Yahoo makes the first move amid the potential that the government might someday soon come calling:
WASHINGTON - Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday that it will shorten the amount of time that it retains data about its users' online behavior — including Internet search records — to three months from 13 months and expand the range of data that it "anonymizes" after that period.
The company's new privacy policy comes amid mounting concerns among regulators and lawmakers from Washington to Europe about how much data big Internet companies are collecting on their users and how that information is being used. Yahoo's announcement also ratchets up the pressure on rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to follow its lead.
In September, Google said it would "anonymize," or mask, the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses on its server logs after nine months, down from a previous period of 18 months. And Microsoft, which keeps user data for 18 months, said last week it would support an industry standard of six months.
Under Yahoo's new policy, the company will strip out portions of users' IP addresses, alter small tracking files known as "cookies" and delete other potential personally identifiable information after 90 days in most cases. In cases involving fraud and data security, the company will anonymize the data after six months.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo also said it will expand the scope of data that it anonymizes to encompass not only search engine logs, but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. That information is used to personalize online content and advertising.
Yahoo will begin implementing the new policy next month and says it will be effective across all the company's services by mid-2010.
Anne Toth, vice president of policy and head of privacy for Yahoo, said the company is adopting the new policy to build trust with users and differentiate it from its competitors. Yahoo also hopes to take the issue of data retention "off the table" by showing that Internet companies can regulate themselves, Toth said.
European Union regulators have pressured Yahoo, Google and Microsoft over the past year to shorten the amount of time that they hold onto user data. And Congress has begun asking questions about the extent to which Internet and telecommunications companies track where their users go online and use that information to target personalized advertising.
Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, praised Yahoo for setting a new standard on privacy protection and said Google, Microsoft and other companies will now be compared against that standard.
Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group, agreed that Yahoo's new policy is "step in the right direction." He added, however, that he would like to see more clarity — and more standardization — from the industry about what it does with Internet users' data. He noted, for instance, that while some companies delete full IP addresses, other delete only parts of IP addresses or simply encrypt them.
Indeed, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said in a statement that the method of anonymization is more important than how long records are logged. It called on the entire industry to adopt a "high standard."
For its part, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said it takes privacy seriously and strives to strike "the appropriate balance between protecting our users' privacy and offering them benefits of data retention, such as better security measures and new innovations." Google did not address, however, whether it would be open to further reductions in the time it maintains user logs.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
a cool solar gadget for a laptop!
Global Satellite USA Launches Solar-Powered Laptop Bag
December 17, 2008
[Satellite Today 12-17-08] Global Satellite USA has released the Generator, a bag that produces enough solar power to charge a laptop from less than a day in the sun, the company announced Dec. 17.
The Generator features a 15-watt solar panel and a battery that holds the equivalent of a full laptop charge and also can be charged from a wall outlet.
For each hour in the sun, the Generator extends laptop run time by 20 to 45 minutes, depending on the efficiency of the laptop, according to Global Satellite USA. An hour in the sun also generates enough power to fully charge most phones, MP3 players and small cameras.
December 17, 2008
[Satellite Today 12-17-08] Global Satellite USA has released the Generator, a bag that produces enough solar power to charge a laptop from less than a day in the sun, the company announced Dec. 17.
The Generator features a 15-watt solar panel and a battery that holds the equivalent of a full laptop charge and also can be charged from a wall outlet.
For each hour in the sun, the Generator extends laptop run time by 20 to 45 minutes, depending on the efficiency of the laptop, according to Global Satellite USA. An hour in the sun also generates enough power to fully charge most phones, MP3 players and small cameras.
Quick tips for a PPC campaign
These are some good tips I found and use:
Pay per click tips and secrets
PPC tips and secrets are some recommendations which advertisers may evaluate while planning and devising a strategy for this relatively new form of marketing. Since PPC tips and secrets are merely recommendations, there is no need to apply them all, instead only the ones related to or appropriate to the business may need to be employed. Below are ten PPC tips and secrets.
1) Select a small number of suitable keywords on which to bid.
2) Avoid keyword bidding competitions, as prices may get high by sticking to budget.
3) Calculate conversion rate to find out average number of clicks per sale which can give indication of how much is required before a single sale is made.
4) Create appropriate and effective landing page to grab the users’ attention.
5) Landing page must relate to keyword(s)
6) Use PPC optimization and PPC conversion to track most profitable keyword.
7) Use negative keywords.
8) Advert must be written for appropriate target market.
9) Look for well known and trustworthy websites to register and setup PPC campaign.
10) Look for a company to assist in PPC optimization.(Rossini.com)
Pay per click tips and secrets
PPC tips and secrets are some recommendations which advertisers may evaluate while planning and devising a strategy for this relatively new form of marketing. Since PPC tips and secrets are merely recommendations, there is no need to apply them all, instead only the ones related to or appropriate to the business may need to be employed. Below are ten PPC tips and secrets.
1) Select a small number of suitable keywords on which to bid.
2) Avoid keyword bidding competitions, as prices may get high by sticking to budget.
3) Calculate conversion rate to find out average number of clicks per sale which can give indication of how much is required before a single sale is made.
4) Create appropriate and effective landing page to grab the users’ attention.
5) Landing page must relate to keyword(s)
6) Use PPC optimization and PPC conversion to track most profitable keyword.
7) Use negative keywords.
8) Advert must be written for appropriate target market.
9) Look for well known and trustworthy websites to register and setup PPC campaign.
10) Look for a company to assist in PPC optimization.(Rossini.com)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
On line sales shifts gears in this economy
Online Businesses Doing More with Less in an Uncertain Economy via Web Optimization Technology
Testing and Targeting Solutions Deliver Superior Online Experiences to Consumers While Driving Revenue and Profit for Businesses
BOSTON, Dec 16, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Ever gone online and had an unsatisfying experience on a website? Maybe you weren't happy with the way information was displayed or found it hard to find what you were looking for. That's the unhappy picture that consumers face when shopping on websites that have not been fine-tuned (or "optimized") for visitors. The good news is, businesses realize that not optimizing their websites depresses their revenue and profits and are now doing everything they can to improve online shopping experiences in an uncertain economy.
Increasingly, large retail websites are turning to website optimization technologies such as multivariate testing and behavioral targeting to improve visitors' online experience. Testing allows businesses to present multiple variations of content and discover which content you prefer while targeting enables companies to understand you better as a customer so that they can present you with relevant information, such as coupons. ShopNBC, the third-largest television home shopping network in the United States, is one business that has implemented testing and targeting solutions within its e-commerce infrastructure.
Top five things they found:
The company identified five key elements to test that might influence the actions of users who were contemplating a purchase:
1) Location and size of the "Add-to-Cart" button
2) Headlines identifying cross-sell items
3) Styles of tabs that link users to product details
4) Color, size, and style of Clearance and Limited Time pricing offers
5) Highlighting of payment options for qualified buyers
These are just some of the suggestions. You must have an inviting web site. You must have something people want to buy. Notice the specials and close outs, people love specials and close outs.
Want to know more call me at 913-533-4098 or visit my web site www.rossini.com.
Testing and Targeting Solutions Deliver Superior Online Experiences to Consumers While Driving Revenue and Profit for Businesses
BOSTON, Dec 16, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Ever gone online and had an unsatisfying experience on a website? Maybe you weren't happy with the way information was displayed or found it hard to find what you were looking for. That's the unhappy picture that consumers face when shopping on websites that have not been fine-tuned (or "optimized") for visitors. The good news is, businesses realize that not optimizing their websites depresses their revenue and profits and are now doing everything they can to improve online shopping experiences in an uncertain economy.
Increasingly, large retail websites are turning to website optimization technologies such as multivariate testing and behavioral targeting to improve visitors' online experience. Testing allows businesses to present multiple variations of content and discover which content you prefer while targeting enables companies to understand you better as a customer so that they can present you with relevant information, such as coupons. ShopNBC, the third-largest television home shopping network in the United States, is one business that has implemented testing and targeting solutions within its e-commerce infrastructure.
Top five things they found:
The company identified five key elements to test that might influence the actions of users who were contemplating a purchase:
1) Location and size of the "Add-to-Cart" button
2) Headlines identifying cross-sell items
3) Styles of tabs that link users to product details
4) Color, size, and style of Clearance and Limited Time pricing offers
5) Highlighting of payment options for qualified buyers
These are just some of the suggestions. You must have an inviting web site. You must have something people want to buy. Notice the specials and close outs, people love specials and close outs.
Want to know more call me at 913-533-4098 or visit my web site www.rossini.com.
Is the way the net works changing?
Google's OpenEdge Clouds Its Net Neutrality Stance
A network edge-caching measure that accesses data temporarily stored on servers near end users is causing some to question Google's long-term intentions.
By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
December 15, 2008 04:33 PM
Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s OpenEdge project -- an edge-caching measure in which frequently accessed data is temporarily stored on servers located near end users -- is putting its support of Internet traffic neutrality in question.
A report Monday in The Wall Street Journal charges that the new "fast track" policy by Google will undermine its commitment to the net neutrality concept. Citing "documents reviewed by the Journal," reporters focused on Google's OpenEdge project as evidence of Google's pending effort to downgrade its support of net neutrality.
Former Vice President Al Gore talked at Web 2.0 Summit, covering topics like his company Current TV, the democratization of the Web, the recently-concluded election and his favorite topic, renewable energy. Twitters Evan Williams and Current TVs Joel Hyatt talked at the Web 2.0 Summit about the current state of media, including some of the changing ways that people are communicating, sharing and making money with user-generated content. Gary Mueller, CEO of Digital Now, talks about the company's secure document communications service, which helps small businesses, consumers, and service providers exchange confidential documentation.
Twitters Evan Williams and Current TVs Joel Hyatt talked at the Web 2.0 Summit about the current state of media, including some of the changing ways that people are communicating, sharing and making money with user-generated content.
Network neutrality, which Google has been a vocal supporter of, would ensure that broadband service providers don't prioritize some Internet content, applications or services over other content, applications or services.
The accusation produced an immediate response from Google's telecom legal counsel Richard Witt, who strongly denied the charge.
"Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story," Witt wrote in his blog, "I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open."
Witt explained that its OpenEdge project is "non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements."
Stephen Arnold, a search engine expert who has written several books and reports on Google, zeroed in on Google's edge-caching as key to the argument that Google is not backtracking.
"Google's twist on the edge-caching setup is that it doesn't want to bother with the hassle of setting up a server facility and arranging a fat pipe to connect it with the local network," Arnold said in his blog. "Instead, they're negotiating with ISPs to simply collocate their servers in the existing network facilities, neatly clearing both of these hurdles. Google emphasized that these deals won't be exclusive -- any content provider could get the same sort of deal if it's willing to pay the ISPs' prices -- and its commitment to net neutrality stands."
The Journalstory, which featured sketches of Google chairman Eric Schmidt and President-elect Barack Obama, suggested that Obama and prominent Internet lawyer Lawrence Lessig, were shifting their previous positions that supported net neutrality.
Lessig, who taught law courses years ago with Obama at the University of Chicago, said in his blog post Monday that he hasn't shifted his opinion on net neutrality and hasn't seen any evidence that Obama has shifted his opinion, either.
"The article is an indirect effort to gin up a drama about a drama about an alleged shift in Obama's policies about network neutrality," Lessig wrote in his blog. "What's the evidence for the shift? That Google allegedly is negotiating for faster service on some network pipes." Lessig, who recently accepted a new post at Harvard Law School, said he hasn't "softened" his opinion on net neutrality as suggested in the Journal story.
Noting that since Google and Lessig aren't abandoning their commitment to net neutrality, Arnold doesn't believe there is any "tectonic shift" on the issue under way on their part.
A network edge-caching measure that accesses data temporarily stored on servers near end users is causing some to question Google's long-term intentions.
By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
December 15, 2008 04:33 PM
Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s OpenEdge project -- an edge-caching measure in which frequently accessed data is temporarily stored on servers located near end users -- is putting its support of Internet traffic neutrality in question.
A report Monday in The Wall Street Journal charges that the new "fast track" policy by Google will undermine its commitment to the net neutrality concept. Citing "documents reviewed by the Journal," reporters focused on Google's OpenEdge project as evidence of Google's pending effort to downgrade its support of net neutrality.
Former Vice President Al Gore talked at Web 2.0 Summit, covering topics like his company Current TV, the democratization of the Web, the recently-concluded election and his favorite topic, renewable energy. Twitters Evan Williams and Current TVs Joel Hyatt talked at the Web 2.0 Summit about the current state of media, including some of the changing ways that people are communicating, sharing and making money with user-generated content. Gary Mueller, CEO of Digital Now, talks about the company's secure document communications service, which helps small businesses, consumers, and service providers exchange confidential documentation.
Twitters Evan Williams and Current TVs Joel Hyatt talked at the Web 2.0 Summit about the current state of media, including some of the changing ways that people are communicating, sharing and making money with user-generated content.
