News Update Place

Have you noticed anything different with Google lately? We webmasters certainly have, and if recent talk on Google’s algorithm changes started in November 2003 with the Florida update, now remembered as a legendary event among the webmaster community. This was followed by the Austin, Brandy, Bourbon, and Jagger updates. Google updates used to occur monthly; they’re now carried out quarterly. But with so many servers, there seem to be several different results rolling through the servers at any time during a quarter.
BigDaddy, Google’s most recent update, is partly to blame. Believed to be using a 64-bit architecture, BigDaddy is an update of Google’s infrastructure as much as it is an update of its search algorithm. Pages lose their first page rankings and drop to the 100th page, or worse still, the Supplemental index!
BigDaddy’s algorithm problems fall into four categories: canonical issues, duplicate content issues, the Sandbox, and supplemental page issues.
Canonical Issues. These occur when a search engine treats www.yourdomain.com, yourdomain.com, and yourdomain.com/index.html as different web sites. When Google does this, it flags the different copies as duplicate content, and penalizes them. If yourdomain.com is not penalized and all other sites link to your web site using http://www.yourdomain.com/, then the version left in the index will have no ranking. These are basic issues that other major search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN, have no problem dealing with. Google’s reputation as the world’s greatest search engine (self-ranked as a ten on a scale of one to ten) is hindered by its inability to resolve basic indexing issues.
The Sandbox. It’s believed that Google has implemented a time penalty for new links and sites before fully marking the index, based on the presumption that 100,000-page websites can’t be created overnight. Certain web sites, or links to them, are “sandboxed” for a period of time before they are given full rank in the index. Speculation is that only a set of competitive keywords (the ones that are manipulated the most) are sandboxed. A drifting legend in the search engine world, the existence of the Sandbox has been debated, and is yet to be confirmed by Google.
Duplicate Content Issues. Since web pages drive search engine rankings, Black Hat SEOs began duplicating the content of entire web sites under their own domain name, instantly producing a ton of web pages (kind of like downloading an encyclopedia onto your web site). Due to this abuse, Google aggressively attacked duplicate content abusers with their algorithm updates, knocking out many legitimate websites as collateral damage in the process. For example, when someone scrapes your site, Google will look at both renditions of the site, and in some cases it may determine the legitimate one to be the duplicate. The only way to prevent this is to track down sites as they are scraped and then submit spam reports to Google. Issues with duplicate content also arise because there are a lot of legitimate uses for them. News feeds are the most obvious example: a news story is covered by many websites because it’s the content that viewerss want to see. Any filter will inevitably catch some legitimate uses.
as different web sites. When Google does this, it flags the different copies as duplicate content, and penalizes them. If yourdomain.com is not penalized and all other sites link to your web site using http://www.yourdomain.com/, then the version left in the index will have no ranking. These are basic issues that other major search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN, have no problem dealing with. Google’s reputation as the world’s greatest search engine (self-ranked as a ten on a scale of one to ten) is hindered by its inability to resolve basic indexing issues.
Supplemental Page Issues. “Supplemental Hell” to webmasters, the issue has been lurking in places like Webmasterworld for over a year, but it was the major shake-up in late February (coinciding with the ongoing BigDaddy rollout) that finally led to all hell breaking loose in the webmaster community. You may be aware that Google has two indexes: the main index, which is the one you see when you search; and the Supplemental index, a graveyard where old, erroneous and obsolete pages are laid to rest (among others). Nobody’s disputing the need for a Supplemental index, it does indeed provide a worthy cause. But when you’re buried alive, it’s another story! Which is exactly what’s been happening: active, recent, and clean pages have been showing up in the Supplemental index. The true nature of the issue is unclear, nor has a common causing leading to it been determined.

