December 2007 - Posts
These lists are everywhere. And seemingly every website and media outlet has a top 10, 15, 20 or 50 of some kind. But PC World's
Top 15 Tech Disappointments caught my attention. And not so much because I agree or disagree with their choices, but because I find number 13 an interesting selection - social networks. "But it's all so... 2006. Haven't you got anything new to show us?" reads the post.
While every other top-whatever list claims social networking to be one of the top stories of 2007 and top trends of 2008, PC World is saying
enough already. Why? Because it's on everyone's mind but the marketers' touting it as the next billion-dollar ad space (eMarketer predicts $1.5 billion in 2008) ... social networking fatigue is setting in. There are many social networks out there outside of the big two of MySpace and Facebook. So many, in fact, how is one to keep up with all of these new friends, and who has the time? Yes, it's wonderful to be able to connect and share each others' lives. But there are numerous hassles along the way. The proliferation of spam on MySpace and, more recently, big-time
privacy concerns over at Facebook are two.
I think PC World got it right ... and wrong. Social networking fatigue is real and these networks will dry up - at least in their current form - but they won't disappear. Portable networking is going to throw a wrench in everything. Social networking will take on many new forms, through email, widgets, shopping ... you name it. As long as security issues are addressed and non-obtrusive advertising is achieved, there's no reason why the Web won't be transformed into one giant, portable social network. And who else to lead the way but Google with their anticipated
Open Social system?
The truth is, we've been "social networking" ever since the Web came online. Forwarding emails, URLs, blogging, making new friends and contacts never before seen ... the only things that have really changed are destination sites and user profile pages. Now, we're going to see a sort of retro-networking scenario - where we're once again free to go wherever we want on the Web and not be tied down to a spammy site loaded with security risks, pornographers or get-rich-quick schemes but still be able to share all those hilarious YouTube clips with our nearest and dearest. So get ready for 2008. Gather your friends, and get ready to spread your wings - your way.
Fresh off Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales'
announcement of his impending community-powered search engine Wikia,
EarthFrisk.org has drawn first blood, announcing their community search engine, ready for use.
EarthFrisk promises better results and less spam by eliminating the traditional algorithm- and link-based search and will rely on community involvement in the way of votes and comments to produce search results. It all hinges on their color value (CV) system. When a search result is returned, users have the option to log in, then vote and comment on the result. EarthFrisk says that this method keeps results from being manipulated by bogus links and that their CV ratings "cannot be manually altered by any one company." By downloading the EarthFrisk toolbar, users can get a quick view of a site's "value" by looking at the CV bar for a color-coded rating. In a quick test of the new service, presumably because of limited use, all of the results have returned a "green" rating.
EarthFrisk returns results from many major outlets from a variety of categories - Search Engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, Clusty), Social Media (Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Stumbleupon, Reddit), and Information (Wikipedia, Brittanica, Dictionary, Infoplease WebMD).
A couple of nice features at first glance:
- A preview pane pops up when moused over (why has Google not included this simple feature?). But so far, many of the previews are blank and read "forbidden request."
- Search only certain resources, such as Google, Digg or Wikipedia.
In the end, just like everything community-powered, the real value will only be seen when users actually participate. And with every social media outlet imaginable, taking even more time away from people could be a tall order.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 21th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
MobiMogul Set to Launch New Mobile Advertising Service: MobiMogul, Inc. (www.MobiMogul.com), a mobile phone advertising network focused on providing audible advertisements to consumers and sharing the ad revenues from the advertisements with MobiMogul subscribers and mobile service providers, is set to launch in early 2008.
Search Finally Gets Healthy with SearchSalad.com: Amidst media speculation, Lemon Interactive Ltd today announced the release of Searchsalad.com (www.searchsalad.com), which provides unique Search results from Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Wikipedia as well as non-search sites such as eBay, Kelkoo, Engadget, Review Centre, CNET, YouTube, Blinx and Ciao.
Future Scanner: Your Source for 2008 Predictions: Google to launch revolutionary health platform and GPhone. Major airlines to install in-flight internet. Will Spore be the biggest video game of all time? All of these 2008 predictions and more can be found on Future Scanner, the leading source for what's going to be hot in the New Year and beyond.
SEOmeter.com Unveils Their New Google Crawl Tool: SEOmeter.com has announced the launch of their new search engine crawl tool, which will allow webmasters to better gauge their website's importance in search engines.
New Online Tool TrueThinker Learns How Users Organize Info, Makes Growing Knowledge Easier, Faster: TrueThinker.com based on 40 years of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research; free 30-day trial available now. TrueThinker is a new online tool that makes learning and sharing information about any topic easier and faster because it actually learns how you manage information.
Reuters reports Google has reached a partnership agreement with DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile service provider to offer search and email - an audience of more than 49 million users. The service could also include access to photo-sharing service Picasa and the Google Calendar application - all of which scheduled early next year. This follows up DoCoMo's joining of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of companies committed to working with Google on the Android platform.