Network neutrality, which Google has been a vocal supporter of, would ensure that broadband service providers don't prioritize some Internet content, applications or services over other content, applications or services.
The accusation produced an immediate response from Google's telecom legal counsel Richard Witt, who strongly denied the charge.
"Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story," Witt wrote in his blog, "I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open."
Witt explained that its OpenEdge project is "non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements."
Stephen Arnold, a search engine expert who has written several books and reports on Google, zeroed in on Google's edge-caching as key to the argument that Google is not backtracking.
"Google's twist on the edge-caching setup is that it doesn't want to bother with the hassle of setting up a server facility and arranging a fat pipe to connect it with the local network," Arnold said in his blog. "Instead, they're negotiating with ISPs to simply collocate their servers in the existing network facilities, neatly clearing both of these hurdles. Google emphasized that these deals won't be exclusive -- any content provider could get the same sort of deal if it's willing to pay the ISPs' prices -- and its commitment to net neutrality stands."
The Journalstory, which featured sketches of Google chairman Eric Schmidt and President-elect Barack Obama, suggested that Obama and prominent Internet lawyer Lawrence Lessig, were shifting their previous positions that supported net neutrality.
Lessig, who taught law courses years ago with Obama at the University of Chicago, said in his blog post Monday that he hasn't shifted his opinion on net neutrality and hasn't seen any evidence that Obama has shifted his opinion, either.
"The article is an indirect effort to gin up a drama about a drama about an alleged shift in Obama's policies about network neutrality," Lessig wrote in his blog. "What's the evidence for the shift? That Google allegedly is negotiating for faster service on some network pipes." Lessig, who recently accepted a new post at Harvard Law School, said he hasn't "softened" his opinion on net neutrality as suggested in the Journal story.
Noting that since Google and Lessig aren't abandoning their commitment to net neutrality, Arnold doesn't believe there is any "tectonic shift" on the issue under way on their part.
Aother security Explorer flaw
inda Young - AHN Editor
Washington D.C. (AHN) - Until Microsoft finds a fix for a security flaw in Internet Explorer that could allow criminals to take control of computers and steal passwords experts are warning people to use a different browser.
Microsoft said at least seven versions of its popular Internet Explorer web browser, which is used by most of the world's computers, are vulnerable to this security flaw. About 10,000 websites have been compromised so far as Microsoft races to find a security patch.
"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," the firm announced in a security advisory alert about the flaw.
This security flaw allows hackers to take control of a computer if they can trick victims into visiting a special website with malicious code that infects the user's computer.
Right now the goal seems to be to steal passwords that can be sold later on the black market, but experts warn that it could be exploited by financially motivated hackers.
Experts also caution that any Internet browser is subject to attack.
Washington D.C. (AHN) - Until Microsoft finds a fix for a security flaw in Internet Explorer that could allow criminals to take control of computers and steal passwords experts are warning people to use a different browser.
Microsoft said at least seven versions of its popular Internet Explorer web browser, which is used by most of the world's computers, are vulnerable to this security flaw. About 10,000 websites have been compromised so far as Microsoft races to find a security patch.
"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," the firm announced in a security advisory alert about the flaw.
This security flaw allows hackers to take control of a computer if they can trick victims into visiting a special website with malicious code that infects the user's computer.
Right now the goal seems to be to steal passwords that can be sold later on the black market, but experts warn that it could be exploited by financially motivated hackers.
Experts also caution that any Internet browser is subject to attack.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Will we be using our phones for more surfing in the future?
Study: Most will use cell phone for Internet by 2020
December 15, 2008 — 11:33am ET | By Sue Mare
The iPhone may have paved the way for consumers to access the Internet via their cell phone, but it will take another 12 years for the cell phone to become the primary gateway to the Internet for people worldwide. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's "Future of the Internet III study," nearly 600 Internet experts said the combination of portability and relative affordability will turn the cell phone into the leading Internet gateway by 2020.
The experts interviewed said that by 2020 they expect there will be a set of universal standards making it easier for users to maintain a consistent connection to the Internet. In addition, the researchers expect future mobile phones will function more as computers than phones making it difficult to distinguish between a mobile phone and a laptop.
Based upon the report, Pew suggests mobile technology may offer a better alternative for providing Internet access than computers through projects such as One Laptop per Child Initiative.
December 15, 2008 — 11:33am ET | By Sue Mare
The iPhone may have paved the way for consumers to access the Internet via their cell phone, but it will take another 12 years for the cell phone to become the primary gateway to the Internet for people worldwide. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's "Future of the Internet III study," nearly 600 Internet experts said the combination of portability and relative affordability will turn the cell phone into the leading Internet gateway by 2020.
The experts interviewed said that by 2020 they expect there will be a set of universal standards making it easier for users to maintain a consistent connection to the Internet. In addition, the researchers expect future mobile phones will function more as computers than phones making it difficult to distinguish between a mobile phone and a laptop.
Based upon the report, Pew suggests mobile technology may offer a better alternative for providing Internet access than computers through projects such as One Laptop per Child Initiative.
Delta to offer web e-mail on flights
By Roger Yu, USA TODAY
Delta Air Lines will be the latest domestic airline to offer in-flight Internet for passengers, launching paid Wi-Fi service on Tuesday on its East Coast shuttle flights.
The Atlanta-based airline will initially introduce GoGo, an Internet service operated by Aircell, on five MD-88s flying the New York LaGuardia-Boston Logan and New York LaGuardia-Washington Reagan routes. A Boeing 757-200 is also equipped with GoGo.
Passengers on the shuttle flights can expect about 40 minutes of Internet surfing time, says Chris Babb, a Delta product manager.
The carrier plans to add "a plane every two or three days" with the goal of equipping its entire mainline domestic fleet by the end of next year, Babb says.
The service will cost $9.95 for flights less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. As a promotion, Delta's new service will be free for the first two weeks.
Delta Air Lines will be the latest domestic airline to offer in-flight Internet for passengers, launching paid Wi-Fi service on Tuesday on its East Coast shuttle flights.
The Atlanta-based airline will initially introduce GoGo, an Internet service operated by Aircell, on five MD-88s flying the New York LaGuardia-Boston Logan and New York LaGuardia-Washington Reagan routes. A Boeing 757-200 is also equipped with GoGo.
Passengers on the shuttle flights can expect about 40 minutes of Internet surfing time, says Chris Babb, a Delta product manager.
The carrier plans to add "a plane every two or three days" with the goal of equipping its entire mainline domestic fleet by the end of next year, Babb says.
The service will cost $9.95 for flights less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. As a promotion, Delta's new service will be free for the first two weeks.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
What you can do to bring in leads
You hear me say I can bring you leads but in truth I should be saying what you should do to bring in your own leads!!! Here is a snippet or two from a leading net source on advertising on-line:
Rather than accumulating debt to spend on marketing try to create something that is free that you can give away. Sell food? Offer free recipes and a free online cookbook. Sell software? Give away a lite version. Looking to build a platform? Offer a strong API. Sell consulting or information? Offer with papers and/or a blog. As you gain exposure you can give away less and spend more time and effort making your customer relationship deeper and more meaningful.
What else can you do? Advertise to your own customers! Sounds funny ha? How simple an idea? Yes capture your own e-mail lists then advertise to them via e-mail newsletters!This strategy works and will bring leads and sales!
Here is a recent example of one of our successful e-news letters we created for a customer:
http://www.rossini.com/layouts/hottest_software/newsletter4.html
This is just a sample not totally done but it gives you an idea that it can work.
Another form of advertising is just plain sending out a simple text message to your clients like we did for www.streakfreemichigan.com. Here is an example and it doubled her sales over night! Simple, to the point and well it worked!
Save time and money with our ultimate cleaning cloth made from patented mirafiber. This cloth uses only water to clean any surface. It is green technology at its best." The Ultimate cloth cleans windows, glass, mirrors, windshields, shower doors, stainless steel, ceramic tile, granite, marble and more. This “green cloth” is washable, bleachable, and is guaranteed for 5 years!
Take a look at our web site www.streakfreemichigan.com and see the many green options that are perfect for a small holiday gift.
Free shipping through the end of the year on all orders big and small!
Please feel free to visit our informational blog on our website at www.streakfreemichigan.com. Thank you for reading this e-mail and I hope to see you as a valued customer soon.
Lorraine
Streak Free Michigan
P.O. Box 115
Bradley, Michigan 49311
This simple blog has worked! By the way, her ultimate cloth is great and I highly recommend it.
From Lorraine see what she says: It looks like the e mails are paying off. Sales are coming from all parts of the country!
Another way to stimulate your own traffic is: Write articles
Writing Articles is an excellent way to promote your website and best of all you can get recognize as an Internet business expert. You can submit your article to ezine or article directory. We at Rossini.com can show you the way! Be an expert in your field!!!
How about doing SEo to get more leads? Here is an opinion from the net that makes sense:
The Outsourcing Option
Full disclosure: I am biased. I run a search engine marketing agency. But I hope you’ll hear me out anyway.
Hiring an SEO agency to either handle the full scope of work or to consult on research and strategy and delegate to your web developer makes sense in many situations. SEO agencies usually spend a great deal of time researching strategies and tactics and compiling resources - all of which can help you hit the ground running with your SEO campaign. But you need to find the right agency.
Let’s be clear: no SEO agency can guarantee you rankings or growth. If they tell you they can, they’re being either dishonest or foolish, or both. The bottom line is that SEO experts don’t control the search engines. Changes to Google’s algorithm can, and usually do, come unannounced. That is out of our hands.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the burden of risk should fall entirely on your shoulders. Failure of a campaign shouldn't’t mean you lost your investment, the agency “did their best” and it just didn’t work out. Smart agencies recognize that the best thing they can do is share the risk with the client. How? Simply: they set specific goals and benchmarks and stick to them. That may mean they continue working at a discounted rate if they don’t reach a goal. On the other hand, they may offer to work on a performance-based contract from the start so their compensation will be linked directly to the return on your investment. The point is, it should be more of a partnership than a client/vendor relationship. That is as important now as it ever has been.
SEO is scalable - you don’t have to throw everything and the kitchen sink into it. Sometimes just taking a few small steps here and there over time adds up to success. Other times you need a one-time overhaul of your site, or maybe a long-term relationship with an expert who can help chart the course. It will depend on the goals you set for your website and how realistic they are given the limits of time and resources. But search engines are going to remain the primary driver of traffic and sales on the web for the foreseeable future. SEO, for that reason, shouldn't’t be an afterthought to your marketing plan, even in tough economic times - indeed, with such a high potential return on your investment, it should be a priority.
Well enough for now, I believe that despite the economy, using my strategies, you can still make sales and be successful!!
Rather than accumulating debt to spend on marketing try to create something that is free that you can give away. Sell food? Offer free recipes and a free online cookbook. Sell software? Give away a lite version. Looking to build a platform? Offer a strong API. Sell consulting or information? Offer with papers and/or a blog. As you gain exposure you can give away less and spend more time and effort making your customer relationship deeper and more meaningful.
What else can you do? Advertise to your own customers! Sounds funny ha? How simple an idea? Yes capture your own e-mail lists then advertise to them via e-mail newsletters!This strategy works and will bring leads and sales!
Here is a recent example of one of our successful e-news letters we created for a customer:
http://www.rossini.com/layouts/hottest_software/newsletter4.html
This is just a sample not totally done but it gives you an idea that it can work.
Another form of advertising is just plain sending out a simple text message to your clients like we did for www.streakfreemichigan.com. Here is an example and it doubled her sales over night! Simple, to the point and well it worked!
Save time and money with our ultimate cleaning cloth made from patented mirafiber. This cloth uses only water to clean any surface. It is green technology at its best." The Ultimate cloth cleans windows, glass, mirrors, windshields, shower doors, stainless steel, ceramic tile, granite, marble and more. This “green cloth” is washable, bleachable, and is guaranteed for 5 years!
Take a look at our web site www.streakfreemichigan.com and see the many green options that are perfect for a small holiday gift.
Free shipping through the end of the year on all orders big and small!
Please feel free to visit our informational blog on our website at www.streakfreemichigan.com. Thank you for reading this e-mail and I hope to see you as a valued customer soon.
Lorraine
Streak Free Michigan
P.O. Box 115
Bradley, Michigan 49311
This simple blog has worked! By the way, her ultimate cloth is great and I highly recommend it.
From Lorraine see what she says: It looks like the e mails are paying off. Sales are coming from all parts of the country!
Another way to stimulate your own traffic is: Write articles
Writing Articles is an excellent way to promote your website and best of all you can get recognize as an Internet business expert. You can submit your article to ezine or article directory. We at Rossini.com can show you the way! Be an expert in your field!!!
How about doing SEo to get more leads? Here is an opinion from the net that makes sense:
The Outsourcing Option
Full disclosure: I am biased. I run a search engine marketing agency. But I hope you’ll hear me out anyway.