Google’s monthly updates, once fairly predictable, were anticipated by webmasters with both joy and angst. Google followed a well published algorithm that gave each web page a Page Rank (a numerical ranking based on the number and rank of the web pages that link to it). When you searched for a term, Google ordered all the web pages that were deemed relevant to your search by their Page Rank. A number of factors were used to determine the relevancy of pages, including keyword density, page titles, meta tags, and header tags.
This original algorithm favored incoming links that used selected keywords as anchor text. The more sites that linked to yours using that keyword-rich anchor text, the better your search rank for those keywords. As Google became the dominant search force in the early part of the decade, site owners fought for high rankings in its SERPs. The release of Google’s Adsense program made it very lucrative for those site owners who won: if a web site ranked highly for a popular keyword, they could run Google ads under Adsense, and split the revenue with Google! This led to an SEO epidemic that had never before been seen by the webmaster world.
The nature of links between web sites changed. Webmasters found that referring links on their websites could not only reduce their own search engine rankings, but boost those of their competitors as well. Google’s algorithm works in a manner whereby links coming into your web site boost its Page Rank (PR), while outgoing links from your web pages to other web sites reduce your PR. Attempts to boost the page rankings for websites led to people creating link farms, participating in reciprocal link partnerships, and buying and selling links. Instead of using links to provide quality content for their visitors, webmasters now included links to support PRs and for monetary gain.
This led to the wholesale scraping of web sites, as I mentioned earlier. Black Hat SEOs could combine the content of an entire web site with Google’s ad, and a few high-powered incoming links, to produce high page rankings and generate revenue from Google’s Adsense program — all without providing any unique web site content themselves! Aware of the manipulation that was taking place, Google aggressively altered their algorithms to prevent it. Thus began the cat-and-mouse game that has become the Google algorithm: in order to blacklist the duplicate sites so they could provide their users with the most relevant search results, sometimes the algorithm attacked the original site instead of the scraped one.
This led to a period of unstable updates that caused many top ranking, authentic web sites to drop from their ranks. Most end-users may not perceive this to be a problem. As far as they’re concerned, Google’s job is to provide the most relevant listings for their search, which it still does. For this reason, the problem hasn’t made an immediate major impact on Google. However, if Google continues to produce unintended results as it evolves, slowly but surely, problems will surface. As these problems escalate, the webmaster community will lose faith in Google, making it vulnerable to the growing competition.
Webmasters are the word-of-mouth experts; and run the web sites that use Google’s Adsense program. Fluctuations in ranking are part of the internet business, and most webmasters realize this – we’re simply calling on Google to fix the bugs that unfairly snatch the correct rankings of our websites.
Of course, we understand that the reason that the bugs surfaced to begin with is because not all webmasters are innocent. Some have violated the guidelines laid out by Google, and continue to do so. We support Google’s needs to fight spam and Black Hat SEO manipulation, and accept that there’s probably no easy fix.
We don’t expect Google to reveal their algorithm, or the changes that have been made to it. But given the impact Google’s rankings have on companies, we webmasters would like to see more communication around the known issues, and be able to assist with identifying future algorithm issues, rather than speculating.
The most recent of these speculations suggest that Google is currently looking at attributes such as the age of a domain name, the number web sites on the same IP, and frequency of fresh content to churn their search results. As webmasters, we’d appreciate the ability to report potential bugs to Google, and receive a responses to our feedback.
After all, it’s not just in Google’s best interests to have a bug-free algorithm. Ultimately, this will provide the best search results for everyone.

WASHINGTON - The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are “additional supporting evidence … that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.”

Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the        National Science Foundation and universities.

The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth’s climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments. The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the “proxy” evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.

Combining that information gave the panel “a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years,” the panel wrote. It said the “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia,” though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a “Little Ice Age” from about 1500 to 1850.

Their conclusions were meant to address, and they lent credibility to, a well-known graphic among climate researchers — a “hockey-stick” chart that climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created in the late 1990s to show the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years.