This would be a major win for Google. Yahoo, for once, is leading the way - securing major deals in Asia and most recently
striking a deal with America Movil, Latin America's top mobile phone company. For users, it all points to a stronger future for the mobile 'Net and healthy competition. "What we are seeing is that it's not an issue of dominance on the mobile
platform," said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. "It's an
issue about many strong players each trying to grow stronger."
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 21th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
Reseller Program For SEOs Offers Up to $4,000 Per Year Per Client Referral: SEO companies, web designers, product marketing companies can now add an additional revenue stream while offering clients more avenues to promote their products.
Become a Tax-Wise Business Owner With "Tax-Wise Business Ownership": Just in time for the holidays, noted author Toby Mathis, Esq. has released the 2nd edition of Tax-Wise Business Ownership; A book of essential and practical know-how for the independent contractor or business owner.
Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) Benefit From SaaS Solutions Over On-Premise Applications SMBs and SaaS.com's SBE Expect A Fruitful Relationship: A recent article written for ComputerWorld pinpoints exactly why a SaaS solution is quintessential for the small and medium business (SMB) market.
WorksForWeb Releases iLister, a New SEO-Friendly General Classifieds Software: WorksForWeb (WFW) is announcing the release of iLister, general classifieds listing software. iLister is one of several products offered by WFW to cater for the online classifieds website market worldwide, in addition to iAuto vehicle classifieds software, and iRealty, real estate classifieds software.
iMedix Nominated for Best New Start-Up of 2007: Community-powered health search engine selected from thousands of start-ups around the world.
Dominate Your Market in a Web 2.0 World: Internet Mastermind Rich Schefren's Business Acceleration Course Released Today: How to leverage the tools of Web 2.0 Marketing, such as social networking, to become the most visible and visited business in your industry.
According to a report from
ForSee Results, using the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), customers were less satisfied with online retail this holiday season, down 1.3 percent from 2006. The report also states that the likelihood to recommend and purchase online are also down.
"Online shopping is still the bright spot for holiday retailers, but lower
satisfaction coupled with slower than expected spending growth puts a little
cloud over the season," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results.
While not a significant drop, it is worth noting and can be taken as a sign that as more people shop online and become comfortable and familiar doing so, expectations grow. For etailers, this means that you should be taking every opportunity to meet those expectations. User comments and ratings can help spread online recommendations. Security should be a big factor - privacy policies should be prominently displayed and/or easily located and secure transactions should be highlighted. And always have your ears pricked - listening to your consumers and paying attention to trends is essential to satisfying users. If consumers want it, they expect it. And with the array of tools, many free, available to every website owner, there is hardly an excuse to not provide a user with what they want.
AuriQ Systems, a leading Web analytics firm has announced a new set of tools aimed at provided a variety of daily tracking and reporting data for just about any website.
Visit Widgets come in Javascript or Flash, are customizable and offer several different sets of data to see where your site visitors come from and what they do on your site. A simple step-by-step process begins by selecting what type of data you want to capture, adjusting settings, getting the code and pasting it on your site. Their Hidden Widget also allows you to track data without displaying the widget to users.
Some of the widgets available include Top Popular Pages, Top Referring Sites, Top Referring Search Engines, Top Search Keywords, Top Visiting Countries and an All-in-One Widget.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 27th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
JaguarPC Web Host Strikes New Alliance and Announces New Hire: VReplay taps JaguarPC for representation in the U.S. for rich media creation services; JaguarPC announces new Chief Financial Officer Carol Dedear.
2008 Top Five Tips for Safely Sending Large Corporate File: According to industry research firm IDC, between 2006 and 2010 the information added annually to the digital universe will increase more than six fold. The impact of digital data is already affecting nearly every industry including healthcare, legal, engineering, marketing and advertising.
Data Protection Software Saves Corporations Millions of Dollars: According to Diskeeper® Corporation there are a good number of Fortune 500 companies which are loosing thousands on a daily basis due to accidental deletions; and it is estimated that deletions, accidental or not, cost the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars annually.
Mind Maps Get Smart -- ThoughtOffice Adds Intelligence to Popular Brainstorming Solutions: Mindmapping is a powerful approach to visualizing ideas and processes. But how do you generate innovative ideas in the first place? ThoughtOffice uses the power of associations to drive the creative process and instill intelligence into mind mapping.
Javelina Software Announces ADsecurity: Javelina Software, LLC, today announced the addition of a new product, ADsecurity™, a set of tools specifically designed to help IT administrators manage their network security. With ADsecurity's reports and tools administrators have the ability to locate, document, and repair security rights in an Active Directory network.
eCommerce Marketing Company Seeks Mom Entrepreneurs for Inclusion in Direct Mail Catalog: Mom-operated ecommerce retailers can apply to position their products in front of 50,000 targeted direct mail consumers in a fresh and economical approach to ecommerce marketing.
British-based Microsoft MVP Marc Liron says that he quickly became tired of coding XML for video sitemaps, that Google recently announced they would support in their indexing patterns. So, he created his
Google Video Sitemap Generator.