Hiring an SEO agency to either handle the full scope of work or to consult on research and strategy and delegate to your web developer makes sense in many situations. SEO agencies usually spend a great deal of time researching strategies and tactics and compiling resources - all of which can help you hit the ground running with your SEO campaign. But you need to find the right agency.
Let’s be clear: no SEO agency can guarantee you rankings or growth. If they tell you they can, they’re being either dishonest or foolish, or both. The bottom line is that SEO experts don’t control the search engines. Changes to Google’s algorithm can, and usually do, come unannounced. That is out of our hands.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the burden of risk should fall entirely on your shoulders. Failure of a campaign shouldn't’t mean you lost your investment, the agency “did their best” and it just didn’t work out. Smart agencies recognize that the best thing they can do is share the risk with the client. How? Simply: they set specific goals and benchmarks and stick to them. That may mean they continue working at a discounted rate if they don’t reach a goal. On the other hand, they may offer to work on a performance-based contract from the start so their compensation will be linked directly to the return on your investment. The point is, it should be more of a partnership than a client/vendor relationship. That is as important now as it ever has been.
SEO is scalable - you don’t have to throw everything and the kitchen sink into it. Sometimes just taking a few small steps here and there over time adds up to success. Other times you need a one-time overhaul of your site, or maybe a long-term relationship with an expert who can help chart the course. It will depend on the goals you set for your website and how realistic they are given the limits of time and resources. But search engines are going to remain the primary driver of traffic and sales on the web for the foreseeable future. SEO, for that reason, shouldn't’t be an afterthought to your marketing plan, even in tough economic times - indeed, with such a high potential return on your investment, it should be a priority.
Well enough for now, I believe that despite the economy, using my strategies, you can still make sales and be successful!!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
I can bring leads!
Bottom line, if you want leads and sales give my company a try! I use my experience, powerful software and a lot of elbo grease to bring results!
Spammer shut down!
Junk e-mail drops after major spammer shut down
Star news services
The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted Tuesday after a Web hosting firm that engaged in spam activity was taken offline, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
McColo Corp., according to The Post, was a Web hosting business with customers made up of “some of the most disreputable cyber-criminal gangs in business today.”
The San Jose business was reported to be responsible for more than 75 percent of the world’s junk e-mail each day.
According to The Post’s Brian Krebs, two of McColo’s main Internet providers shut it down after his blog “Security Fix” reported the spam activities.
“Security Fix” said it studied the company for four months before making the report.
According to Krebs’ article: “While its gleaming, state-of-the-art, 30-story office tower in downtown San Jose, Calif., hardly looks like the staging ground for what could be called a full-scale cyber-crime offensive, security experts have found that a relatively small firm at that location is home to servers that serve as a gateway for a significant portion of the world’s junk e-mail.
“The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via e-mail.
But the company’s Web site was not accessible Wednesday, when two Internet providers cut off MoColo’s connectivity to the Internet, security experts said. Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide.
“E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.
“Spamcop.net, another spam watchdog, found a similar decline, from about 40 spam e-mails per second to about 10 per second.
“Officials from McColo did not respond to multiple e-mails, phone calls (or) instant messages. It’s not clear what, if anything, U.S. law enforcement is doing about McColo’s alleged involvement in the delivery of spam.
Star news services
The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted Tuesday after a Web hosting firm that engaged in spam activity was taken offline, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
McColo Corp., according to The Post, was a Web hosting business with customers made up of “some of the most disreputable cyber-criminal gangs in business today.”
The San Jose business was reported to be responsible for more than 75 percent of the world’s junk e-mail each day.
According to The Post’s Brian Krebs, two of McColo’s main Internet providers shut it down after his blog “Security Fix” reported the spam activities.
“Security Fix” said it studied the company for four months before making the report.
According to Krebs’ article: “While its gleaming, state-of-the-art, 30-story office tower in downtown San Jose, Calif., hardly looks like the staging ground for what could be called a full-scale cyber-crime offensive, security experts have found that a relatively small firm at that location is home to servers that serve as a gateway for a significant portion of the world’s junk e-mail.
“The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via e-mail.
But the company’s Web site was not accessible Wednesday, when two Internet providers cut off MoColo’s connectivity to the Internet, security experts said. Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide.
“E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.
“Spamcop.net, another spam watchdog, found a similar decline, from about 40 spam e-mails per second to about 10 per second.
“Officials from McColo did not respond to multiple e-mails, phone calls (or) instant messages. It’s not clear what, if anything, U.S. law enforcement is doing about McColo’s alleged involvement in the delivery of spam.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
yahoo chairman steps aside now will Microsoft step up?
A view from a stock market watcher:
“The strategic necessity here is for this company to merge with Microsoft,” Larry Haverty, a fund manager at Gamco Investors Inc. in Rye, New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. Gamco manages about $24 billion, including Yahoo shares. “This is just unmitigated good news for the Yahoo shareholders.”
Microsoft and Yahoo trail Google, which controls more than 60 percent of the Internet-search market in the U.S. Microsoft has said that while it’s open to a search-ad deal with Yahoo, it isn’t interested in buying the company outright. Microsoft bid as much as $33 a share for Yahoo this year, and Yahoo now trades at less than a third of that value. Microsoft may end up paying between $15 and $18 for Yahoo, Haverty said.
“The strategic necessity here is for this company to merge with Microsoft,” Larry Haverty, a fund manager at Gamco Investors Inc. in Rye, New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. Gamco manages about $24 billion, including Yahoo shares. “This is just unmitigated good news for the Yahoo shareholders.”
Microsoft and Yahoo trail Google, which controls more than 60 percent of the Internet-search market in the U.S. Microsoft has said that while it’s open to a search-ad deal with Yahoo, it isn’t interested in buying the company outright. Microsoft bid as much as $33 a share for Yahoo this year, and Yahoo now trades at less than a third of that value. Microsoft may end up paying between $15 and $18 for Yahoo, Haverty said.
A new Google product
This company is the new Microsoft look what they have now:
Days after it was expected to debut, a voice search function has been added to the Google application for the iPhone. The feature allows users to speak a search term, which is then transmitted to Google’s servers, recognized, then entered as a search ...
First Look At Google Mobile App For iPhone: Great But Not Second ... TechCrunch
Google Voice Search could be Iphone killer app Inquirer
This article created by C-net.
Days after it was expected to debut, a voice search function has been added to the Google application for the iPhone. The feature allows users to speak a search term, which is then transmitted to Google’s servers, recognized, then entered as a search ...
First Look At Google Mobile App For iPhone: Great But Not Second ... TechCrunch
Google Voice Search could be Iphone killer app Inquirer
This article created by C-net.
Monday, November 17, 2008
What is the worst computer problem?
Take a look at this!!
The Worst Tech Problem? 'The Internet's Down'
11.17.08
discuss Total posts: 1
by Chloe Albanesius
Most of us have been plagued with a blue screen of death, a laptop that refuses to connect to a home wireless network, or a cell phone that just doesn't feel like making calls.
About 48 percent of technology users have encountered such problems with their devices in the last year, according to a Sunday report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. How do they deal with these technological meltdowns? Most turn to customer support or just tinker with the devices themselves.
Of the more than 2,000 people surveyed last year by Pew, about 38 percent of them said they contacted customer support for help with a bad Internet connection, computer, or cell phone, while 28 percent fixed the problem on their own.
About 15 percent asked friends or family for assistance, 2 percent found help online, and another 15 percent could not fix the problem at all.
What caused the most headaches? Internet connections. About 44 percent of home Internet users reported having their Web connection fail in the last year.
"Broadband may be trickier to fix than dial-up without help from customer support," according to the report. About 49 percent of broadband customers had to contact customer support when they had a problem, versus 27 percent of dial-up customers.
Also causing problems were computers, with 28 percent of respondents reporting a malfunction in the last year, followed by 21 percent of cell phone users, 2 percent of people with PDA's like the BlackBerry, and 3 percent of those with MP3 players like the Apple iPod.
People who encountered computer trouble were most likely to fix it themselves, with about 29 percent contacting customer support. Internet and cell phone troubles were not as easy to troubleshoot, with 45 percent and 43 percent of people turning to user support, respectively.
Friends and family were most likely to help with computer and Internet problems, but cell phone problems were not as easily resolved. About 23 percent of people with cell phone issues could not fix the problem at all. About 19 percent of computer issues were unresolved, while only 7 percent of Internet connection issues could not be fixed.
Men were more likely than women to fix their computers themselves, but women were more likely than men to ask friends and family for help, according to Pew.
The Worst Tech Problem? 'The Internet's Down'
11.17.08
discuss Total posts: 1
by Chloe Albanesius
Most of us have been plagued with a blue screen of death, a laptop that refuses to connect to a home wireless network, or a cell phone that just doesn't feel like making calls.
About 48 percent of technology users have encountered such problems with their devices in the last year, according to a Sunday report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. How do they deal with these technological meltdowns? Most turn to customer support or just tinker with the devices themselves.
Of the more than 2,000 people surveyed last year by Pew, about 38 percent of them said they contacted customer support for help with a bad Internet connection, computer, or cell phone, while 28 percent fixed the problem on their own.
About 15 percent asked friends or family for assistance, 2 percent found help online, and another 15 percent could not fix the problem at all.
What caused the most headaches? Internet connections. About 44 percent of home Internet users reported having their Web connection fail in the last year.
"Broadband may be trickier to fix than dial-up without help from customer support," according to the report. About 49 percent of broadband customers had to contact customer support when they had a problem, versus 27 percent of dial-up customers.
Also causing problems were computers, with 28 percent of respondents reporting a malfunction in the last year, followed by 21 percent of cell phone users, 2 percent of people with PDA's like the BlackBerry, and 3 percent of those with MP3 players like the Apple iPod.
People who encountered computer trouble were most likely to fix it themselves, with about 29 percent contacting customer support. Internet and cell phone troubles were not as easy to troubleshoot, with 45 percent and 43 percent of people turning to user support, respectively.
Friends and family were most likely to help with computer and Internet problems, but cell phone problems were not as easily resolved. About 23 percent of people with cell phone issues could not fix the problem at all. About 19 percent of computer issues were unresolved, while only 7 percent of Internet connection issues could not be fixed.
Men were more likely than women to fix their computers themselves, but women were more likely than men to ask friends and family for help, according to Pew.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
An interesting way people look at the net
This is a very cool article:
F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
Summary:
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.
In our new eyetracking study, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users' main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:
* Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.
* Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.
* Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.
Obviously, users' scan patterns are not always comprised of exactly three parts. Sometimes users will read across a third part of the content, making the pattern look more like an E than an F. Other times they'll only read across once, making the pattern look like an inverted L (with the crossbar at the top). Generally, however, reading patterns roughly resemble an F, though the distance between the top and lower bar varies.
Three screenshots from Nielsen Norman Group's recent eyetracking study.
Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies of three websites. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations.
The above heatmaps show how users read three different types of Web pages:
* an article in the "about us" section of a corporate website (far left),
* a product page on an e-commerce site (center), and
* a search engine results page (SERP; far right).
If you squint and focus on the red (most-viewed) areas, all three heatmaps show the expected F pattern. Of course, there are some differences. The F viewing pattern is a rough, general shape rather than a uniform, pixel-perfect behavior.
On the e-commerce page (middle example), the second crossbar of the F is lower than usual because of the intervening product image. Users also allocated significant fixation time to a box in the upper right part of the page where the price and "add to cart" button are found.
On the SERP (right example), the second crossbar of the F is longer than the top crossbar, mainly because the second headline is longer than the first. In this case, both headlines proved equally interesting to users, though users typically read less of the second area they view on a page.
Implications of the F Pattern
The F pattern's implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of repurposing print content:
* Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
* The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
* Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.
Detailed Scanning Behaviors
It's fascinating to watch the slow-motion replay of users' eye movements as they read and scan across a page. Every page has reading issues beyond the dominant F pattern I'm discussing here. For example, users scan in a different, more directed way when they're looking for prices or other numbers, and an interesting hot-potato behavior determines how users look at a list of search engine ads. We also have many findings on how people look at website images.
Many of the detailed findings are presented in our two days of seminars on Writing for the Web at the User Experience 2008 conference in Chicago and Amsterdam.
The biggest determinant for content usability is how users read online — and because people read differently, you have to write differently.
F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
Summary:
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.
In our new eyetracking study, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users' main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:
* Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.
* Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.
* Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.
Obviously, users' scan patterns are not always comprised of exactly three parts. Sometimes users will read across a third part of the content, making the pattern look more like an E than an F. Other times they'll only read across once, making the pattern look like an inverted L (with the crossbar at the top). Generally, however, reading patterns roughly resemble an F, though the distance between the top and lower bar varies.
Three screenshots from Nielsen Norman Group's recent eyetracking study.
Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies of three websites. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations.
The above heatmaps show how users read three different types of Web pages:
* an article in the "about us" section of a corporate website (far left),
* a product page on an e-commerce site (center), and
* a search engine results page (SERP; far right).