It had compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures — a 1 degree rise in global average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere during the 20th century — and the stick’s long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

That research is “likely” true and is supported by more recent data, said John “Mike” Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, had asked the academy for the report last year after the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, launched an investigation of the three climate scientists.

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat from global warming is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.

“This report shows the value of Congress handling scientific disputes by asking scientists to give us guidance,” Boehlert said Thursday. “There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change.”

The academy panel said it had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600.

But it considered the evidence reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major “greenhouse” gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations had the biggest effects on climate. But those temperature changes “were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas” levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, the panel said.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.

___

On the Net:

National Academy of Sciences: http://nationalacademies.org

SAN FRANCISCO - Business software maker Oracle Corp. on Thursday said its fiscal fourth quarter profit rose 27 percent on record revenue as sales surged across most of its business lines and geographic regions.
Net income for the three months ending May 31 rose to $1.3 billion, or 24 cents a share, compared with $1.02 billion, or 20 cents, in the same quarter of last year. Revenue grew 25 percent to $4.85 billion from $3.88 billion. The results were largely in line with estimates issued last week, when the Redwood Shores-based company said it expected to beat an earlier financial forecast.

Investors in after hours trading largely shrugged off the news, which included a forecast for the current quarter that was largely in line with analyst expectations. Oracle shares have largely stagnated over the past couple of years, as growth for business software has slowed.

Excluding acquisition expenses and other costs, Oracle earned 29 cents per share, 1 cent higher than the average estimate among analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Sales also beat Wall Street estimates of $4.7 billion. If it weren’t for a higher-than-expected tax rate, Oracle would have earned 30 cents, President Safra Catz said.

New software license sales, which investors watch closely because they are a strong indicator of future performance, rose 32 percent to $2.1 billion from $1.6 billion last year. Results for both periods include Oracle’s $11.1 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft Inc.

Since early last year, Oracle has spent more than $20 billion acquiring competitors in the business software arena in a bid to combat slowing growth.

“It was a very, very strong finish to a very critical year for Oracle,” Catz said on a conference call with reporters. “It shows that our strategy is working and taking hold.”

Catz forecast profit before one-time costs in the current quarter would be 16 cents, matching the average analyst estimate. Sales will rise 19 percent to 20 percent from the same period last year, she said, which translates to $3.29 billion to $3.32 billion, slightly below the $3.36 billion analysts had been expecting.

Catz said the forecast was highly dependent on currency exchange rates, which have fluctuated recently. Rates during the fourth quarter were largely neutral, after being “pretty negative” over previous quarters, she said.

New licenses for business applications, which help automate payroll and other administrative tasks, rose 83 percent to $641 million, from $350 million last year. Licenses in Oracle’s more traditional group for databases and related software, which act like electronic filing cabinets, grew 18 percent to $1.48 billion, from $1.26 billion.

Besides PeopleSoft, Oracle has also swallowed up other former competitors, including Siebel Systems Inc. for $6.1 billion and smaller companies for about $2 billion. On Wednesday it closed its acquisition of Portal Software Inc. for about $220 million.

Chief Executive Larry Ellison has said the takeovers will allow Oracle to increase profit by 20 percent per year and overtake competitors. Catz said the plan enabled Oracle’s applications business to grow faster than Germany-based SAP AG, its so-called middleware business to grow faster than San Jose-based BEA Systems Inc. and its database sales faster than International Business Machines Corp.

For the full fiscal year, net income rose 17 percent to $3.38 billion, or 64 cents, from $2.87 billion, or 55 cents. Revenue grew 22 percent to $14.38 billion, from $11.8 billion.

Touching on an issue sweeping Silicon Valley companies, Catz said she didn’t expect Oracle to face problems as a result of stock options it has issued in the past. The company has long had a policy of pricing options, which allow an employee to buy shares in the future at a set rate, based on the closing price the day before the options were granted.

To date, 46 companies are under investigation or doing their own internal probes of whether options were backdated. That practice would allow executives to reap a larger profit on the sale of the stock as the price rose.