This tool promises to make easy work of video sitemaps. According to the website, "Our Google Video Sitemap software allows the savvy webmaster to help Google
index their website video. Video Sitemap Pro will quickly help you generate a
valid
Google Video Sitemap file (XML) for your website." It's early in creation and new versions are expected soon. But with video's ever increasing popularity among Web surfers and Google SERPs, now is the time to get started creating video sitemaps.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced a date for the release of his for-profit, open source search tool named Wikia Search, Jan.7, 2008. Wales hopes to challenge Google and the other major players by empowering the users to provide accurate and relavant search results. Somewhat like Jason Calacanis' brainchild Maholo, technology enthusiasts will help rank search results with the aid of algorithms and Web crawlers, ending with a more transparent view of how users get their search results.
Only a select group has been invited to contribute thus far. The Wikia Project also includes software that anyone can use to build wikis and will have a feature that allows users to create their own search engines.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 26th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
Rummble Releases a Useful Facebook Application: Rummble, the location based content discovery service and mobile social network, launch a http://apps.facebook.com/rummble Facebook application to share your favourite places around the world, with your Facebook friends.
Boston-Based Feeley & Driscoll Offers Smart Planning Tips for 2008: Companies often skip tax and business planning for the new year in the year-end scramble to make tax deadlines, capitalize on exemptions and revised tax legislation, meet payroll requirements, and review financial performance. Feeley & Driscoll, P.C., a Boston-based public accounting and business consulting firm, offers the following list of hot topics to consider as businesses look to 2008.
Colabria® Announces Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit: Colabria®, in collaboration with many diverse sponsors, thought leaders and users, announces the Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit - Expanding Customer Value Networks, in New York City, NY, on Friday, 1 February, 2008.
Search Engine Marketing Specialist Latitude for Growth Backed by Private Equity Firm Vitruvian: Latitude Group, the award-winning internet search engine marketing company, has received financial backing from private equity investor Vitruvian Partners in a management buy-out. Ernst & Young advised Latitude Group.
A Very 'Hands-on' Internet Entrepreneur Takes the 2007-2008 Glazer-Kennedy Information Marketer of the Year Award: On November 4. 2007, Beth Davis, The Hand Analyst, won the prestigious Glazer-Kennedy Information Marketer of the Year Award. Beth believes that the key to business success, quite literally, rests in the palms.
New Data Recovery Software Assists Hard Drive Data Recovery, Retrieval of Deleted Photos, Music and Video Files: New data recovery software designed to assist with a variety of operations -- including hard drive data recovery -- can help when disaster strikes. Disk Doctors has launched Digital Media Recovery, a powerful software is designed to retrieve deleted, or corrupted, files from Memory Cards, USB Storage devices and hard drives.
Prepaid Broadband - A Big Deal for the Prepaid Recharge World : Prepaid Internet Broadband is about to explode throughout the world by means of upgrades to 3rd generation Mobile networks as well as the investment in wireless technologies such as WiMAX . These networks which will enable a prepaid, pay as you go billing mechanism will have a significant impact on the internet across the earth from Africa through to Asia. Prepaid Earth explains how prepaid will change the internet.
When's the last time you wanted to copy something from a webpage (a section
of text for example) and paste it quickly into an email? Chances are pretty good
that it happens very often and today's Website Magazine Tool-Of-The-Day makes
doing so a snap. Snippy is a small program (just 84KB - no install) that lets
users mark out a region of the screen they want to copy, add it to their
clipboard and past it in another application. If you are working in Internet
Explorer, the URL will also be copied to the clipboard.
Users of Snippy (of which I now count myself a faithful user) can either copy
an area freehand or hold down the SHIFT key to create a rectangular area. The
color of the line and its weight (how wide it is) can be modified easily in the
settings, accessible within the taskbar.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 21th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
SEO Training
Still Limited At The University Level
Arizona search engine optimization company Vertical Measures recently
released the results of an extensive study into the top SEM and SEO training
programs and resources available at the university level today.
Yesmail
Breaks Into the Leader Ranks of Email Marketing Service Providers: An
Independent Research Firm Awards Yesmail Perfect Scores in 15 Subcategories
Yesmail, a recognized industry-leading provider of permission-based online
email marketing solutions, announced today that it has been designated a Leader
in the Q4 2007 Forrester WaveTM report for Email Marketing Service Providers.
Novotus
Names Talent Technology Corporation 2007 Partner of the Year
Talent Technology Corporation, an award-winning provider of recruitment
technology, today announced they were named Partner of the Year by first-class
talent acquisition company, Novotus.
Webjam
Wins .net's prestigious People's Choice Award
Webjam, the place for you, your groups and your sites, has won one of the
UK's most auspicious awards for internet companies, the .net People's Choice
Award
ERC
Dataplus Announces Launch of Online Personnel Action Form System
New online personnel action form system eliminates the paperwork of
personnel changes.
Voxeo
Announces General Availability of Designer 8
Voice application development tool includes updated web services
standards; now available in both hosted and premise environments.
Vector
Networks Announces the Availability of Vector IT Asset Manager Pro v5
New version adds network device discovery and mapping.
Ever since Google pounded Yahoo into search submission, the second banana has been looking for a foothold. It appears mobile may be the ticket for Yahoo. They've made a deal with America Movil, Latin America's top mobile phone company to provide Web services to 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, good for 143 million wireless subscribers. This deal represents the largest so far of more than 20 search deals Yahoo has made with mobile operators. oneSearch (released in the US in January 2007) is the flagship product, providing mobile users with quick access to search and mobile Web services.
