Google’s Webmasters blog has a post on rich snippets and structured data. While this is from Google, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has a very similar approach.

Snippets are “the few lines of text that appear under every search result” that are designed to “give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query.” The post points out that the search engine needs to understand the content on a page in order to produce the snippets.

“The snippet for a restaurant might show the average review and price range; the snippet for a recipe page might show the total preparation time, a photo, and the recipe’s review rating; and the snippet for a music album could list songs along with a link to play each song.

You can help search engines understand key information in the content by adding structured data in several formats (Google looks for Microdata (preferred), Microformats and RDFa) and for a small set of topics. These topics are those covered by schema.org: Reviews, People, Products, Businesses and organizations, Recipes, Events and Music.

See the full post for details and links.

John 1:14-16 (NLT)

14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.
15 John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’”
16 From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.

Reflection:

God gave us the greatest gift when He sent His one and only Son for you and me. We have already received this in our lives and yet this is a truth we must continually receive day in and day out, over and over again.

Response:

From his abundance, let’s receive once again, afresh and anew, one gracious blessing after another, the reality that we are forgiven and free in Christ. Let’s be like little children in believing in Jesus’s unfailing love and faithfulness and thank Him that He has made His home among us through His Spirit.

Six years ago, Julie Rosenthal, the program management specialist for Asian studies, wanted to teach her daughter about helping others. Rather than encouraging her daughter to volunteer, Rosenthal took it farther: she founded Food on the 15th, a program through which students deliver food to the elderly.

“We want the children to have firsthand experience delivering the food to the people so that they can get that feeling of really making a difference in somebody’s life, a positive difference,” Rosenthal said.

The program was recently profiled by Voices of America, which provides news, information, and cultural programming worldwide through the Internet, mobile and social media, radio, and television.  VOA is funded by the U.S. Government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The piece, “Students Learn Lesson in Power of Giving,” appeared on the VOA website on April 13.  The story will be translated and shown around the world.

Food on the 15th will come to UMBC later this semester, with the Asian Studies Program as the lead partner. The program will be collecting non-perishable food items from students as they move out of the dorms at the end of the semester. Rosenthal hopes that the organization can have a consistent presence at UMBC.

In responding to the global economic crisis of the past two years, which nations’ governments got it right and which got it wrong? UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller asks this question in his latest Baltimore Sun column, which compares economic policies and outcomes in the U.S. and Europe.

“Economic indicators strongly suggest that the Obama administration and those who called in 2009 for a massive, Keynesian stimulus made the prudent, informed choice,” Schaller argues. He writes, “Austerity measures — tax increases and public sector payroll and benefit reductions — actually resulted in higher, not lower debt ratios for some European economies because GDP contraction yielded lower tax revenues, which more than offset any short-term economic savings from budget-slashing.”