Oracle released the results after the stock market closed. The company’s shares rose 7 cents in extended trading. Earlier, the stock fell 20 cents to close at $14.33 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Oracle shares have gained more than 17 percent so far this year.

___

On the Net:

http://oracle.com

The primary focus of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals is to generate traffic to a web site. Some SEO professionals are better than others at achieving that goal via higher rankings in search engines for target keyword phrases. However, the ball is often dropped once the visitor actually hits the site and, most likely, leaves.

Successful SEO professionals understand the secret is to dial in web site conversion rates. In this article, I’ll detail some of the most effective and relatively easy steps you can take to maximize conversions on your web site.

Being a Good Guy
When I first joined consumer electronics eretailer goodguys.com (recently purchased by CompUSA), my task was to increase sales via business development and marketing strategies. My background in agency-side search engine marketing (SEM) made that a relatively easy task. My boss told me that I needed to increase traffic to boost sales via SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) strategies. I told him that the first thing we needed to do was increase the sales from our existing visitors, as it’s much more cost-effective to improve the site’s performance and convert current site visitors than to generate new ones.

My first step was to assess the site’s design and performance overall. Even with my limited expertise in usability and graphic design, I was able to pinpoint a few critical issues: the home page file size (mostly comprised of high resolution images) was so large that the site took almost 30 seconds to load on a broadband connection. I had the design team optimize many of the images to cut down file size with virtually no degradation of image quality. I did the same thing with the development team, challenging them to clean up the JavaScript and other elements of the code that were slowing down download (and negatively impacting the site’s spiderability).

After optimizing the code (and copy), my next step was to bring in usability engineers to conduct a heuristic analysis of the shopping experience. With a relatively low conversion rate, we had nothing to lose by looking for easy design fixes through the shopping and checkout process. A local Portland agency provided a set of trouble tickets tiered in order of importance. We implemented a majority of the changes within weeks and noticed a slight improvement in conversions that added up to six- and seven-figure improvements to the bottom line over time.

Lessons Learned
From this experience, I took five key guidelines, which can have a significant impact on a site’s conversion rates.

Validation

While it would seem like a no-brainer, very few ecommerce companies have taken advantage of a very simple but effective sales tool: social proof. Originally outlined by Robert Cialdini, the basic concept of social proof is that people are more likely to purchase a product or service that others have deemed worthy. By providing a “Best Sellers” or “Recommended Items” list on your web site, you’re helping save time and make any purchase decision easier for the visitors.

There are other third-party validation techniques that apply to B2B as well as B2C companies: customer/client testimonials, awards and recognition, product or service reviews, and case studies/success stories. Every company has a slightly different audience, so it’s important to know what type of content is most compelling to your prospects.

Reciprocity

Remember when banks used to give out free toasters with every new account you set up? Promotions are still effective in generating business — even online. The theory is that by giving away something relatively inexpensive, the recipient is obligated to return the favor (hopefully by purchasing something). Effective web-based promotions include free trials, demonstrations, downloads, online tools, webinars and podcasts. Price-based promotions can include free shipping, discounts or rebates and contests. At goodguys.com, we gave away a digital camera regularly to boost the email newsletter subscriber-base, with great success.

Safety

As outlined in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, safety is one of the most basic needs a person can have. Even in our high-tech world, we still need to feel secure — especially when we purchase products online. The best way to create a sense of security is to prominently display industry and security certifications, warranties and guarantees throughout the shopping and checkout process. Providing information on shipping guarantees may seem academic, but many shoppers bail out of the checkout process if they feel the product won’t get to them on time, if at all, and that there may not be any recourse.