If you squint and focus on the red (most-viewed) areas, all three heatmaps show the expected F pattern. Of course, there are some differences. The F viewing pattern is a rough, general shape rather than a uniform, pixel-perfect behavior.
On the e-commerce page (middle example), the second crossbar of the F is lower than usual because of the intervening product image. Users also allocated significant fixation time to a box in the upper right part of the page where the price and "add to cart" button are found.
On the SERP (right example), the second crossbar of the F is longer than the top crossbar, mainly because the second headline is longer than the first. In this case, both headlines proved equally interesting to users, though users typically read less of the second area they view on a page.
Implications of the F Pattern
The F pattern's implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of repurposing print content:
* Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
* The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
* Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.
Detailed Scanning Behaviors
It's fascinating to watch the slow-motion replay of users' eye movements as they read and scan across a page. Every page has reading issues beyond the dominant F pattern I'm discussing here. For example, users scan in a different, more directed way when they're looking for prices or other numbers, and an interesting hot-potato behavior determines how users look at a list of search engine ads. We also have many findings on how people look at website images.
Many of the detailed findings are presented in our two days of seminars on Writing for the Web at the User Experience 2008 conference in Chicago and Amsterdam.
The biggest determinant for content usability is how users read online — and because people read differently, you have to write differently.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Net marketing can increase your sales!
Net marketing such as SEO services, Google pay per click, Craigs list, PR releases, blogging all need to be used together in this troubled time to increase leads and bring sales. I use every marketing product I can to assist my customers to get rankings and get leads or sales. Time is what it takes but it will work. Do not try to be a brain surgeon and try to do this yourself. Let a professional company bring you those leads! Call us today or by our SEO 1 month service and see what we can do for you!
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Need SEO help or have questions?
We have added a pay per month for help with your search engine marketing questions. You can use me as a consultant and I will help you.
Need good keywords or phrases? I can help
Need help with adding a site map?
How about having me submit you to the search engines!
Follow this link and have up to 2 hours of contract assistance: http://www.rossini.com/submit.html
We can bring you leads and sales!
Need good keywords or phrases? I can help
Need help with adding a site map?
How about having me submit you to the search engines!
Follow this link and have up to 2 hours of contract assistance: http://www.rossini.com/submit.html
We can bring you leads and sales!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Its a holiday today and the post office is closed!
First I wish to give thanks and praise to our veterans today. We have benefited so much as a country from their bravery. My prayers go out to them and our fallen heroes today!
As a national holiday even one so special as today, the post office is closed as it should be. One thing to remember is that the net now is a world community and we are more and more intertwined. On a day such as today, you still may have the need to get mail out or send a proposal or a special notice and it is through e-mail that it can be done. You can send an e-mail brochure or an contract or just a special note and you will find that the net is 24/7. I recently heard that the Post Office will again raise rates in May and once again costs will go up for us all. Again you will find that e-mail is a very effective way to send out a message and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
We at Rossini.com offer e-mail service and offer e-mail newsletters should you ever need it!
Have a very good day and do not forget to remember those who have fallen today!
As a national holiday even one so special as today, the post office is closed as it should be. One thing to remember is that the net now is a world community and we are more and more intertwined. On a day such as today, you still may have the need to get mail out or send a proposal or a special notice and it is through e-mail that it can be done. You can send an e-mail brochure or an contract or just a special note and you will find that the net is 24/7. I recently heard that the Post Office will again raise rates in May and once again costs will go up for us all. Again you will find that e-mail is a very effective way to send out a message and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
We at Rossini.com offer e-mail service and offer e-mail newsletters should you ever need it!
Have a very good day and do not forget to remember those who have fallen today!
E-mail providers are squeezing you!
Here at Rossini.com we currently do not have any limits on your e-mail but most other companies do. Read this article from Kim Kamando!
E-mail limits can be tough
This will greatly reduce the file size. Your file size should be less than 2 megabytes. Gmail is quite generous with its e-mail size limit. Other providers are often stingier. It isn't uncommon to see 2MB limits on e-mail messages. You have to plan for the worst.
Now, you mentioned PDF-creation software. It certainly is a good idea to send your newsletter in PDF format. And yes, you can put photographs in PDF files.
With PDF files, you don't need to worry if recipients have Word. Most computers have Adobe Reader installed. If a recipient doesn't have it, it can be downloaded for free.
Also, PDFs retain their formatting across operating systems and machines. You don't need to worry that your carefully formatted document will go askew.
E-mail limits can be tough
This will greatly reduce the file size. Your file size should be less than 2 megabytes. Gmail is quite generous with its e-mail size limit. Other providers are often stingier. It isn't uncommon to see 2MB limits on e-mail messages. You have to plan for the worst.
Now, you mentioned PDF-creation software. It certainly is a good idea to send your newsletter in PDF format. And yes, you can put photographs in PDF files.
With PDF files, you don't need to worry if recipients have Word. Most computers have Adobe Reader installed. If a recipient doesn't have it, it can be downloaded for free.
Also, PDFs retain their formatting across operating systems and machines. You don't need to worry that your carefully formatted document will go askew.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Blog writing
Believe it or not blogs do work! If you are looking to do a blog but do not have the time, I offer several ways to have them done for you. Yes it will cost money but less than you think. Call me at 913-533-4098 or e-mail me at jrossini@rossini.com for more information.
Friday, November 7, 2008
New testimonials!
Rossini.com is pleased to post two testimonials we recently received. We are proud to be these people's vendor and it is our honor to have them as customers!
LET'S GO JOE!
Marketing on the internet is a specialized field. It is difficult to find someone with the expertise to get the job done properly.
I was fortunate to find Rossini Management Systems. Joe Rossini has proven to be both knowledgable and conscientious. My sales have more than doubled this past month. If something does not produce the desired results, he moves to something else. This is important since every web site is different and appeals to a different market.
Thanks to Joe, I am looking forward to an expanding business on the internet by capturing more and more of the available market. Let's go Joe! www.rossini.com
Lorraine Koloseik
Streak Free Michigan
www.streakfreemichigan.com
"When I need a hands-on, responsive web designer or host, I know I can
always count on Rossini Management Systems. I have know Joe Rossini for
years and have worked with Joe and Brenda now for nearly a decade. They
know what they are doing, they learn your needs, and they are creative.
There's nothing more reassuring than knowing you can count on a partner
in your activities, and Rossini Management Systems is a partner you can
count on."
Greg L. Musil
Shughart Thomson & Kilroy, P.C.
LET'S GO JOE!
Marketing on the internet is a specialized field. It is difficult to find someone with the expertise to get the job done properly.
I was fortunate to find Rossini Management Systems. Joe Rossini has proven to be both knowledgable and conscientious. My sales have more than doubled this past month. If something does not produce the desired results, he moves to something else. This is important since every web site is different and appeals to a different market.
Thanks to Joe, I am looking forward to an expanding business on the internet by capturing more and more of the available market. Let's go Joe! www.rossini.com
Lorraine Koloseik
Streak Free Michigan
www.streakfreemichigan.com
"When I need a hands-on, responsive web designer or host, I know I can
always count on Rossini Management Systems. I have know Joe Rossini for
years and have worked with Joe and Brenda now for nearly a decade. They
know what they are doing, they learn your needs, and they are creative.
There's nothing more reassuring than knowing you can count on a partner
in your activities, and Rossini Management Systems is a partner you can
count on."
Greg L. Musil
Shughart Thomson & Kilroy, P.C.
Rossini.com produces three election night winners!
Rossini.com is proud to say that three of our web sites were winners on election night. Go look at www.patapple.org, http://www.reelectfrankkellysheriff.org/ and www.justicenotforsale.org.
Rossini.com 15 years in the web creation business! Give us a try!
Rossini.com 15 years in the web creation business! Give us a try!
Is Yahoo about to fold?
SYDNEY, Australia - Yahoo Inc. shares dived more than 14 percent after the chief executive of Microsoft Corp. said Friday the software giant is not interested in renewing its bid for the struggling Internet company.
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer told a business lunch in Sydney that he had moved on after Yahoo rejected its takeover bid in the spring. He did suggest a partnership in the search engine market is possible.
"We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us and we moved on," Ballmer said. "We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don't know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share."
Yahoo shares fell $2.01 to $11.95 in morning trading Friday.
Yahoo's co-founder and chief executive, Jerry Yang, said Wednesday that Microsoft should make another bid for his company, which runs the world's No. 2 search engine. His appeal came after top search engine Google Inc. backed out of an Internet advertising partnership with Yahoo to avoid a challenge from the U.S. Justice Department, which said it would sue to block the deal on antitrust grounds.
Yahoo had been counting on the Google Inc. deal to boost its finances and placate shareholders still incensed by management's decision to reject the $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft six months ago.
"I'm sure there are still some opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, but I think (an) acquisition is a thing of the past," Ballmer said.
He also told the Australian audience that Microsoft saw an opportunity to reinvent the online search process.
"If anybody thinks the future of search is going to look like the present search, that's crazy," Ballmer said. "The user interface on search hasn't changed for six years. You still get the same dull, boring 10 blue links, for God's sake. Can't we do any better than that?"
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer told a business lunch in Sydney that he had moved on after Yahoo rejected its takeover bid in the spring. He did suggest a partnership in the search engine market is possible.
"We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us and we moved on," Ballmer said. "We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don't know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share."
Yahoo shares fell $2.01 to $11.95 in morning trading Friday.
Yahoo's co-founder and chief executive, Jerry Yang, said Wednesday that Microsoft should make another bid for his company, which runs the world's No. 2 search engine. His appeal came after top search engine Google Inc. backed out of an Internet advertising partnership with Yahoo to avoid a challenge from the U.S. Justice Department, which said it would sue to block the deal on antitrust grounds.
Yahoo had been counting on the Google Inc. deal to boost its finances and placate shareholders still incensed by management's decision to reject the $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft six months ago.
"I'm sure there are still some opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, but I think (an) acquisition is a thing of the past," Ballmer said.
He also told the Australian audience that Microsoft saw an opportunity to reinvent the online search process.
"If anybody thinks the future of search is going to look like the present search, that's crazy," Ballmer said. "The user interface on search hasn't changed for six years. You still get the same dull, boring 10 blue links, for God's sake. Can't we do any better than that?"
Monday, October 13, 2008
law suits on line
From the KC Star
More lawsuits trip up bloggers on Internet
By DAN MARGOLIES
The Kansas City Star
Local blogger Dan Ryan has never been sued for his postings, although one commenter whose anti-Semitic ravings he deleted accused him of slander and threatened “to own my house.”
Even so, Ryan, whose daily musings about politics, homemade beer and whatever else strikes his fancy appear at www.gonemild.com, said he was not overly concerned about getting sued.
“I have the benefit of being fundamentally judgment-proof — like most bloggers,” he joked, referring to his relative lack of wealth. Also, he said, “I try to avoid anything slanderous or anything that would be actionable.”
Ryan’s caution may stem from his training as an attorney. Most bloggers, though, are less attuned to the niceties of the law. An increasing number are finding themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
The Citizen Media Law Project has tallied 280 legal actions against bloggers and other online publishers nationwide. Compared with the millions of blogs out there, that might not seem like a lot. But the numbers have been trending steadily upward, from a mere four lawsuits in 1997 to 89 last year.
Although only a handful of cases have resulted in verdicts or settlements, a few have been eye-popping enough to give even the average basement- residing poster pause.
The largest was an $11.3 million defamation verdict in Florida against a woman who, on various Internet bulletin boards, disparaged the head of an organization she hired to remove her son from a Costa Rica boarding school as a “crook,” “con artist” and “fraud.”
Closer to home, St. Charles, Mo., authorities launched a criminal investigation after Lori Drew, an adult woman posing as a boy online, taunted 13-year-old Megan Meier with a series of cruel messages. Megan subsequently committed suicide.
Although the Missouri investigation was dropped, a federal grand jury in California indicted Drew for conspiracy and computer fraud.
The Drew case, to be sure, represents the extreme end of the blogging spectrum, where unfiltered, unmediated, unedited content is posted on the Internet.
It’s only a matter of time, experts said, before bloggers provoke more lawsuits, whether for defamation and invasion of privacy or for copyright infringement.
“In fact, every time someone publishes anything online, whether it’s a news article, blog post, podcast, video or even a user comment, they open themselves up to potential legal liability,” David Ardia, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, wrote recently on Poynter Online.
Ardia, who also directs the Citizen Media Law Project, noted that “even the smallest blog or most esoteric discussion forum has the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.”
Mainstream news organizations have insurance policies that cover the copyright and defamation risks associated with online publication. But until now, such insurance wasn’t available for individual bloggers.
Last month, Kansas City-based Media/Professional Insurance, which bills itself as the largest underwriter of media liability insurance in the world, launched a product aimed at the ordinary citizen blogger. BlogInsure, as it is called, appears to be a first — liability insurance for bloggers covering costs and damages for claims of defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement.
