bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

sponsorType

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

Our very own silicon ghost town, Hong Kong Cyberport, has just been named the most Intelligent Building of the Year.

The prize has come from the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum, which tries to promote the idea of transforming cities into 'intelligent communities'.

By last night, the forum had still not put any announcements about the award on its website, but as an announcement was carried by the Government Information Service, it is probably safe to say that Cyberport won.

The only question is why.

So far, Cyberport comprises a very wired hotel, some underutilised office space and a pile of posh flats fringing a building site.

The forum is organised by a group that calls itself the World Teleport Association. Its members are largely telecommunications carriers and property developers.

The WTA paid a visit to the Cyberport two years ago, when it  was little more than a visitors' centre overlooking a lake of mud and concrete.

The group was in Hong Kong as guests of local WTA members Werner ComTech, Hongkong Land, Wharf Holdings, Reach and Cyberport owner PCCW.

Nigritude Ultramarine. Ever heard the phrase? You should have,  because over the past month it has been one of the Web's top search terms.

But before we explain it, here are a few background details.  Back in the olden days, webmasters could  boost their websites by adding keywords or phrases to their pages' code.

This would get them bumped up the rankings on a search engine, and was called search engine optimisation. Trouble is, spammers, pornographers and other ne'er-do-wells began using deceptive keywords to boost their sites' placings.

So search engines began ignoring keywords and looking at other aspects of a site. Google famously uses links to a site to help gauge its ranking. But most of Google's criteria are a closely guarded secret.

So by way of a test, affiliate marketing site Darkblue.com and the search engine optimisation site SearchGuild.com launched a contest. Boost your site to the top of Google's rankings and win an iPod or a Sony flat screen.

SearchGuild users came up with a nonsense phrase and, by the time the contest closed last week, Google had listed 588,000 pages that mentioned Nigritude Ultramarine, compared to zero before the competition. And there were 822 hopeless misspellings.

The organisers said there were 20,000 entrants, and that Alexa.com listed Nigritude Ultramarine as the world's '4th hottest search' (although it  entirely missed the Lycos 50). What some entrants may not have realised, and what most of them obviously were not bothered about, was that negritude ultramarine is apparently another name for dark blue.

By spamming wikis, weblogs and chat forums around the world with the expression, all the entrants were doing was vandalising other sites' search rankings by turning them into accidental marketing tools for Darkblue. Very cynical, but remarkably effective.

Gripes or gossip to share? Send it to back.space@scmp.com



Cyberport scores for intelligence before being completed