21

Steering Around the SEO Blockade

As landing a high ranking through search engine optimization grows more competitive by the day, often blocking small-to-medium-sized enterprises from achieving top spots online, more businesses are turning to social media to find new customers.

Many customers, meanwhile, are also starting use the search functions on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to getting referrals from their friends and contacts, said Heather Logrippo, chief executive oficer of Expose Yourself Public Relations.

“Websites are like businesses cards,” Logrippo told the E-Commerce Times. “They are great to show people at first glance who you are. However, consumers want more up-to-the-minute information, and want to see how others interact with your business.”

Social media, therefore, should play an important role in marketing for almost any business, Logrippo said. “This new medium isn’t a fad and it’s not going away.”

Early adopters of social media will be legions ahead — similar to those who first got websites, she said, noting that older sites are often ranked higher than newer websites.

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16

Video Sites Dip Toes in HTML 5 Waters

Vimeo has become the latest video-sharing Web site to take the plunge into HTML 5, a markup language that can run video without the help of a plug-in like Flash — if the user is surfing on the right kind of browser. You Tube is also using the technology. For now, though, HTML 5 has a few notable shortcomings of its own, and Vimeo’s use of it is strictly a beta test.

Forget about the debate over whether “Avatar” or “The Hurt Locker” will win movie awards this year. The real argument among those who create and share their own Web videos — DIY James Camerons, as it were — centers on whether or not they should dump Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash and other plug-in players for HTML 5, the latest version of the Web’s markup language.

The picture cleared up a little for HTML 5 supporters late last week as they learned that top video sharing sites Vimeo and YouTube were going to offer their users the option of using the new standard. If users of the two Web sites have compatible browsers — a short list right now including Chrome, ChromeFrame on Internet Explorer and Safari — they will find the ability to watch videos without plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight, as well as quicker in-video navigation without buffering.

However, Vimeo spokesperson Brad Daugherty acknowledged in a blog post that what some consider to be the best way to deliver video on the Web can bring out the worst in people.

“Almost every thread on the Internet about HTML 5 devolves into some kind of flamewar. Please don’t comment here extolling the virtues of open source or unencumbered codecs,” Daugherty wrote. “We know, it’s our job to know and that conversation has been had a million times. The simple fact is right now h.264 [a coding format] allows us the most flexibility to display on many devices and many players with the same file. When that changes, so will we.”

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19

Who Will Show Up to Linux’s Steam-Powered Playground?

Linux fans tend to be a loyal bunch, showering their favorite operating system with rightfully deserved praise at every opportunity.

When they do complain about Linux, however, the topic is often gaming. Lack of games on Linux, that is — a factor many consider crucial to Linux’s ultimate mainstream acceptance.

So it was with great glee and excitement last week that the community learned that the Steam content delivery platform and source engine are coming to Linux in the not-too-distant future!

‘A Reason to Rejoice’

“The day has finally come and Linux gamers around the world have a reason to rejoice, as this is the biggest news for the Linux gaming community that sees very few tier-one titles,” wrote Michael Larabel of Phoronix.

Over on Slashdot, meanwhile — where the speculation had also been going on for some time — bloggers were at least as jubilant.

“AWESOME,” wrote CasualFriday, for example. “If CS:S and HL2 run well in Ubuntu, I now have no reason to keep my Windows partition.”

Source: www.technewsworld.com

Linux fans tend to be a loyal bunch, showering their favorite operating system with rightfully deserved praise at every opportunity.

When they do complain about Linux, however, the topic is often gaming. Lack of games on Linux, that is — a factor many consider crucial to Linux’s ultimate mainstream acceptance.

So it was with great glee and excitement last week that the community learned that the Steam content delivery platform and source engine are coming to Linux in the not-too-distant future!

‘A Reason to Rejoice’

“The day has finally come and Linux gamers around the world have a reason to rejoice, as this is the biggest news for the Linux gaming community that sees very few tier-one titles,” wrote Michael Larabel of Phoronix.

Over on Slashdot, meanwhile — where the speculation had also been going on for some time — bloggers were at least as jubilant.

“AWESOME,” wrote CasualFriday, for example. “If CS:S and HL2 run well in Ubuntu, I now have no reason to keep my Windows partition.”

19

Google Packs a Crowd Into the Virtual Editing Room

Google Packs a Crowd Into the Virtual Editing Room

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is rolling out an update to users of its Docs service allowing them to do more real-time collaborating and making a variety of speed and service enhancements.

Elements of the update began rolling out Monday, with others scheduled to filter out to users over the next few days, according to Google.

The update includes real-time collaboration on word documents, something previously available for spreadsheets. It also includes a sidebar chat window to discuss documents during collaboration sessions.