Yahoo is wise to start snapping up as many deals as possible in a marketplace on the rise. Rival Google has plans of their own, currently developing their own mobile operating system. Yahoo will rely on advertising deals in the mobile industry.
eWeek has put out their list of the top wireless stories from 2007. Not surprisingly, Google has their collective hands in several of the stories. They lead the way with the top story, the development of Android. The second story (FCC 700MHz auction) directly affects the third story (Google's bid for the spectrum).
Other top stories include the release of the BlackBerry 8820, the curious failiure of WiMax to make the scene and, of course the iPhone. See the list
here.
Viral video champions JibJab, an independent Internet entertainment studio
has premiered its third annual year in review entitled "In 2007." Website
Magazine would reguarly go ahead and show that video to you directly (even
though it's not Web related - maybe for the keywords) but we're not able to do
that today, and neither is anyone else. Why? Temporary exclusivity.
"In 2007" is
available on JibJab.com, but also exclusively on MSN for the first
twenty-four hours after its release. Thereafter, it will continue to be featured
on MSN and other JibJab partner sites such as Yahoo! Video, YouTube, Bebo, Daily
Motion, CNN.com, and Verizon Wireless' VCAST Video Service. JibJab has also
partnered with PLYmedia to provide subtitles to its expanding international
audience.
"We have made a concerted effort this year to broaden JibJab's distribution
footprint," said co-founder Gregg Spiridellis. "Our goal is to push JibJab
content wherever users want it, not only with our traditional satirical shorts,
but also with our new Sendables greeting line."
This got me thinking about the concept of "temporary exclusivity" which may serve you wonderfully as well. If
you've got content (video, audio, even articles) that is worthy of sharing, why
not consider working out exclusive deals that give high traffic or at least
notable or trustworthy sites first use? You'll find that the benefit of greater
exposure will serve you well, especially if you ensure that you'll be able to
distribute that content beyond that initial distribution point afterwards.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 20th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
ParetoLogic Launches Data Recovery and Data Recovery Pro to Recover Lost or
Deleted Files : ParetoLogic's Data Recovery and Data Recovery Pro can recover a wide
variety of file types, including recycled, encrypted and compressed. The files
are saved to a selected destination, and avoids taking up valuable hard drive
space.
Jaduka Wins
'Red Herring 100 Global' Award... Named One of Top Tech Start-Ups in World : Jaduka has been selected as a winner of the Red Herring 100 Global Award.
Jaduka is a leader in helping IT application developers and third party
solutions providers harness communications to create more effective business
processes.
HostGator
Offers 4,500 Free Web Templates to Webmasters : Shared hosting service provider HostGator now offers 4,500 free Website
templates to customers and resellers. The templates cover nearly 120 different
types of businesses and make it easier for non-technical people to build
attractive, effective Websites.
Early
Impact Announces Recent Updates to its ProductCart Shopping Cart Software : Early Impact's ProductCart e-commerce software is used by thousands of
Internet merchants. The software was recently updated to support Google Checkout
UK, PayPal Website Payments Pro UK and many new features, including an XML API.
Third
Door Media Announces Sponsorship of SEMPO: Industry-Leading Organizations to
Join Forces at SMX West : Third Door Media, Inc., producers of the Search Marketing Expo conference
series, today announced that they will serve as a sponsor for Search Engine
Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO), a search industry advocacy group.
The sponsorship combines the forces of two of the most well-known brands in the
search industry.
Email Data
Source Ranks Email Brand Equity of Marketers in the Employment Sector : Email Data Source released its study ranking the Email Brand Equity Index™
of marketers in the Employment Sector.
CMS
Watch Finds Growing Sophistication, Increased Success for Portal Buyers : Enterprise Portal Software Customers Overcome Hype to Make Tough Choices
Easy WebContent is aiming to thoroughly simplify the process of editing your Web pages. Designed as a system for the small- and medium-size Web businesses, Easy WebContent allows just about anyone - from those with some design knowledge to those with none at all - to start editing their site within minutes, make changes and have them take hold live. Enter your Web page (static HTTP pages only) and the system immediately recognizes and prepares the site for editing.
The tool boasts more than 70 editing features, from meta tag editing, redirects and image management to designing and implementing forms and adding new pages to your site. The system is entirely Web-based and is a true WYSIWYG editor, and Director of Operations Payman Taei says that new features are continually being added. One such feature will be an easier interface to edit images - currently a series of buttons to rotate, crop and resize images are needed rather than a simple mouse action. But if you don't like what you see after a change, the system holds 10-15 backups at all times, or unlimited backups with the professional version. "Our goal is to make this the #1 editing tool out there," says Taei.
There are two versions of the service available. The standard version runs $9.95 per month, and the professional version is $17.95 per month - a nice alternative for companies not wanting to pay an hourly rate to an outside designer. There are no setup fees or long-term contracts required. There is also a reseller program available for those interested in offering the service to their clients.