Communication

Giving the site visitor (prospect or customer) and opportunity to talk with a sales or service representative is crucial. You don’t have to be Amazon.com to integrate slick technologies like Push-to-Talk, email signup or dynamic contact forms. While at goodguys.com, I used an online survey, developed by i-OP, to determine how visitors were using the current site, what they’d like to see in the future, and how they would like us to talk to them via email. The feedback (which consisted of 500 surveys completed in less than a week) helped us develop an email communication strategy and influenced site modifications, which included an email newsletter signup form embedded within the site template.

Measurement

There is no excuse for a company not to have a basic web analytics platform that provides insight into site traffic patterns, referring sites, and search phrases, especially since Google offers free Web analytics (via its acquisition of Urchin) and free conversion tracking via AdWords (which can also be used to track other campaigns, including banners, email, and even Yahoo! PPC text ads).

Web analytics and online conversion tracking are powerful tools that can be used to influence site design and optimization to further improve sales. While most search engine marketing campaigns can offer a compelling return-on-investment (ROI) statement, incorporating offline conversion tracking can make those numbers even more compelling. By implementing printable coupons, unique 800 numbers, pay-per-call campaigns, web-based surveys, and loyalty programs, a company can start to tie web-based marketing initiatives to offline conversions to create an even higher ROI.

Improving your Conversions
Use these recommendations as a framework for improving your own web sites’ conversion rates before focusing on search marketing techniques like SEO and PPC to increase traffic. In the end, you’ll generate more revenue from existing traffic, and increase the effectiveness of your future marketing efforts.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Calling it a “sad, bloody story,” veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace expressed regret about Dan Rather’s departure from CBS News but said Rather wasn’t finished yet.
“You wait and see, he’s going to find his place,” Wallace told a packed house on Wednesday at the annual conference of PromaxBDA in New York. “We’re going to be hearing from Dan. He’s a superb reporter.”

Wallace and CNN host Larry King received the organizations’ TV Century Awards.

Wallace has in the past suggested that Rather should have resigned for his role in the discredited “60 Minutes Wednesday” report on        President Bush’s military career that led to the firing of one producer and the forced resignations of four executives. But Wallace was much more conciliatory Wednesday, a day after Rather and CBS News parted ways.

“It’s a sad, sad story. He’s a good man, a hell of a reporter, (he) made a mistake,” Wallace said. When asked about why Rather would go ahead with a report that seemed shaky, he said: “I don’t know. Ask him.”

And Wallace didn’t mince words when asked whether incoming “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric, the longtime former co-host of NBC’s “Today” show, has the gravitas to carry an evening newscast.

“Katie Couric is a fine reporter, a superb interviewer,” Wallace said.

The 88-year-old correspondent said CBS chief Leslie Moonves’s strategy is to grab a greater share of viewers aged 25 to 54, the demographic regarded as the core audience for the network evenings newscasts, and he believes Couric will be able to find a way to do it.

“Forget perky. Perky is out. She is a serious individual who wants to take on a serious job of getting more people to watch the 6:30 p.m. news,” Wallace said. But Wallace said he didn’t know what Couric and CBS management had in mind.

“That’s above my pay grade,” Wallace said.

The conference’s first session was highlighted by a number of presentations as well as a musical number by        Megan Mullally, late of the NBC sitcom “Will & Grace” and this fall a syndicated talk-show host.

The conference continues Thursday.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -        Reese Witherspoon has sued Star magazine, alleging the tabloid ran a false story saying she is pregnant with her third child.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Superior Court claims a story in the magazine’s June 26 issue falsely stated that she didn’t want producers of two of her upcoming movies to know she was expecting. The story also suggested that Witherspoon, 30, was wearing maternity clothing, according to the lawsuit.

“It is a frivolous lawsuit,” Mike Kahane, general counsel to the tabloid’s parent company, American Media Inc., said in a statement Thursday. “It has no legal merit and we intend to vigorously defend it and have every confidence that we will prevail.”

Witherspoon claims the story harmed her because it suggested she is hiding information from her producers. Being pregnant would affect her ability to perform her duties in connection with those films, the lawsuit said.