“To my knowledge, this is a unique product,” said Media/Pro’s chairman, Leib Dodell. “It’s an expansion of what we’ve been trying to do for the last 30 years, which is to stay abreast of developments in the media industry and make our coverage relevant to them.”
More lawsuits trip up bloggers on Internet
By DAN MARGOLIES
The Kansas City Star
Local blogger Dan Ryan has never been sued for his postings, although one commenter whose anti-Semitic ravings he deleted accused him of slander and threatened “to own my house.”
Even so, Ryan, whose daily musings about politics, homemade beer and whatever else strikes his fancy appear at www.gonemild.com, said he was not overly concerned about getting sued.
“I have the benefit of being fundamentally judgment-proof — like most bloggers,” he joked, referring to his relative lack of wealth. Also, he said, “I try to avoid anything slanderous or anything that would be actionable.”
Ryan’s caution may stem from his training as an attorney. Most bloggers, though, are less attuned to the niceties of the law. An increasing number are finding themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
The Citizen Media Law Project has tallied 280 legal actions against bloggers and other online publishers nationwide. Compared with the millions of blogs out there, that might not seem like a lot. But the numbers have been trending steadily upward, from a mere four lawsuits in 1997 to 89 last year.
Although only a handful of cases have resulted in verdicts or settlements, a few have been eye-popping enough to give even the average basement- residing poster pause.
The largest was an $11.3 million defamation verdict in Florida against a woman who, on various Internet bulletin boards, disparaged the head of an organization she hired to remove her son from a Costa Rica boarding school as a “crook,” “con artist” and “fraud.”
Closer to home, St. Charles, Mo., authorities launched a criminal investigation after Lori Drew, an adult woman posing as a boy online, taunted 13-year-old Megan Meier with a series of cruel messages. Megan subsequently committed suicide.
Although the Missouri investigation was dropped, a federal grand jury in California indicted Drew for conspiracy and computer fraud.
The Drew case, to be sure, represents the extreme end of the blogging spectrum, where unfiltered, unmediated, unedited content is posted on the Internet.
It’s only a matter of time, experts said, before bloggers provoke more lawsuits, whether for defamation and invasion of privacy or for copyright infringement.
“In fact, every time someone publishes anything online, whether it’s a news article, blog post, podcast, video or even a user comment, they open themselves up to potential legal liability,” David Ardia, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, wrote recently on Poynter Online.
Ardia, who also directs the Citizen Media Law Project, noted that “even the smallest blog or most esoteric discussion forum has the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.”
Mainstream news organizations have insurance policies that cover the copyright and defamation risks associated with online publication. But until now, such insurance wasn’t available for individual bloggers.
Last month, Kansas City-based Media/Professional Insurance, which bills itself as the largest underwriter of media liability insurance in the world, launched a product aimed at the ordinary citizen blogger. BlogInsure, as it is called, appears to be a first — liability insurance for bloggers covering costs and damages for claims of defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement.
“To my knowledge, this is a unique product,” said Media/Pro’s chairman, Leib Dodell. “It’s an expansion of what we’ve been trying to do for the last 30 years, which is to stay abreast of developments in the media industry and make our coverage relevant to them.”
The holidays are coming
The holidays are almost here and one way to save money and time is to shop on-line. Rossini.com offers multiple shopping carts from simple to more powerful. Call us now and take advantage of the power of on-line marketing and sales.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
How you can fight the current economic slowdown
Well stocks are tanking and most of us are losing paper money. Main street is slowing down which means that perhaps your sales are slowing down. How can we all fight this and continue to make sales?
You must cut some things or rethink some things such as postage. It costs .42 or so to mail a letter. You think heck that is cheap until you add the cost of the envelope and the handling of the letter and also gas to get to the post office and on and on. The little things add up. So what can we do? Well how about using the Internet to do some e-mailing to your clients and suspects and prospects. An e-mail newsletter done correctly is extremely cost efficient. You do have creation time to put together a good targeted letter. Yes you do have to have a program to capture your e-mail names and put them in a list that can be sent out. You do have to make sure these are your names, your customers or prospects that wont mind getting your e-mail. Once this is done though you have it created and now you can take that list and e-mail it out. Think about it, if you had 1000 names to mail to it would just in postage potentially cost you $420.00 just in postage to mail it out traditionally. It usually costs a lot less to do this with an e-mail newsletter. The big plus is that you can potentially one week latter e-mail again to this list at an even lesser rate thus once again saving part of that $420.00 snail mail postage costs.
Well this is just one way to reach your clients and save money. Today people use e-mail all the time so call me and I will help you find multiple ways to use e-mail newsletters to increase sales and save money.
Talk soon
Joe Rossini
You must cut some things or rethink some things such as postage. It costs .42 or so to mail a letter. You think heck that is cheap until you add the cost of the envelope and the handling of the letter and also gas to get to the post office and on and on. The little things add up. So what can we do? Well how about using the Internet to do some e-mailing to your clients and suspects and prospects. An e-mail newsletter done correctly is extremely cost efficient. You do have creation time to put together a good targeted letter. Yes you do have to have a program to capture your e-mail names and put them in a list that can be sent out. You do have to make sure these are your names, your customers or prospects that wont mind getting your e-mail. Once this is done though you have it created and now you can take that list and e-mail it out. Think about it, if you had 1000 names to mail to it would just in postage potentially cost you $420.00 just in postage to mail it out traditionally. It usually costs a lot less to do this with an e-mail newsletter. The big plus is that you can potentially one week latter e-mail again to this list at an even lesser rate thus once again saving part of that $420.00 snail mail postage costs.
Well this is just one way to reach your clients and save money. Today people use e-mail all the time so call me and I will help you find multiple ways to use e-mail newsletters to increase sales and save money.
Talk soon
Joe Rossini
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Comcast will start limiting your usage
This is important:
By Yinka Adegoke Thu Aug 28, 10:20 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it will cap customers' Internet usage starting October 1, in a bid to ensure the best service for the vast majority of its subscribers.
ADVERTISEMENT
Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies.
"If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use," according to the company's updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use.
Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year.
Comcast said up to 99 percent of its 14 million Internet subscribers would not be affected by the new threshold, which it said would help ensure the quality of Internet delivery is not degraded by a minority of heavy users.
U.S. Internet subscribers are typically not aware of any limit on their Internet usage once they sign up to pay a flat monthly fee to their service provider.
As Web usage has rocketed, driven by the popularity of watching online video, photo-sharing and music downloading services, cable and phone companies have been considering various techniques to limit or manage heavy usage.
But Comcast has come under fire from a variety of sources for its network management techniques.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigated complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent, and earlier this month ordered Comcast to modify its network management.
Comcast has said that by the end of the year it will change its network management practices to ensure all Web traffic is treated essentially the same, but has also been exploring other ways to prevent degradation of its Internet service delivery.
One consumer group said while Comcast's new 250 GB limit was "relatively high," it could eventually ensnare customers as technology progresses.
"If Comcast has oversold their network to the point of creating congestion problems, then well-disclosed caps for Internet use are a better short-term solution than Comcast's current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic," said S Derek Turner of Free Press, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group that filed a complaint about Comcast's network management practices earlier this year.
The Philadelphia-based company is not alone in trying to come up with ways to limit heavy Internet usage.
Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, said in January it would run a trial of billing Internet subscribers based on usage rather than a flat fee.
Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said Comcast was also considering so-called consumption-based billing, but no decisions had been made.
(Editing by Braden Reddall)
By Yinka Adegoke Thu Aug 28, 10:20 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it will cap customers' Internet usage starting October 1, in a bid to ensure the best service for the vast majority of its subscribers.
ADVERTISEMENT
Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies.
"If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use," according to the company's updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use.
Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year.
Comcast said up to 99 percent of its 14 million Internet subscribers would not be affected by the new threshold, which it said would help ensure the quality of Internet delivery is not degraded by a minority of heavy users.
U.S. Internet subscribers are typically not aware of any limit on their Internet usage once they sign up to pay a flat monthly fee to their service provider.
As Web usage has rocketed, driven by the popularity of watching online video, photo-sharing and music downloading services, cable and phone companies have been considering various techniques to limit or manage heavy usage.
But Comcast has come under fire from a variety of sources for its network management techniques.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigated complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent, and earlier this month ordered Comcast to modify its network management.
Comcast has said that by the end of the year it will change its network management practices to ensure all Web traffic is treated essentially the same, but has also been exploring other ways to prevent degradation of its Internet service delivery.
One consumer group said while Comcast's new 250 GB limit was "relatively high," it could eventually ensnare customers as technology progresses.
"If Comcast has oversold their network to the point of creating congestion problems, then well-disclosed caps for Internet use are a better short-term solution than Comcast's current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic," said S Derek Turner of Free Press, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group that filed a complaint about Comcast's network management practices earlier this year.
The Philadelphia-based company is not alone in trying to come up with ways to limit heavy Internet usage.
Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, said in January it would run a trial of billing Internet subscribers based on usage rather than a flat fee.
Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said Comcast was also considering so-called consumption-based billing, but no decisions had been made.
(Editing by Braden Reddall)
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Internet directories
Little is told of the real search space that Google and Yahoo and MSN and others use frequently. These areas are the places that the search leaders come to look. They see if your company is in the directory and if it is, it is placed or taken into their main search database.
Rossini.com enters all of its customers periodically in these directories. If you want to know if you are in there, just e-mail me and I will send you a verification. If for any reason you are not, we will enter you as part of your support!
Rossini.com enters all of its customers periodically in these directories. If you want to know if you are in there, just e-mail me and I will send you a verification. If for any reason you are not, we will enter you as part of your support!
Dell and a new direction
Computer buzz news:
BEIJING, China (AP) -- Dell Inc. unveiled four low-cost computer models for China, India and other emerging economies Wednesday in a new bid to tap the potential of high-growth markets outside the United States.
A sales clerk in China looks at a display computer in the Chinese retail outlet Gome in Beijing, China.
A sales clerk in China looks at a display computer in the Chinese retail outlet Gome in Beijing, China.
The two notebook and two desktop PCs are the first Dell models designed especially for emerging markets, said Steve Felice, the U.S. computer maker's president for the Asia-Pacific.
They are meant for small-business users and are to be sold in 20 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Strong sales in Asia helped Dell turn in better-than-expected results in the last quarter despite a slowing U.S. economy. It is due to report its latest quarterly results after the U.S. markets close Thursday, and analysts are watching whether it can maintain its growth pace.
"Our success is going to be largely dependent on our ability to expand globally," Felice said in an interview.
BEIJING, China (AP) -- Dell Inc. unveiled four low-cost computer models for China, India and other emerging economies Wednesday in a new bid to tap the potential of high-growth markets outside the United States.
A sales clerk in China looks at a display computer in the Chinese retail outlet Gome in Beijing, China.
A sales clerk in China looks at a display computer in the Chinese retail outlet Gome in Beijing, China.
The two notebook and two desktop PCs are the first Dell models designed especially for emerging markets, said Steve Felice, the U.S. computer maker's president for the Asia-Pacific.
They are meant for small-business users and are to be sold in 20 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Strong sales in Asia helped Dell turn in better-than-expected results in the last quarter despite a slowing U.S. economy. It is due to report its latest quarterly results after the U.S. markets close Thursday, and analysts are watching whether it can maintain its growth pace.
"Our success is going to be largely dependent on our ability to expand globally," Felice said in an interview.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Who is on line and where?
Take a look at this it is interesting!
In a recent interview with Josh Bernoff, co-author of the new book Groundswell: Winning In a World Transformed by Social Technologies, we discussed the need to put people before objectives, strategy and technology (just remember the acronym P.O.S.T and you’ve got it). Keep that in mind when considering these other stats about the online population* from the book:
* 25% read blogs, visit social networking sites, and/or read customer reviews
* 20% regularly update/maintain a profile on a social networking site
* 18% contribute to online forums or discussion groups
* 14% comment on someone else’s blog
* 11% post ratings/reviews of products or service, publish, maintain or update a blog, and/or listen to podcasts
* 8% use RSS
* 5% use Twitter
*Figures represent percentage of online U.S. adults participating at least monthly.
In a recent interview with Josh Bernoff, co-author of the new book Groundswell: Winning In a World Transformed by Social Technologies, we discussed the need to put people before objectives, strategy and technology (just remember the acronym P.O.S.T and you’ve got it). Keep that in mind when considering these other stats about the online population* from the book:
* 25% read blogs, visit social networking sites, and/or read customer reviews
* 20% regularly update/maintain a profile on a social networking site
* 18% contribute to online forums or discussion groups
* 14% comment on someone else’s blog
* 11% post ratings/reviews of products or service, publish, maintain or update a blog, and/or listen to podcasts
* 8% use RSS
* 5% use Twitter
*Figures represent percentage of online U.S. adults participating at least monthly.
