Top diamond SEO, IE9 & one daft criminal

18/03/10 posted by Liz Niland

Apple fever is currently sweeping the United States with iPad pre-orders now open. And, if you haven’t heard already, Mervis - a diamond store in the US - has created a $20,000 diamond encrusted iPad. While we dismissed this story as mere froth, (we just want the iPad to hit Oz - whatever it looks like!) Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal has broken down the incredible success of what appears to be a very cheap but very well-executed search engine optimisation and marketing campaign.

Judging by the quality of the released images, Baker argues that the website for the “prototype” of the iPad “probably cost Mervis about $5 and 10 minutes of time to develop”. The widespread success of this story, and the consequential back links it has delivered to Mervis, are due to a smartly-timed PR campaign, relevant content, a “photoshopped image of a diamond iPad that some high school kid put together” and a clever URL and site structure. The campaign might even work so well that Mervis will actually need to start actually building some of those dazzlers.

In other news out of America, Microsoft have announced some more explicit details of the anticipated Internet Explorer 9. As predicted, IE9 will support some HTML5 features and will hopefully provide further fuel to the kill IE6 fire. The new browser will be faster than its predecessor but techies have shunned the offering for its failing to support elements already common in the market. Interestingly though, the HTML5 integration will mean that IE9 will not have a reliance on Flash, which, given the deepening divide between Apple and Google, could potentially see Microsoft make a new ally as the search engine du jour of the iPad’s creator.

There’s nothing better than an old fashioned heist - unless you can catch an alleged mafioso without leaving your laptop. In another case of criminal vs Facebook, 33-year-old Pasquale Manfredi was tracked down via his social connections and is now facing a long stretch in the slammer if found guilty of “murder, mafia association and drugs trafficking,” as reported by the BBC. Although the image of a dangerous crime lord sending Farmville invites around his network is difficult to fully imagine, for the sake of our safety, lets hope the baddies keep being so daft!