“The true facts are that plaintiff is not pregnant, does not have a baby bump and has not otherwise gained weight such that she has had to resort to wearing empire-waist dresses,” the lawsuit said.

Witherspoon, who is married to        Ryan Phillippe, won an Oscar for her role as June Carter Cash in 2005’s “Walk the Line.” The couple have a daughter, Ava, born in 1999, and a son, Deacon, born in 2003.

LONDON (Reuters) - A musical version of “The Lord of the Rings” is to open in London next year but the production has been reworked and cut after its world premiere in Toronto received some damning reviews.

Wallace, taking on board the acerbic reception meted out to the musical by some North American critics, said: “There will be a series of revisions. There is stuff we have learned. We are breaking it down scene by scene.”

“The writers have been doing some reworking. This will be a cut and reworked version with more music and we have edited out some of the sub-plot,” said Wallace, formerly in-house producer with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London-based The Really Useful Group.

The Toronto show, which took four years to bring to the stage, opened in March with critics applauding its leaping orcs and menacing dark riders but getting lost in the tangled plots of Middle Earth.

The 55-member cast slipped into 500 costumes and engaged in fight scenes and acrobatics atop a 40-tonne, computer-controlled stage floor featuring 17 elevators, which spun and rose amid magic and illusion.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times complained, “Everyone and everything winds up lost in this” while the Toronto Globe and Mail said, “It still looks a lot like unfinished business.”

But the London Times branded it “a stirring triumph of theatrical magic.”

Wallace said: “I was surprised by how extreme some of the North American response was. But I was gratified that the UK critics were more responsive. I think it is coming back to its spiritual home in London.”

The producer, who plans to open the show next in Germany in 2008, said, “We have taken into account what critics said. A pattern emerged. We did indeed need to heighten the emotional intensity of the third act. We can make it more impactful.”

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Kwan in Toronto)

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. - Grammy-winning rapper Eminem continued divorce proceedings with his wife, Kimberley Mathers, in a private hearing Thursday. Details of the meeting were not disclosed.
Kimberley Mathers, who is seeking financial support, attorney fees and joint custody of the couple’s 10-year-old daughter, Hailie Jade Scott, was seen being escorted out of the building by a sheriff’s deputy.

Her lawyer, Michael J. Smith, declined to comment. A message seeking comment was left Thursday with Eminem’s attorney, Harvey Hauer.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Bruce Mathers III, was not seen by reporters at the courthouse, but was present for the hour-long meeting before Court Referee David Elias, court officer Mark Mileski said.

Eminem filed for divorce April 5, 82 days after the couple remarried.

The 33-year-old rapper remarried Kimberley Mathers in Rochester on Jan. 14, a month after the couple announced they were getting back together.

Their first marriage lasted from 1999 to 2001.

Macomb County Circuit Judge Antonio Viviano, who originally was scheduled to preside over Thursday’s hearing, had set a deadline of Aug. 25 for completion of depositions, interrogatories, pension evaluations and other matters.

A settlement conference is scheduled for Sept. 19.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Actor

        Rob Lowe narrowly won approval from planners for a massive dream estate on his $8.5 million Montecito lot despite a neighbor’s complaint that the mansion would spoil his panoramic ocean view.

ADVERTISEMENT
 
“I’ve always been a big believer in the process. I’m obviously pleased with the outcome,” the former star of “The West Wing” said after Wednesday’s 3-2 vote by the Montecito Planning Commission.

The vote came after a daylong commission debate over whether the proposed 14,260-square-foot estate would overwhelm the Picacho Lane neighborhood, which is also home to mystery writer Sue Grafton.

Lowe’s proposal calls for a 24-foot-high privacy hedge that would screen their estate from neighbor Fred Gluck, former head of the international consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Gluck said the hedge would partially block views of the Pacific.

The complaint blossomed into a debate on the expanding size of Montecito homes.