Some copy writing skills
This is important when building a good web page that people will pay attention to
* Bullets- Listing out items in bulleted lists makes it much easier for a visitor to get useful information. Bulleted lists work great for emphasizing multiple benefits, as each benefit gets sufficient space to stand out and all of the benefits can be quickly scanned by visitors wondering if a given product or service will satisfy their needs.
* Bolding- Within paragraphs of copy, it’s a good idea to bold the more critical text. Visitors’ eyes will be able to quickly latch onto those important, bolded points amidst the rest of the text. That said, use bolding sparingly as too much will simply overwhelm visitors and actually hurt your visitors’ ability to skim and scan your text.
* Hyperlinks- Hyperlinks’ contrasting blue color and underlining also grab the eye and cause hyperlinked words to pop out at visitors. But since links are clickable, those hyperlinked words and phrases can also be used to qualify visitors and move them to pages and messaging crafted to speak to and answer more specific needs and questions - stuff that may not interest everyone but that will be important to specific segments of your audience.
* Sub-headlines- Break your content up into sections and label those sections with Sub-headlines (also called subheads). Once you’ve done that, try reading just the subheads and see if you come away with the gist of page’s content. Not only will this help visitors quickly scan the page for content, but it will also allow them to skip down to the section that’s most important to them. And as an added bonus, Sub-headlines help create needed whitespace for your page layout.
* White Space- White space makes it easier for visitors to find information and focus on what they are really looking for. Ensure you leave white space by breaking up long paragraphs (consider more than 5 stacked lines to be too long), using sub-headlines and bullets, and by maintaining decent margins and line spacing. Web copy should never look intimidating or too densely packed.
* Jargon- Using highly technical words or industry jargon inhibits skimming and scanning for anyone who isn’t 100% familiar with the terminology. As a general rule, copy on a broad-audience website should be at or below a fifth grade reading level. If specific technical terms are necessary, say if they are a key search term, link them to a glossary or FAQ, or explain the terms within the text itself.
* Bullets- Listing out items in bulleted lists makes it much easier for a visitor to get useful information. Bulleted lists work great for emphasizing multiple benefits, as each benefit gets sufficient space to stand out and all of the benefits can be quickly scanned by visitors wondering if a given product or service will satisfy their needs.
* Bolding- Within paragraphs of copy, it’s a good idea to bold the more critical text. Visitors’ eyes will be able to quickly latch onto those important, bolded points amidst the rest of the text. That said, use bolding sparingly as too much will simply overwhelm visitors and actually hurt your visitors’ ability to skim and scan your text.
* Hyperlinks- Hyperlinks’ contrasting blue color and underlining also grab the eye and cause hyperlinked words to pop out at visitors. But since links are clickable, those hyperlinked words and phrases can also be used to qualify visitors and move them to pages and messaging crafted to speak to and answer more specific needs and questions - stuff that may not interest everyone but that will be important to specific segments of your audience.
* Sub-headlines- Break your content up into sections and label those sections with Sub-headlines (also called subheads). Once you’ve done that, try reading just the subheads and see if you come away with the gist of page’s content. Not only will this help visitors quickly scan the page for content, but it will also allow them to skip down to the section that’s most important to them. And as an added bonus, Sub-headlines help create needed whitespace for your page layout.
* White Space- White space makes it easier for visitors to find information and focus on what they are really looking for. Ensure you leave white space by breaking up long paragraphs (consider more than 5 stacked lines to be too long), using sub-headlines and bullets, and by maintaining decent margins and line spacing. Web copy should never look intimidating or too densely packed.
* Jargon- Using highly technical words or industry jargon inhibits skimming and scanning for anyone who isn’t 100% familiar with the terminology. As a general rule, copy on a broad-audience website should be at or below a fifth grade reading level. If specific technical terms are necessary, say if they are a key search term, link them to a glossary or FAQ, or explain the terms within the text itself.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Why regular TV is going digital!
Here is the real reason that in Fe. 2009 you rTV will stop working in many areas of you rhome:
FCC to Decide in Battle for TV Spectrum
As Google, Others
Push for Sharing,
Broadcasters Fret
By AMY SCHATZ
August 18, 2008; Page B1
Landover, Md. -- After eight months of testing, a plan to employ unused TV channels to provide cheap, high-speed wireless Internet networks still faces determined opposition and an uncertain future.
The Federal Communications Commission will have the final say in the battle between the broadcasters -- which fear interference on the airwaves they'll still be using -- and the companies including Google Inc. and Motorola Inc. that want to share the television airwaves, using them for high-speed wireless service that could spur the development of new wireless gadgets.
[Kevin Martin]
In September, the FCC is expected to report its findings on tests of prototype "smart radios" that can pinpoint which local broadcast channels are being used and then avoid them. Shortly after that, its five commissioners are expected to take up the issue of whether those TV airwaves can be shared, with an eye to setting rules for their use by year end.
"Spectrum is very valuable and we want to make sure it's being used as efficiently as possible," says FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. "The idea of trying to utilize the 'white spaces' from a consumer perspective would be a good win for everyone."
White spaces are swaths of broadcast spectrum that will be left open after TV stations switch to digital broadcasting in February. This spectrum is valuable because signals can travel great lengths on it, and because it allows them to penetrate buildings, unlike airwaves used by some wireless phones and devices. The slivers of airwaves currently set aside for cordless phones, Bluetooth devices and Internet Wi-Fi networks are also getting crowded, and tech companies want more unlicensed airwaves to use.
"I like to think of it as Wi-Fi on steroids," Google co-founder Larry Page told FCC lawyers, congressional staff and lobbyists in June during his first lobbying trip to Washington. "It would make a huge difference for everybody."
White-spaces fans see a world in which empty TV channels could be used to deliver cheap, high-speed wireless Web access to consumers without forcing them to buy a latte. They envision installing a few antennas over a wide area to create a "mesh" network that delivers wireless Internet service. Previous efforts to do that with Wi-Fi antennas haven't been that successful, because their signals are weak and as a result the networks required a large number of antennas.
Letting wireless gadgets share TV-station airwaves could unleash a boom in new consumer electronics not seen since Wi-Fi took off about a decade ago, say companies including Google and Intel Corp., which are lobbying heavily for sharing.
"We have medical devices, laptops, even toys that are starting to incorporate Bluetooth. We want the wireless revolution to continue, but the little spectrum we have won't get us there," says Neeraj Srivastava, director of technology policy at Dell Inc.
Broadcasters are fighting the effort, arguing that their signals will get messed up, along with their businesses. "The only way we operate as a business is if our viewers get a clear TV picture. Given the fact that there's been a series of failures (in testing) at the FCC it doesn't give us a lot of comfort," says Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters.
Wireless microphone companies have joined the opposition, worried the new devices could prompt their microphones to fail. Many of their users, including the Grand Ole Opry, Broadway theaters and the National Football League, have appealed to the FCC to proceed with caution.
The technology companies are trying to prove they can share some of those channels without harm. They say their wireless gadgets with "smart radios" can automatically sniff out local broadcast channels and avoid them.
So far, though, the FCC's tests of these prototypes -- in labs, a football stadium and even a Broadway theater -- haven't offered a clear conclusion. Recently, FCC engineers spent a day at FedEx Field, the home of the Washington Redskins. Several engineers roamed the football stadium for hours, testing two prototype boxes designed to figure out which TV channels and wireless microphones were in use.
Neither box worked perfectly. A prototype designed by Philips Electronics NV's Philips Electronics North America Corp. was too sensitive: It said every TV channel in the stadium was in use, which wasn't the case. The other, from a Singapore research group, picked up some channels in use in the area but not others.
On the sidelines, Bruce Franca, an engineer representing the Association for Maximum Service Television, a group that handles technical issues for broadcasters, argued with Monisha Ghosh, a Philips researcher who insisted that her company's device was doing what it was supposed to do: find TV channels in use.
"Our device is a little more sensitive," said Ms. Ghosh, to a snort from Mr. Franca. Nearby, representatives from the NFL, Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and wireless-microphone manufacturer Shure Inc., crowded around the FCC engineers, some shaking their heads and muttering about the devices not working. For months, engineers from both sides have been claiming that the testing results prove their case.
It has been more than two decades since the FCC refereed a battle like this. Back then, in 1985, a staff engineer convinced the agency that unlicensed gadgets could share so-called garbage airwaves without disturbing the microwave ovens and other devices that already used them. It was a radical step for the agency, which had never set aside airwaves for unlicensed use by still-to-be invented gadgets.
Within a few years, industry standards were developed for those airwaves and Wi-Fi was born. Coffee-shop and home Internet hot spots flourished as a variety of other gadgets, including Bluetooth devices, also began using the unlicensed airwaves.
Technology company executives argue that if the FCC simply sets broad rules for sharing TV airwaves, engineers will come up ways to use them without disrupting TV channels or wireless microphones. Regulators in the U.K. did that recently, issuing rough guidelines that would allow unlicensed devices to share TV airwaves.
Four devices designed to figure out which TV channels are in use have been submitted for FCC testing. So far, FCC engineers aren't talking about their conclusions.
FCC to Decide in Battle for TV Spectrum
As Google, Others
Push for Sharing,
Broadcasters Fret
By AMY SCHATZ
August 18, 2008; Page B1
Landover, Md. -- After eight months of testing, a plan to employ unused TV channels to provide cheap, high-speed wireless Internet networks still faces determined opposition and an uncertain future.
The Federal Communications Commission will have the final say in the battle between the broadcasters -- which fear interference on the airwaves they'll still be using -- and the companies including Google Inc. and Motorola Inc. that want to share the television airwaves, using them for high-speed wireless service that could spur the development of new wireless gadgets.
[Kevin Martin]
In September, the FCC is expected to report its findings on tests of prototype "smart radios" that can pinpoint which local broadcast channels are being used and then avoid them. Shortly after that, its five commissioners are expected to take up the issue of whether those TV airwaves can be shared, with an eye to setting rules for their use by year end.
"Spectrum is very valuable and we want to make sure it's being used as efficiently as possible," says FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. "The idea of trying to utilize the 'white spaces' from a consumer perspective would be a good win for everyone."
White spaces are swaths of broadcast spectrum that will be left open after TV stations switch to digital broadcasting in February. This spectrum is valuable because signals can travel great lengths on it, and because it allows them to penetrate buildings, unlike airwaves used by some wireless phones and devices. The slivers of airwaves currently set aside for cordless phones, Bluetooth devices and Internet Wi-Fi networks are also getting crowded, and tech companies want more unlicensed airwaves to use.
"I like to think of it as Wi-Fi on steroids," Google co-founder Larry Page told FCC lawyers, congressional staff and lobbyists in June during his first lobbying trip to Washington. "It would make a huge difference for everybody."
White-spaces fans see a world in which empty TV channels could be used to deliver cheap, high-speed wireless Web access to consumers without forcing them to buy a latte. They envision installing a few antennas over a wide area to create a "mesh" network that delivers wireless Internet service. Previous efforts to do that with Wi-Fi antennas haven't been that successful, because their signals are weak and as a result the networks required a large number of antennas.
Letting wireless gadgets share TV-station airwaves could unleash a boom in new consumer electronics not seen since Wi-Fi took off about a decade ago, say companies including Google and Intel Corp., which are lobbying heavily for sharing.
"We have medical devices, laptops, even toys that are starting to incorporate Bluetooth. We want the wireless revolution to continue, but the little spectrum we have won't get us there," says Neeraj Srivastava, director of technology policy at Dell Inc.
Broadcasters are fighting the effort, arguing that their signals will get messed up, along with their businesses. "The only way we operate as a business is if our viewers get a clear TV picture. Given the fact that there's been a series of failures (in testing) at the FCC it doesn't give us a lot of comfort," says Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters.
Wireless microphone companies have joined the opposition, worried the new devices could prompt their microphones to fail. Many of their users, including the Grand Ole Opry, Broadway theaters and the National Football League, have appealed to the FCC to proceed with caution.
The technology companies are trying to prove they can share some of those channels without harm. They say their wireless gadgets with "smart radios" can automatically sniff out local broadcast channels and avoid them.
So far, though, the FCC's tests of these prototypes -- in labs, a football stadium and even a Broadway theater -- haven't offered a clear conclusion. Recently, FCC engineers spent a day at FedEx Field, the home of the Washington Redskins. Several engineers roamed the football stadium for hours, testing two prototype boxes designed to figure out which TV channels and wireless microphones were in use.
Neither box worked perfectly. A prototype designed by Philips Electronics NV's Philips Electronics North America Corp. was too sensitive: It said every TV channel in the stadium was in use, which wasn't the case. The other, from a Singapore research group, picked up some channels in use in the area but not others.
On the sidelines, Bruce Franca, an engineer representing the Association for Maximum Service Television, a group that handles technical issues for broadcasters, argued with Monisha Ghosh, a Philips researcher who insisted that her company's device was doing what it was supposed to do: find TV channels in use.