While catering to the non-design professionals, the system is robust but can look a bit daunting at first. But Taei claims that current users are not experiencing problems. There is a support team and tutorial available.
Easy WebContent offers a
free 7-day trial and
video tutorial.
Do a search on Google and you're not going to find RSS or Atom feeds anymore. But you will still find podcasts - because so many people are listening to podcasts these days. Google claims the removal of feeds will enhance the user experience. According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, "Feeds increase the likelihood that users see duplicate results," and "Users clicking on a feed may miss valuable content available only in the HTML page."
Searching for feeds will now need to be done through
Google Reader and
iGoogle.
Nielsen's list continues, this time with their top 10 blogs sites of 2007. Tops on the list is Google's Blogger, getting 33.6 million visitors, down from October's 34.1 million but a 49% jump from one year ago. Wordpress comes in second (12 million) with an impressive 310% increase from last year. Next is TypePad (11 million), gossip site tmz.com (8.8 million), LiveJournal (3.4 million), Thatsfit (2.6 million), Gadling (2.4 million - a 255% increase), Engadget (2.3 million), Xanga (2.2 million - a drop of 46%) and Gizmodo (2.1 million).
It appears that blogging shows no signs of slowing down. And as blogging software becomes easier to implement and use, expect the rise to continue. What will be interesting to see is if Movable Type creeps up this list, now that they have announced their
Movable Type Open Source Project.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 19th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
Omemo Launches
Groundbreaking P2P Network :
Akin to a Multimedia Version of Wikipedia; Omemo Creates Immense
Repository of Audio, Video and Software Renowned Technology Pioneer Pablo Soto
Unleashes Next Generation Software
Linux CEO
Brings Open Web Services for Online Dating to Social Networking :
Ex-Linspire CEO, Kevin Carmony, launches Dating DNA, providing free dating
Web Services for Social Networking sites and web devices
ExactSeek
Partners with Searchdaimon AS on New Search Engine Technology :
ExactSeek implements Searchdaimon AS advanced search technology to provide
improved search speed, relevancy and index scalability.
First
Social Networking Industry Virtual Trade Show to be held Today - Decmeber 19,
2007 :
Ticonderoga Ventures, Inc. announces today is the first-ever virtual trade
show for the social networking industry. It is a one day online event that runs
today (Wednesday, December 19, 2007) from 8:00 AM EST to 8:00 PM EST.
Influxis
Partners with Adobe for Flash Media Interactive Server 3
Upgrade offers enhanced security and HD quality encoding for real-time
communications.
We've mentioned before about where to find free images online that you can
use on your website, but where do you turn if you're looking for a little more
for stock photography? How about Website Magazine's Tool-Of-The-Day (actually more of a resource) Fotolia.
Fotolia.com offers high quality royalty free
images for as little as $1. I know what you're probably thinking - there's
simply no way that this is possible unless it's illegal. But Fotolia is unique.
As the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, Fotolia
allows individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and
illustrations. It is an excellent solution for art directors, graphic artists,
and marketing professionals on a restrictive budget looking for creative royalty
free imagery to illustrate such things as magazine ads, websites, billboards,
flyers, and presentations.
What's so special about phpBB 3.0? I'll tell you. Olympus, version 3.0 of the
popular open source forum software phpBB
has a host of new features (in addition to the many improvements on 2.0) that
are worthy of note. One of the issues I've heard about previous versions is that
there is no site wide RSS support and it's not in this version either, but here
are some of the most significant improvements and advancements:
- Include attachments in posts and private messages.
- Display automatic image thumbnails.
- Create unlimited sub forums.
- Display active topics of all sub forums.
- Create your own BBCodes
- Add new fields on user profiles; display at registration and profile
view
- Moderation queue, topic merging and topic copying
- Add other members as friends or foes
- posts by foes are hidden
- friends are show in friends list
- Ability to bookmark topics
- Subscribe to forums
- Mail or print topics
- and a whole lot more.
Google has announced the introduction of video sitemaps - making your videos more searchable via Google Video Search. Crawlable video formats include .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm and .flv.
From Google's Webmaster Help Center:
When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, we will make the included video URLs
searchable on Google Video. Search results will contain a thumbnail image
(provided by you or autogenerated by Google) of your video content, as well as
information (such as title) contained in your Video Sitemap. In addition, your
video may also appear in other Google search products. During this beta period,
we can't predict or guarantee when or if your videos will be added to our index,
but as we refine our product, we expect both coverage and indexing speed to
improve.Check out the information in their
Webmaster Help Center to learn how to create them, some video-specific tag definitions and some best practices.
Click fraud prevention solution provider Click Forensics announced the availability of a product for publishers and advertising networks to automatically blocks sources of click fraud and poor quality traffic from hitting pay-per-click (PPC) ads running on their sites Akin to a spam filter, the product filters traffic in real time so publishers can improve the quality of traffic passed to advertisers.
From the release: Using patent-pending analytics and live campaign data from the Click Fraud Network™, Click Forensics for Publishers identifies sources of click fraud and poor quality traffic. Information is updated in real-time as data is continuously gathered from live advertising campaigns tracked across various search engines, content networks and publishers. Specific data tailored to the needs of the individual publisher or ad network is then provided via an API so intelligent filtering decisions can be made.