Lowe, who purchased the 3.4-acre, undeveloped property for about $8.5 million last year, told the commission that Gluck first complained about potential view loss, then on the size of the home.

Lowe noted that Gluck’s 8,577-square-foot home also exceeds Montecito guidelines for what planners call floor-area ratios.

Lowe’s proposal is to build a 9,860-square-foot home with a 2,000-square-foot basement, an 800-square-foot guest house, an 800-square-foot second-story cabana with an 800-square-foot garage below. There will also be a swimming pool, spa and tennis court.

On Wednesday, three commissioners sided with Lowe and said the estate was compatible with the neighborhood. Two agreed with Gluck that the project sets a disturbing precedent.

Information from: Santa Barbara News-Press, www.newspress.com

After landing a slot on American Idol, Katharine McPhee decided it was time to take control of her destiny.

In a new interview with People magazine, the season five runner-up reveals that she struggled with severe bulimia for five years, bingeing and purging in a destructive cycle that could have permanently ruined her singing voice and caused devastating consequences to her health.
At her worst, McPhee says she was making herself vomit up to seven times each day, which she equates to “putting a sledgehammer to your vocal cords.”
But all that changed once the 22-year-old aspiring singer got the go-ahead from the Idol judges and realized that in order to succeed on the talent search, she would need to rein in her eating disorder.
“When I made it onto American Idol, I knew that food–my eating disorder–was the one thing really holding me back,” McPhee tells People. “I was bingeing my whole life away for days at a time. So, when I got on the show, I said, ‘You know what? I can do well in this competition. Let me give myself a chance and just get a hold of this thing.’ ”
Backed up by her parents, frequent Idol audience members Peisha and Daniel McPhee, the Idol hopeful enrolled in an intensive treatment program at Los Angeles’s Eating Disorder Center of California, where she underwent three months of group and individual therapy, spending 10 hours a day, six days a week at the center.
“I really had to surrender and give up having a free life to do the program, because I’d be there from 9 in the morning until 7 at night,” McPhee says. But she knew the sacrifice was necessary if she wanted to get well.
“I knew I had put off going to a treatment center long enough–I’d been struggling with bulimia since I was 17,” she says.
McPhee attributes some of her problems with food to growing up in a city where tremendous emphasis is placed on celebrity-slim bodies.
“Growing up in Los Angeles and spending all those years in dance class, I’d been conscious of body image at a young age, and I went through phases of exercising compulsively and starving myself,” she says.
By using the intuitive eating approach she learned at the Eating Disorder Center, McPhee was eventually able to redefine her relationship to food.
“I learned that there’s no such thing as a bad food,” she says. “If you look at a doughnut, people think it’s a fattening food–why? Because if you eat it you’ll get fat? No, you’ll get fat if you eat 10 doughnuts.”
As a result, she dropped 30 pounds and broke her cycle of bingeing and purging.
“That’s why I say American Idol saved my life, because if I hadn’t auditioned, I don’t think I would have gotten a handle on food,” she tells the magazine.
By openly talking about her eating disorder, McPhee stands to help fans who may be struggling with similar issues, according to Dr. Thomas Weigel, a psychiatrist at the Klarman Eating Disorders Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.
“Katharine’s portrayal of her eating disorder and its effects on her life would tend toward helping people suffering with eating disorders to seek out treatment,” Weigel said.
“She had a problem, which was affecting her career, and she went through a difficult treatment program to make progress toward recovery. It was hard work, but she fought against the eating disorder to get her life back.”
And what a life it is. After the Idol finale, McPhee went on to sign a record deal with RCA Records in conjunction with 19 Recordings Limited.

Her first single, “My Destiny,” coupled with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” is scheduled for release on Tuesday. As of Thursday, the tracks were ranked number 52 in music by Amazon.com.

Though the Idol competition is officially over, McPhee still has her work cut out for her if she hopes to catch up to Taylor Hicks, who released his first single last week and instantly rocketed to the top of the charts.