"Our device is a little more sensitive," said Ms. Ghosh, to a snort from Mr. Franca. Nearby, representatives from the NFL, Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and wireless-microphone manufacturer Shure Inc., crowded around the FCC engineers, some shaking their heads and muttering about the devices not working. For months, engineers from both sides have been claiming that the testing results prove their case.
It has been more than two decades since the FCC refereed a battle like this. Back then, in 1985, a staff engineer convinced the agency that unlicensed gadgets could share so-called garbage airwaves without disturbing the microwave ovens and other devices that already used them. It was a radical step for the agency, which had never set aside airwaves for unlicensed use by still-to-be invented gadgets.
Within a few years, industry standards were developed for those airwaves and Wi-Fi was born. Coffee-shop and home Internet hot spots flourished as a variety of other gadgets, including Bluetooth devices, also began using the unlicensed airwaves.
Technology company executives argue that if the FCC simply sets broad rules for sharing TV airwaves, engineers will come up ways to use them without disrupting TV channels or wireless microphones. Regulators in the U.K. did that recently, issuing rough guidelines that would allow unlicensed devices to share TV airwaves.
Four devices designed to figure out which TV channels are in use have been submitted for FCC testing. So far, FCC engineers aren't talking about their conclusions.
Big Brother is watching!
AT&T Staunchly Defends Ad Targeting
Claims it's never
adversely targeted users
As mobile advertising picks up steam, AT&T sets a precedent by issuing a strong defense of tracking users' web-browsing behavior across its network, arguing it can "dramatically improve their experience," reports the New York Times.
AT&T also emphasized the importance of doing so "the right way," meaning using of the "opt-in" method (requiring customers to affirmatively agree to monitoring) as opposed to "opt-out" (tracking anyone who does not explicitly ask to not be tracked). The latter is the method most commonly used by ad targeting companies.
The announcement was part of a response to an inquiry from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to 33 companies concerning ad targeting practices. News that behavioral ad firm NebuAd might buy customer web-surfing data from several internet service providers (ISPs) prompted the inquiry. Major ISPs, including Comcast, Verizon, TimeWarner Cable, and AOL, reassured the Committee that they do not monitor behavior on sites they don't run.
Against the tide, AT&T asserted behavioral targeting can be valuable for customers — provided that companies give consumers control over their information, ensure transparency, and take steps to protect privacy.
Justifying AT&T's argument, a recent Harris Interactive study found consumers are generally fine with behavioral targeting as long as privacy and security safeguards are met.
AT&T has never engaged in overall behavioral targeted advertising, not even in a customer trial, company spokeswoman Dorothy Attwood pointed out. She added that ISPs and ad networks, like Google, glean a deeper understanding of customer behavior by examining their entire online browsing history across all websites as opposed to examining their activity on just one.
Other behavioral targeting activities, like correlating web-surfing data across various platforms (i.e. use on sites broken down by broadband versus wireless users) is possible, she added, but AT&T has so far refrained from doing so, choosing instead to take a more "deliberate approach" to tracking and developing ad-delivery technologies.
The House conducted a hearing in mid-July to determine to what extent the partnership between ISPs and ad firms infringe upon user privacy, putting pressure on both parties to reform their current practices.
Events/Webcasts:
Claims it's never
adversely targeted users
As mobile advertising picks up steam, AT&T sets a precedent by issuing a strong defense of tracking users' web-browsing behavior across its network, arguing it can "dramatically improve their experience," reports the New York Times.
AT&T also emphasized the importance of doing so "the right way," meaning using of the "opt-in" method (requiring customers to affirmatively agree to monitoring) as opposed to "opt-out" (tracking anyone who does not explicitly ask to not be tracked). The latter is the method most commonly used by ad targeting companies.
The announcement was part of a response to an inquiry from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to 33 companies concerning ad targeting practices. News that behavioral ad firm NebuAd might buy customer web-surfing data from several internet service providers (ISPs) prompted the inquiry. Major ISPs, including Comcast, Verizon, TimeWarner Cable, and AOL, reassured the Committee that they do not monitor behavior on sites they don't run.
Against the tide, AT&T asserted behavioral targeting can be valuable for customers — provided that companies give consumers control over their information, ensure transparency, and take steps to protect privacy.
Justifying AT&T's argument, a recent Harris Interactive study found consumers are generally fine with behavioral targeting as long as privacy and security safeguards are met.
AT&T has never engaged in overall behavioral targeted advertising, not even in a customer trial, company spokeswoman Dorothy Attwood pointed out. She added that ISPs and ad networks, like Google, glean a deeper understanding of customer behavior by examining their entire online browsing history across all websites as opposed to examining their activity on just one.
Other behavioral targeting activities, like correlating web-surfing data across various platforms (i.e. use on sites broken down by broadband versus wireless users) is possible, she added, but AT&T has so far refrained from doing so, choosing instead to take a more "deliberate approach" to tracking and developing ad-delivery technologies.
The House conducted a hearing in mid-July to determine to what extent the partnership between ISPs and ad firms infringe upon user privacy, putting pressure on both parties to reform their current practices.
Events/Webcasts:
Google Phone
Here it comes!
The first Google-powered phone may hit shelves as early as October and as late as the end of the year — likely in time for the holiday season.
Google's buzzed-about Android — not a phone but a smartphone platform that operates on a High Tech Computer Corp (HTC) handset — will be available through wireless carrier T-Mobile.
Like other mobile phone manufacturers, HTC imitated iPhone's modish touchscreen design. It also added a full keyboard for easier typing and texting capabilities, the New York Times reports.
The Android operating system promises to turn phones into personalized devices, running applications and services unique to each user. The system is free to the 30 or so mobile carriers and manufacturers in Google's Open Handset Alliance. Alliance members Sprint and Qualcomm plan to offer Android phones eventually, but T-Mobile is the only one that will debut a unit this year. (AT&T and Verizon Wireless still have not committed to selling any Android phones so far.)
Carriers benefit from smartphones because revenue stream from data plans is higher than simple voice plans. They can also create and sell their own mobile applications, though Android's availability to third-party application developers (like the iPhone) may prove to be too much competition. Over 1,700 entries have been received for the so-called Android Developer Challenge.
The phone's release date depends on when the FCC certifies that the Google software and the phone meet network standards.
The first Google-powered phone may hit shelves as early as October and as late as the end of the year — likely in time for the holiday season.
Google's buzzed-about Android — not a phone but a smartphone platform that operates on a High Tech Computer Corp (HTC) handset — will be available through wireless carrier T-Mobile.
Like other mobile phone manufacturers, HTC imitated iPhone's modish touchscreen design. It also added a full keyboard for easier typing and texting capabilities, the New York Times reports.
The Android operating system promises to turn phones into personalized devices, running applications and services unique to each user. The system is free to the 30 or so mobile carriers and manufacturers in Google's Open Handset Alliance. Alliance members Sprint and Qualcomm plan to offer Android phones eventually, but T-Mobile is the only one that will debut a unit this year. (AT&T and Verizon Wireless still have not committed to selling any Android phones so far.)
Carriers benefit from smartphones because revenue stream from data plans is higher than simple voice plans. They can also create and sell their own mobile applications, though Android's availability to third-party application developers (like the iPhone) may prove to be too much competition. Over 1,700 entries have been received for the so-called Android Developer Challenge.
The phone's release date depends on when the FCC certifies that the Google software and the phone meet network standards.
Internet radio is changing
Internet radio as we know it is changing as this article tells us:
Buckling under the weight of the Internet radio royalty hike that SoundExchange pushed through last July, Pandora may pull its own plug soon. Despite being one of the most popular Internet radio services, the company still isn't making money, and its founder, Tim Westergren, says it can't last beyond its first payment of the higher royalties.
Related Stories
* Internet radio providers criticize SoundExchange's excessive administrative fees
SoundExchange offered a potential reprieve from the royalty hikes, but that turned out to be a red herring to sneak DRM onto web radio. In the end, SoundExchange was able to initiate a massive (and retroactive) royalty hike on Internet radio stations, imposing per-user fees for each song. Adding insult to injury, the royalties on Internet radio will double for big stations by 2010, to an estimated 2.91 cents per hour per listener—far higher than the 1.6 cents that satellite stations would pay. Radio stations don't pay fees like these yet, but don't worry. SoundExchange is working on fixing that problem.
Pandora, its peers, and many of their collective users have petitioned SoundExchange and politicians multiple times, but nothing has worked. According to the Washington Post, Representative Howard L. Berman (D-CA) is attempting one more last-minute deal between webcasters and SoundExchange, one that could lower the per-song rate set last year, but he isn't optimistic. "If [the negotiations don't] get much more dramatic quickly, I will extricate myself from the process," Berman said.
If Berman is unsuccessful, Pandora will have to pay 70 percent of its projected 2008 revenues of $25 million. "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved," Pandora's founder Tim Westergren told the Post, "we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money."
While it's true that SoundExchange has had DRM and radio broadcast flags on its agenda for some time now, representatives of the company have also justified its stance on higher royalties from revenue and profit standpoints. Stations like Pandora, SoundExchange argues, have a higher profit margin and more value because they can broadcast an unlimited number of songs to their users. This dynamic ability stands in contrast to traditional and even satellite radio stations that broadcast a single song on a finite number of channels.
SoundExchange also argues that Internet radio stations could do a lot more to increase their revenue, become profitable, and pay their (arguably high) fees. As much as it pains us to say it, there may be a point here.
There's no doubt that SoundExchange has been strong-arming the Internet radio industry into oblivion. But most Internet radio stations like Pandora offer their services for free, or they offer accounts with more features at incredibly cheap prices. While some stations display ads on their website, Pandora hasn't done itself any favors by offering desktop clients and a wildly popular iPhone application (iTunes link) that rake in millions of users without so much as a single ad. Perhaps, for now, the "just build it and we'll figure out the business model later" approach won't be enough to save this experiment in new media.
Buckling under the weight of the Internet radio royalty hike that SoundExchange pushed through last July, Pandora may pull its own plug soon. Despite being one of the most popular Internet radio services, the company still isn't making money, and its founder, Tim Westergren, says it can't last beyond its first payment of the higher royalties.
Related Stories
* Internet radio providers criticize SoundExchange's excessive administrative fees
SoundExchange offered a potential reprieve from the royalty hikes, but that turned out to be a red herring to sneak DRM onto web radio. In the end, SoundExchange was able to initiate a massive (and retroactive) royalty hike on Internet radio stations, imposing per-user fees for each song. Adding insult to injury, the royalties on Internet radio will double for big stations by 2010, to an estimated 2.91 cents per hour per listener—far higher than the 1.6 cents that satellite stations would pay. Radio stations don't pay fees like these yet, but don't worry. SoundExchange is working on fixing that problem.
Pandora, its peers, and many of their collective users have petitioned SoundExchange and politicians multiple times, but nothing has worked. According to the Washington Post, Representative Howard L. Berman (D-CA) is attempting one more last-minute deal between webcasters and SoundExchange, one that could lower the per-song rate set last year, but he isn't optimistic. "If [the negotiations don't] get much more dramatic quickly, I will extricate myself from the process," Berman said.
If Berman is unsuccessful, Pandora will have to pay 70 percent of its projected 2008 revenues of $25 million. "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved," Pandora's founder Tim Westergren told the Post, "we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money."
While it's true that SoundExchange has had DRM and radio broadcast flags on its agenda for some time now, representatives of the company have also justified its stance on higher royalties from revenue and profit standpoints. Stations like Pandora, SoundExchange argues, have a higher profit margin and more value because they can broadcast an unlimited number of songs to their users. This dynamic ability stands in contrast to traditional and even satellite radio stations that broadcast a single song on a finite number of channels.
SoundExchange also argues that Internet radio stations could do a lot more to increase their revenue, become profitable, and pay their (arguably high) fees. As much as it pains us to say it, there may be a point here.
There's no doubt that SoundExchange has been strong-arming the Internet radio industry into oblivion. But most Internet radio stations like Pandora offer their services for free, or they offer accounts with more features at incredibly cheap prices. While some stations display ads on their website, Pandora hasn't done itself any favors by offering desktop clients and a wildly popular iPhone application (iTunes link) that rake in millions of users without so much as a single ad. Perhaps, for now, the "just build it and we'll figure out the business model later" approach won't be enough to save this experiment in new media.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
News about AOL
Yes AOL is still alive but for how long? I think almost everyone of age who has been on the net for several years has had an AOL account. How many of us remember all those CD's in the mail? Well AOL may be up for grabs and one source has said it could be yet another struggling Internet giant (Yahoo). This is an ad by a blogger about what is happening to some of AOl's business as the net changes and revenues shrink for AOL. I hope you like it?
AOL launched what they’re calling the AOL Tech Network this evening. It’s a grouping of existing blogs - the Engadget sites, Switched, TUAW and Download Squad, under a new tech content group.
Unike AOL Games, AOL Entertainment and other sub brands, AOL Tech is being branded without “AOL.” A new link on the AOL home page links to Switched, which will now syndicate in content from the other blogs in the network.