Other changes to the word-processing tool stem from a thorough reconstruction of the code underlying Docs, including better document format, and improved importing and exporting performance, margins and tab stops and image layout.

The new version of Docs also features more responsive spreadsheets that include a formula bar, auto-complete and drag-and-drop columns.

Improvements also include a new tool, a “drawing editor.” Despite its name, the tool doesn’t allow for freehand drawing, but rather focuses on creating flow-charts, designs and diagrams.

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26

Portals in a Web 2.0 World

Whither lies the true “doorway” to the Web 2.0 world?

The search for this golden portal into the future Web has launched a mega-billion dollar corporate competitive scramble with no complete solution in sight — yet.

Portals come in three basic varieties, according to a study of portal business models by the University of Washington’s School of Business:

  • Horizontal portals like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), MSN andAOL provide gateway access to the Internet’s vast store of content and services along with a broad range of tools for locating information and Web sites, communicating with others and developing online communities of interest. They make money through advertising and transaction fees from multiple vertical solutions channels.
  • Vertical portals like WebFlyer and WebMD provide deep content, a place to conduct business, learn and shop, communities and community-building tools. These portals are often composed of a variety of business models, all of which generate separate revenue streams, including advertising and referral fees (if transactions are not completed online). Service fees and transaction fees may be generated if transactions are completed online, and subscription fees may also be generated for unique content.
  • Affinity portals like iVillage.com (women) and Realtor.com (realtors) provide deep content, commerce and community features like those found in vertical portals, but these offerings are targeted toward a specific market segment or even a specific gender. The revenue model is similar to vertical portals, with cost and asset models based on the business model adopted by the portal.

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8

Fighting the Secret War- Online Fraud

CEO of ecommerce supplier, Actinic

here’s a hidden battle going on between online merchants and fraudsters. In the US, fraud is now around $4bn per annum, according to CyberSource’s latest report. The good news is that after years of advancing fraud, merchants are slowly starting to turn the tide.

From the merchant’s perspective, it’s important not just to reject everything that looks suspicious, but to get a balance between fraud prevention and losing good business. It’s also key to remember that fraud varies greatly between different product sectors. For example, most of us would instinctively feel that fraud would be a big problem selling unblocked smart phones. However, I have known merchants selling bibles and model trains to suffer as well. Assumptions can be dangerous.

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8

Securing Future Business Growth with IPv6

The total depletion of IPv4 address pool is close; however, a recent European Commission (EC) survey highlighted an alarming lack of leadership regarding Internet development, as many businesses are still not ready to adopt IPv6, the next generation of IP addressing.

icon Every device linked to the Internet needs an IP address to enable it to connect with the rest of the network. IP addresses are therefore critical to the infrastructure of the Internet. Yet, the biggest threat that the Internet faces today is that we’re running out of the current form of IP addresses, IPv4. Very soon, we will see the pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses shrink to less than 10 per cent, and it’s been estimated that the IPv4 pool will be completely depleted by 2011.
icon The explosive growth of the Internet and adoption of networked digital devices worldwide has led to this IP address exhaustion. The technical community has been aware of this issue for many years, and, recognising that a new version of the addressing protocol system was required to meet future demand, developed the next-generation of IP addresses, IPv6, in the mid-1990s.
Unlike IPv4 addresses, of which there are only 4,294,967,296 in total, IPv6 addresses have a longer format, allowing for about a trillion trillion, trillion,  or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768, 211,456 addresses in total. Because of its longer format, IPv6 allows for more devices to connect to the Internet and helps safeguard the continuing expansion of the Internet generated by the growth in the number of networked devices.

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1

Search Engine Marketing. Do you really need it?

The following video briefly explains the importance of Search Engine Marketing for your online business.

As the video explains, the Internet is crowded with information. How do 1 billion internet users find your products or services through the Internet without getting lost in the process? The answer is Search Engines.

Being listed on search engines is not sufficient at all. Almost 90% of Internet users rarely browse the later pages of search results. With Search Engine Optimization you can make sure you are visible within the top search results in search engines.

Interested in online paid advertising (PPC)?

For more information and professional Search Engine Marketing and Optimization services, visit The Internet Agency.

13

Google announces cloud storage space for Google Docs

Google has recently announced via its blog that its offering additional storage space through its Docs applications.

Earlier a Google Docs user had to email files to themselves, which is particularly difficult with large files, to upload files.  Now you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. In addition you will have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year.

Lkspace which is part of Zeelabs, specializes in Google products and hosting Google solutions on your corporate domain. For more information please contact us on +94 777 005768.

4

Happy 2010 from Zeelabs!

On behalf of the entire Zeelabs, The Internet Agency and LKspace staff, I would like to wish all our visitors a very happy and prosperous new year!