“
As the competition for high quality traffic heats up and as search engines, ad networks and publishers become targets of more sophisticated fraud schemes, they need to ensure the traffic they deliver is of the highest quality,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. “
Click Forensics for Publishers does just that by helping provide the best quality traffic possible.”
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 18th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
Microsoft Launches adCenter Affiliate Program and Joins 5 Star Affiliate
Programs :
5 Star Affiliate Programs is proud to announce the launch of the Microsoft
adCenter Affiliate Program.
ShowMyPC.com,
a Silicon Valley Startup Launches Free Service for Scheduling Web Meetings :
ShowMyPC has launched a new software service for Scheduling and Conducting
Web Meetings. The service lets users instantly start a web meeting and invite
participants by email. The service is absolutely free and no registration is
required.
MailChimp
Creates Email Marketing Experts List :
Email marketers can now find expert email designers and marketing campaign
consultants to help increase conversion rates.
AgencyLogic
Announces New Revenue Sharing Vendor Programs for Single Property PowerSites
:
New Affiliate and Private Label Programs have been created in response to
an increasing demand from brokers, competitors, franchises and other industry
leaders for a single property Website offering.
CMS Watch
Makes 12 Predictions for Content Technology Buyers in 2008 :
SharePoint, Facebook May Disappoint, But New Opportunities Emerge in
Search, Archiving, and Web Analytics
Riverace
Releases "Top Ten Sockets Programming Errors" White Paper :
Written specifically for senior software developers and managers, the "How
to Avoid the Top Ten Sockets Programming Errors" white paper explains in detail
the ten most common sockets programming errors, including Winsock, Unix, Linux,
and TCP/IP, and then shows how developers can avoid them.
MailTank
Boosts Productivity with New Interface: Clients See Productivity Increase of 100
to 300 Percent :
MailTank, the nation's leader in custom email management solutions,
announced today that it had recently unveiled a new interface that helps its
clients dramatically improve their email customer service.
Introduction
of Enhanced Merchant Account Solutions from OffshoreProcessing.com :
Veteran merchant account provider, OffshoreProcessing.com has announced a
revamp of its existing services and some major changes which will offer added
advantages to new and existing customers most specifically those in "high risk"
categories.
Private
Proxy Now Offers Randomly Rotating IP Addresses to Access Blocked Websites :
PrivacyView Software, LLC the developer of award-winning Internet and
computer privacy software, announced today that Randomly Rotating IP Addresses
are available for its Anonymous Proxy Server, Private Proxy.
Truston
and Trend Micro Partner to Offer Discounts on Identity Theft Protection :
Trend Micro customers can save 50% and get 90 days of free ID theft
protection.
Part of
Nielsen's 2007 top ten lists is thier social site rankings. Unsurprisingly, social incumbent
MySpace leads the way with more than 57 million unique visitors in November 2007, ahead of
Facebook (21.9 million),
Classmates (11.4 million),
Windows Live Spaces (9.5 million),
AOL Hometown (7.6 million) and
LinkedIn (5.4 million).
However, growth is another matter. MySpace continues to lose ground, growing by only 7% from last year. Facebook nearly doubled from last year, growing by 89%.
Club Penguin, the social network for kids also nearly doubled, growing 98% from last year. Movie networking site
Flixster (ranked 10th with 3.3 million unique visitors in November) is booming, with a 316% increase from last year. Finally, popular business networking site LinkedIn posted a big gain, growing 245% from last year.
Just looking at the list, with Facebook's more professional and older user base, LinkedIn's business edge and MySpace's waning popularity, it's clear that social networking is growing up.
Superpages.com has announced the inclusion of
ProStores - an e-commerce platform to help Superpages customers monetize on their sites. Regular users of ProStores pay transaction fees on top of the $99.95 monthly subscription, but clients of Superpages will have those fees waived. For those using Superpages for their Web hosting services, ProStores offers the following:
- Integration with a company's Superpages website, allowing for order fulfillment 24/7.
- Availability to submit product catalog to eBay, Yahoo, Google product search and other shopping engines.
- Real-time shipping through UPS, FedEx and others.
- Tax calculations, payment processing (including PayPal) and recurring and automated monthly billing.
- Email marketing campaigns.
According to the Superpages press release, in 2006 users conducted more than 2.8 billion network searches and the network has more than 18 million small-to-medium-sized business listings in the United States.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 17th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
PPC Summit Unites Thousands of Online Marketers with Pay Per Click Experts :
PPC Summit has expanded its event schedule to educate more online marketers around the country and abroad in 2008.
Free Time-Tracking Software actiTIME v1.5 Released :
The new version of free time-tracker actiTIME v1.5 is now available for download. This time the major actiTIME enhancements are related mostly to the technical side of the product.
Easy YouTube Downloader and Converter for Portable Devices :
Download YouTube videos and convert them to iPod, PSP and cellphone.
Devnet Chosen as a Google Enterprise Solutions Partner in Australia :
Internet Marketing Specialists Devnet have become an Enterprise Solutions Partner for Google in Australia.
