of the harder hit web sites were Renkoo, Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia where I saw some users that are in my network loose all their Pageranks. Renkoo lost two points on its main page (dropping from a PR7 to a PR5) and most of the users I know lost at least one point on their blogs. The worst was on Delicio.us where a CEO's linking blog went from a page rank five to zero, this reduction also happened to a few other people on other networks as well. The best for me was one of my local competitors lost out as well, dropping from a PR 7 to a PR 4, on his main web page.

What happened? Google made things tougher in most cases (except Renkoo who did it to themselves). Having a web site or a social network without a strong sense of what SEO is all about is like saying I want to have zero defensible competitive edge. Having an Strong sense of SEO could have preserved Renkoo's former Page Rank at seven or improved it upwards. For a few bloggers the reductions came because they (like Renkoo) were asleep at the wheel.

Maintaining a strong position in Google (and thus your defensible competitive edge) requires constant work, vigilance, and a keen eye for detail. Think of working on your web page like just like doing work on a race car, sometimes you have to go into the pit for either gas or tires. A lot of people's web sites just ran out of gas while on the track. So just like racing, make sure you stay on track, don't fall asleep at the wheel and keep a good SEO guy on your team.

Google update – Jan 08

Colbert Once Again The Greatest Living American

After having his site taken off Google for the term, "The Greatest Living American" for being Google bombed to the number one spot. Stephen Colbert is back with a vengeance. The Cobertnation is now winning for the term "The Greatest Living American" both with and without quotes. I guess Google's work around for Google Bombing isn't working again.



Update 10.01.07 Looks like this was very short lived. Google updated the day after I posted this blog. I also fixed the typos. Sorry to all who were offended over two typos.

"The Greatest Living American"

Colbert Once Again The Greatest Living American

Mystery Meat Navigation

Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) is something that is one of my major pet peeves. I run into at least one new site a day that has Mystery Meat Navigation. Lets take a look at a really bad old site that has Mystery Meat Navigation and once you see how bad this method can be. You will be more wary of using Mystery Meat Navigation in your next web design.

Reggaereport

Look at the left Menu on this site. What do you see? Mystery Meat Navigation!! Now quickly! What do this icons do? Do they help you find useful information on the site? Or do they confuse you? Now if you were able to tell those links are: Irie 'Tings, World a'Reggae News, New Releases, CD Reviews, Crucial Cuts, Photo Album, Fan Mail, About Us, Advertise; without looking at the source code. Thats great. Granted the old designer put alt tags in his Mystery Meat Navigation, but they aren't working in Firefox. Avoid doing your next cool menu with Mystery Meat Navigation if you can.

Mystery Meat Navigation

The Difference Between SEO and SEM

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are Two different things altogether. The two things go hand in hand but are often thought of as one thing. Search Engine Optimization is what is done to your site to ensure that the end users have a friendly easy to use web site with SEF Menus and SEF URLS that Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com crawl through and find your content. Search Engine Marketing is doing the advertising and marketing of your site. Ironical this is all done "offsite" whereas SEO is mostly done "onsite". SEO is a more technical process than SEM and involves a deeper understanding of search engine algorithms.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves advertising and target marketing in order to draw traffic to websites. This includes:

Pay-for-inclusion - Many SEM companies guarantee your site will be indexed by the search engines within a short period of time, and if you really want to you can directly submit your site to the engines. DO NOT DO THIS until your site is done. Also do not go around your SEO/SEM advertiser's back and do this multiple times, this is a form of spam which you are penalized for. Patience is the key. Submission fees are required for submissions to search engines and directories.

Email Marketing (aka "Email Blasts" and "Spamming") - I firmly do not believe in Email Marketing. Unless you already have your own list of clients that read your emails, don't Email Market. I never open spam and everyone I know hates being spammed. So why pay to piss off 10,000 people or more every week? Conversely the Email Marketer will tell you not to SEO or SEM your web site in more cost effective ways. They want you to keep paying for Email Blasts. I think spending your time and money on natural position on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com is a much better business model then sending out 10,000 emails where 90% of them are not even read.

Traditional Ads (PPC - Pay Per Click) - Ads are displayed on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) generally these are text based ads, where the copy is written by the SEO/SEM advertiser. Ads are based on the Keyword entered in the search and fees are triggered by impressions. You pay for the ad even if it's not clicked through. You want to work with your SEO/SEM advertiser so that your ads Click Through Rate has a high percentage. You can easily spend hundreds a day for very little ROI.

Link Exchanging - The SEO/SEM advertiser trades for one way, reciprocal and three way link exchanges while making sure they are of the same niche as you web site is and not spammy web sites. Its the hardest part of getting your web site going.

ROI tracking - The SEO/SEM advertiser tracks your Web Site's stats

SEM and SEO are both a necessary evil if you want a successful web site. Make sure that you work with your SEO/SEM advertiser to Market your web site very strongly both before and after you enjoy organic listings in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Remember if you website is brand new and has no content its going to go no where fast. Content is King. Listen to your SEO/SEM advertiser.

The Difference Between SEO And SEM

HBO: Too Hot Not to Handle

Heat waves. Melting glaciers. Rising sea levels. Catastrophic storms. Migrating viruses. Population displacement. Over the past 100 years, the mass consumption of fossil fuels, especially in America, has contributed to a dangerous warming of the earth that has adversely impacted the way we live.

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