Avangate Presents Affiliate's Doctor With Live Chat :
Personalized one-to-one business consultancy and live chat for the Avangate Affiliates Network.
Search Marketing Expo - SMX West Announces 'Future of Search' Keynote Series :
Search Marketing Expo - SMX West today announced that Cuill vice president of products Louis Monier and Search Engine Land.com Editor-In-Chief Danny Sullivan will headline the 'Future of Search' keynote series at SMX West.
netForensics Enhances Event Log Management Solution With Architecture, Scalability and Data-Collection Improvements :
nFX Log One Offers Organizations Automated Enterprise-Class Log Management Solution for Comprehensive Audit and Compliance Reporting
Bloove: Bringing Web Access to Mobile Phone Messaging :
Irreplaceable for frequent SMS-senders and Internet-users Bloove software now has the ability to manage SMS and store them in archives on the server.
5square.com Incorporates Video Tutorials into Auto Dealer Sales Process Management System: Makes Training and System Navigation a Snap :
5square.com, (www.5square.com), the first complete, integrated selling system in the retail automotive industry, today announced it has incorporated a series of video tutorials into its web based system.
Mobile Access to ACOM's EZContentManager: Manage, Download, Fax, Email and View Enterprise Documents From BlackBerry Device Using WICKSoft Mobile Documents :
Road warriors offered a powerful new weapon in wireless connectivity to corporate document repositories; enables execution of multiple activities from virtually any location.
Shred and Import XML Into SQL Server Using Exult For SQL Server, A Powerful Windows Application Released By Novixys Software, Inc. :
Novixys Software, Inc. has released Exult for SQL Server v. 1.1 a powerful new tool aimed at database administrators and IT departments for easy shredding and importing XML into SQL Server.
Google has begun inviting a selected group of people to try a new
author publishing platform called "Knol", which stands for "
unit of knowledge". Google's goal is to encourage people who know a lot about a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. According to the official Google Blog post, "We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that."
One of the more interesting aspects of the platform are its community tools. Users will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, rate a knol, and write reviews. Couple that with free hosting, the ability to enable advertising and a potential promise that the content will make it into the SERPs and you've got a real winner. "
Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge."
In my opinion this has trouble written all over it. Besides the fact that Google will essentially be indexing its own content (which some will consider to be a slight on content producers) sites such as Wikipedia and other topic-specific and human powered search engines, directories and knowledge portals like Mahalo will over time be devalued (if not in the SERPs than in the minds of users). But do yourself a favor, if you get an invite, don't snooze - use it - or lose out on what could be some great traffic.
Online marketing agency GoViral has released their top five viral video advertisements of 2007. They include Cadbury's Gorilla Drummer (5 million YouTube views), Smirnoff's Green Tea Partay (3.4 million views), Ray-Ban's Catch Sunglasses (3.2 million views), Blendtec's Will it Blend? (2.7 million views) and Lynx/Axe's Bom Chicka Wah Wah (2.6 million views). They can all be seen
here.
Some of points of note:
- The Gorilla Drummer is well-crafted, funny and brief - all characteristics of a good viral video. And technically, gorillas have nothing to do with Cadbury chocolate, but it works and it's memorable.
- Green Tea Partay is clearly riding the wave of Lazy Sunday, one of YouTube's all-time most successful videos.
- Catch Sunglasses is perhaps the best example of user-generated feel and clever product placement. The video has the elements of UGC - complete with a talking camera man in the background audio and the theme of a few friends killing time. But make no mistake, this video was made by people who know what they're doing - and only the signature Ray-Ban style is needed. There isn't a tagline, logo or mention of Ray-Ban in the entire video.
- Will it Blend? is a case of user-generated viral video gone professional. Many Will it Blend? videos were produced before this one, blending everything from golf balls to a tiki torch. The early versions were grainier and had more of the "shot in my basement" feel to it. Many spoofs were also made of this video, creating an even wider reach and a true viral nature. What's more, Web culture is deeply ingrained in this video. An iPhone is blended (the horror) and the video ends with the Blendtec "scientist" holding the remains and saying, "I'm going to put this on eBay."
- Bom Chicka Wah Wah is perhaps the video that comes closest to resembling a television ad. It's a prototypical Axe commercial - a young, attractive woman is overcome with lust for a young, attractive man wearing the Axe scent. What makes this video successfully viral is the targeting of the message - "bom chicka wah wah" is the oft-quoted soundtrack of many-a-racy-film and has become somewhat of a cult classic by this targeted demographic. And sex sells.
If you're looking for a little more control over the ads appearing on your website through Adsense units, you'll be pleased to know that GOogle has released the Ad Review Center, which allows publishers to review ads placement-targted to their site and ensure those ads are relevant to your users.
(Editors Note: Placement targeting allows Adwords to choose specific locations (an entire website or a set of ad-units within that site) where they would like their advertisement to appear.) When Adsense publishers opt into the Ad Review Center they will be ablse to see the ads currently targeted to their site and after a short period of time will be able to see ads that have previously run on their site. While publishers can block ads that deem irrelevant, Google is recommending publishers consider the potential revenue impact before blocking. Advertisers will seemingly benefit as well. Publishers that block ads will be prompted to provide a reason which in turn is shared with advertisers to improve their placement targeting options.
Google will gradually launch the Ad Review Center to all publishers over the next few months. When it has been enabled for your account, you'll see a green notification box at the top of your 'Competitive Ad Filter' page, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab.
Pro account holders at Flickr (Yahoo! property)
are able to get insights into the ways that people are finding their photos.
There are stats available for people surfing on Flickr itself - where
the referrer is flickr.com - and stats about people coming from other
websites. We can show you the sorts of things people search for on search
engines where your photos turn up, and tell you how many views your photos
have in a week, or for all time.
Flickr will be showing Pro account holders an "all time" view counts going
back to when the account was created, but only a few weeks of referrer data is
available until statistics are actually enabled within the account. Users that
upgrade to a pro account will have 28 days of statistics. Flickr will update the
stats once a day.
Account stats currently come free with a $24.95 one year account.
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The following are press releases that
caught our attention today, December 14th, 2007. If you have a news
announcement you would like to share with the Website Magazine
community, please
contact Website Magazine editors now. |
Innovative
Virtual Worlds Press Conference To Be Held at X3Daemon.com on December 27, 2007
:
3DNPVEI, LLC will demonstrate an alpha version of its X3Daemon 3D Web networking
technology during its first virtual worlds press conference hosted on the
system. This unparalleled technology signals a 3D paradigm shift from
proprietary game platforms to browser-based business and social networking using
ISO-Approved Open Standards and secure encryption.
Telogis, a
Leading Provider of Location Based Technologies, Adds Vector Support to
GeoStream JS Toolkit :
Telogis, a leading provider of Location Based Solution systems and components,
today released the new version of its GeoStream JS library to the GeoBase
Technology Preview program. The GeoBase geospatial platform powers some of the
most innovative location-enabled business applications on the market. It is
feature rich, easy to use and takes the complexity out of geospatial software
for rapid deployment.
Books Find a
Way to Utilize Online Video Sites :
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/12/prweb576176.htm
Circle of Seven Productions grows the online video marketing trend for the
publishing industry. Book video brings the publishing market in line with other
entertainment industries thanks to online distribution to sites such as YouTube
and MySpace.
Canonical
Releases Version 1.0 of Bazaar Version Control Tool for Efficient Developer
Collaboration :
Decentralised version control system eases management of distributed,
out-sourced or open source development projects.
Infusion CRM Named Best SaaS Small Business CRM :
Receives Two Willy Awards from CRM Reviewer Rich Bohn of SellMoreNow.com
Email Data
Source Ranks Email Brand Equity of Marketers in the Diet Industry :
Email Data Source released its study ranking the Email Brand Equity Index™ of
marketers in the Diet Industry.
Nielsen has released a bevy of Top 10 lists for year end, 2007. Among those: the top brands accessed via a mobile device, amassed from data collected January - October 2007.
Brand Avg. Monthly Unique Audience (000)1. Yahoo! 16,563
2. Google 10,829
3. MSN 9,276
4. AOL 6,481
5. The Weather Channel 6,409
6. CNN 5,962
7. ESPN 4,902
8. MapQuest 3,685
9. FOX 2,613
10. CitySearch 2,370
Not surprisingly, search portals lead the list. After all, when you're surfing mobile, you're most likely not just browsing around but looking for something very specific in the least amount of time possible. After search, users are looking for those things that would appeal naturally to someone on the move - weather, directions, local information, news and sports summaries. It's also worth noting that several of these sites are automatically bookmarked on thousands of Internet-enabled mobile devices.
The real take-away from this list is that the most successful mobile sites have the user firmly in mind. Looking beyond the search giants, it's no coincidence that the preferred news and sports portals are well optimized for the mobile screen and contain quick, efficient recaps. Both CNN and ESPN mobile offer quick glimpses of news through a variety of categories without the need to do much scrolling. Images are condensed but appealing and the sites learn from your preferences. For example, if I access baseball news regularly from my mobile, the MLB link creeps up the list as hockey news fades away to the next screen.
As you plan for your mobile Web presence do some surfing with your own mobile device. You'll quickly discover what works, what doesn't and - the biggest factor - what is most important on a mobile site to you - the user. Mobile is expanding and refining, and so are the devices with which we access the mobile Web. Again, looking at the user's desires, combined with the developing capabilities of mobile devices - what would a user most likely want from your website while on the go and how can you deliver that information most efficiently?
As maligned as much as it is ballyhooed, human-powered search engine
Mahalo
announced an interesting new feature in "
Mahalo Social". The feature allows
users to collaborate in building trusted search results with their friends. By
participating in the Mahalo community (
recommending links, sharing links
you've recommended) your rank will increase on the Mahalo leader board, providing you an opportunity to increase your exposure.
"
We believe the next phase of development in the search space is going to
be based on human curation," said Mahalo CEO Jason McCabe Calacanis. He added:
"
Human curation via a social network is a very effective solution for evolving
machine search results."
Mahalo also announced that it will be making its entire index available in
both RSS and OPML formats under t