This is partly a streamlining of the organization, but it’s also a way for AOL’s sales team to pitch a tech brand to advertisers that has a big footprint. The combined blogs bring in nearly 5 million combined monthly visitors, making it about twice the size of Wired and in the same ballpark as Yahoo Tech.
Of course, 100% of the Switched content is coming from blogs, unlike those other sites.
Engadget has more, and talks about a new design as well.
AOL launched what they’re calling the AOL Tech Network this evening. It’s a grouping of existing blogs - the Engadget sites, Switched, TUAW and Download Squad, under a new tech content group.
Unike AOL Games, AOL Entertainment and other sub brands, AOL Tech is being branded without “AOL.” A new link on the AOL home page links to Switched, which will now syndicate in content from the other blogs in the network.
This is partly a streamlining of the organization, but it’s also a way for AOL’s sales team to pitch a tech brand to advertisers that has a big footprint. The combined blogs bring in nearly 5 million combined monthly visitors, making it about twice the size of Wired and in the same ballpark as Yahoo Tech.
Of course, 100% of the Switched content is coming from blogs, unlike those other sites.
Engadget has more, and talks about a new design as well.
Friday, July 25, 2008
On line ads for Micfrosoft?
Where is this giant heading? This article gives some insight:
Microsoft gives little insight into online strategy
By JESSICA MINTZ
The Associated Press
REDMOND, Wash. | Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer defended the software maker’s decision to invest heavily in its unprofitable online business.
But he shed little light Thursday on specific steps it will take to challenge Google after the failed bid to buy Yahoo.
Analysts arrived for a yearly meeting at Microsoft headquarters hoping for new details about the software maker’s online strategy following Wednesday’s news that Kevin Johnson, a key executive in Microsoft’s pursuit of Yahoo, was stepping down.
But aside from an announcement that online hangout Facebook will build Microsoft’s Live Search engine into its site, executive presentations offered more cheerleading than fresh insights.
Ballmer filled in for Johnson, president of Microsoft’s Windows and online operations since 2005, to sketch out how the software maker was thinking about investing in its online business.
Last week the company announced $500 million of additional spending for fiscal 2009, but said little about where the money would go.
Ballmer did not disclose dollar amounts. But he indicated Microsoft would focus the bulk of that investment on search technology, data center infrastructure, Web indexing and marketing, and called search the mission-critical part of the online business.
Search is “a two-horse race” between Microsoft and Google, Ballmer said, making only passing reference to Yahoo’s current position as the second-largest search and advertising provider.
The executive said Google and Microsoft were the only two with the resources to play in what he saw as a $1 trillion market.
However, Microsoft must “ante up” to get in the game, Ballmer said repeatedly, laying out investments of as much as $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion a year, including the $500 million announced a week ago.
As you can see with so much money in the game...if yu want to be on thier search engines it might just take a pro to help you get there! Call me and I can do that for you!
Microsoft gives little insight into online strategy
By JESSICA MINTZ
The Associated Press
REDMOND, Wash. | Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer defended the software maker’s decision to invest heavily in its unprofitable online business.
But he shed little light Thursday on specific steps it will take to challenge Google after the failed bid to buy Yahoo.
Analysts arrived for a yearly meeting at Microsoft headquarters hoping for new details about the software maker’s online strategy following Wednesday’s news that Kevin Johnson, a key executive in Microsoft’s pursuit of Yahoo, was stepping down.
But aside from an announcement that online hangout Facebook will build Microsoft’s Live Search engine into its site, executive presentations offered more cheerleading than fresh insights.
Ballmer filled in for Johnson, president of Microsoft’s Windows and online operations since 2005, to sketch out how the software maker was thinking about investing in its online business.
Last week the company announced $500 million of additional spending for fiscal 2009, but said little about where the money would go.
Ballmer did not disclose dollar amounts. But he indicated Microsoft would focus the bulk of that investment on search technology, data center infrastructure, Web indexing and marketing, and called search the mission-critical part of the online business.
Search is “a two-horse race” between Microsoft and Google, Ballmer said, making only passing reference to Yahoo’s current position as the second-largest search and advertising provider.
The executive said Google and Microsoft were the only two with the resources to play in what he saw as a $1 trillion market.
However, Microsoft must “ante up” to get in the game, Ballmer said repeatedly, laying out investments of as much as $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion a year, including the $500 million announced a week ago.
As you can see with so much money in the game...if yu want to be on thier search engines it might just take a pro to help you get there! Call me and I can do that for you!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Web search is not as easy as you think!
Web search using the search engines use to be easy but not as much anymore!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Why have a blog?
This article is very interesting and it does site many of the items I site when having a blog. You have to have commitment to it and if you do it can payoff!
by Rachelle Money, 22 July 2008
Chris Garrett Q&A
Chris Garrett is a professional blogger and co-author of the recently published ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Wordtracker's journalist Rachelle Money caught up with Garrett to pick his brains on how to crack the mini industry of blogging.
Key points
* There are three main ways to make money from blogging – using it to advertise your services, making money from ads, and subscriptions.
* Be unique. Use the Wordtracker tool to discover niche subjects to base your blog on.
* Spend a week commenting on other like-minded bloggers' websites and network your way into the fold. This will put you in a powerful link-building position.
* Make sure your blog entries are adding to a wider debate and are not simply regurgitating content.
Rachelle: On your own blog, chrisg.com, you have said that there's no money in blogging, yet your book title claims that there's a six figure income to be had. What's the truth?
Chris: “The book actually says the same thing. Me and Darren (Rowse) emphasize a couple of times that this is not a get rich quick scheme and although there's money, don't think 'pack in the day job and I'll make a bigger income (from blogging)'. There is money to make but it's hard work and you have to choose the right battle.”
Rachelle: How do you blog for dollars?
Chris: “For Darren, he made money out of things like AdSense and Chitika, (a blog advertising company which Rowse claims has made him more than $250,000).
"My approach is that I made money because of blogging and not from it. I sell consultancy and services from my blog, and then there's Brian's - Brian Clark of [copyblogger.com] - (http://www.copyblogger.com) - approach to sales. He makes money from content through membership and gaining audience and then selling them products.
"Blogging is a tactic and a route to an audience, it's not a business in itself. We would rather think of it as focussing on your own audience and finding ways of pleasing them and paying your bills too.”
Rachelle: What are your blogging tips for someone starting out?
Chris: “You have to ask yourself, what have I added that's new? If all you're doing is adding content or editorial and not commenting on it then what's the point of reading your blog? You might as well just go to the original source of the link.
"Linking out is important too. If you are linking out then you need to stick to a theme or know what you're talking about. You have to continue the conversation and take it forward so your audience will feel inspired - they will want to contribute to the conversation, they will be entertained or get some value or information from it.
"Be unique. There's not a lot of it around because people are writing for themselves or want to write to make money rather than ask themselves 'What does my audience want?' 'Can I deliver that content?'”
Rachelle: With millions of blogs out there how can I make sure mine is unique?
Chris: “Keyword research is great for locating a niche market and is also really important for working out if a niche has legs. If nobody is interested in the niche then you've gone too narrow and if there's too many people in the niche then you've gone too wide.
"The niche could be 32 to 40-year-old professional women or a demographic, a topic, or even an attitude. You have to find a way to connect the audience and keyword research will tell you not only what niche to go for, but what topics to write for that niche.”
Rachelle: Do you do keyword research before you write your blog entries?
Chris: “I don't do keyword research for my own blog but I do do a lot of it for clients. The funny thing with my own personal blog is that I want to keep talking to my small but engaged audience. It's not about traffic but people who really want to hear from me and buy my services. I'd rather have 10 people that really want to hear from me than a million that I kind of miss.”
Rachelle: Do you think business blogging is a waste of time?
Chris: “I think corporate blogs can be useful but I have advised companies in the past not to do it. Some businesses are not set up in a way that they can blog, but they do have article sections. If you go to a corporate website it's me, me, me and it's a picture of the chairman - and the chairman's wife has probably selected the color scheme.
"They are not going to be able to blog very well but they will be able to get the benefits of Wordpress content management system. They will get the benefit of having articles and getting links to those articles, but there has to be the right culture to successfully blog and get an audience.
"A lot of businesses look at blogging as a silver bullet but a good company blog is a symptom rather than a cause. I think it's a shame that companies think, 'we need a blog' but don't really get what that means and the commitment that it brings.”
Rachelle: How do you manage comments?
Chris: “I always say that the comments area is like your home and it's your house, your rules. If people are being plain nasty and not adding anything to the conversation then don't publish the post. You aren't deleting it, you're just not letting it go live. Provide a comment policy so you can set out the ground rules and if someone breaks those rules the comment doesn't go live.
"I see comments as being vital because of the engagement aspect.
"If you really take care of what you write then other people's opinions are just other people's opinions. Your reputation will grow from it rather than be damaged.
"Comments can be good for search engine rankings too but I have a feeling that Google downplays the comments section because it attracts so much spam.”
Rachelle: On your blog you said the 'Build it and they will come' theory is crap. Why?
Chris: “Content is King but without an army guarding him he's just a man in a funny hat. You have to have great content because that's the foundation that everything else is based on, but people have to know about that content. You could have the best invention in the world but if you lock it in your cellar who's going to know about it?
"You need good quality traffic and that comes from fellow bloggers. I link to somebody else who's writing about online marketing or blogging and send people who are interested in that subject to them because I get the same in return.
"In terms of converting to regular readers then links from other bloggers is the way to go.”
Rachelle: How do you get other bloggers to link to you?
Chris: “To get on to their radar you have to comment and email them and get some sort of relationship going or use a service like Twitter to get into conversation. It's not self-promotion you're after at this stage, but networking. I think everybody, even if it's just for a week, should comment on as many blogs in their niche as they can. Commenting is great for getting to know other bloggers, it helps your writing, and helps you develop your own thoughts and ideas.
"The main thing is to have content that is linkable, and things like top tens always seem to work well. The other thing I'd say is that formatting is important too, so when you have a picture, bullet points or quotes it makes it more 'skimmable'. Dense blocks of text are off-putting and people won't bother reading it.“
Rachelle Money is a freelance journalist based in Scotland, UK. She graduated from the Scottish School of Journalism in 2005 where she was awarded an internship with two national publications -
by Rachelle Money, 22 July 2008
Chris Garrett Q&A
Chris Garrett is a professional blogger and co-author of the recently published ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Wordtracker's journalist Rachelle Money caught up with Garrett to pick his brains on how to crack the mini industry of blogging.
Key points
* There are three main ways to make money from blogging – using it to advertise your services, making money from ads, and subscriptions.
* Be unique. Use the Wordtracker tool to discover niche subjects to base your blog on.
* Spend a week commenting on other like-minded bloggers' websites and network your way into the fold. This will put you in a powerful link-building position.
* Make sure your blog entries are adding to a wider debate and are not simply regurgitating content.
Rachelle: On your own blog, chrisg.com, you have said that there's no money in blogging, yet your book title claims that there's a six figure income to be had. What's the truth?
Chris: “The book actually says the same thing. Me and Darren (Rowse) emphasize a couple of times that this is not a get rich quick scheme and although there's money, don't think 'pack in the day job and I'll make a bigger income (from blogging)'. There is money to make but it's hard work and you have to choose the right battle.”
Rachelle: How do you blog for dollars?
Chris: “For Darren, he made money out of things like AdSense and Chitika, (a blog advertising company which Rowse claims has made him more than $250,000).
"My approach is that I made money because of blogging and not from it. I sell consultancy and services from my blog, and then there's Brian's - Brian Clark of [copyblogger.com] - (http://www.copyblogger.com) - approach to sales. He makes money from content through membership and gaining audience and then selling them products.
"Blogging is a tactic and a route to an audience, it's not a business in itself. We would rather think of it as focussing on your own audience and finding ways of pleasing them and paying your bills too.”
Rachelle: What are your blogging tips for someone starting out?
Chris: “You have to ask yourself, what have I added that's new? If all you're doing is adding content or editorial and not commenting on it then what's the point of reading your blog? You might as well just go to the original source of the link.
"Linking out is important too. If you are linking out then you need to stick to a theme or know what you're talking about. You have to continue the conversation and take it forward so your audience will feel inspired - they will want to contribute to the conversation, they will be entertained or get some value or information from it.
"Be unique. There's not a lot of it around because people are writing for themselves or want to write to make money rather than ask themselves 'What does my audience want?' 'Can I deliver that content?'”
Rachelle: With millions of blogs out there how can I make sure mine is unique?
Chris: “Keyword research is great for locating a niche market and is also really important for working out if a niche has legs. If nobody is interested in the niche then you've gone too narrow and if there's too many people in the niche then you've gone too wide.
"The niche could be 32 to 40-year-old professional women or a demographic, a topic, or even an attitude. You have to find a way to connect the audience and keyword research will tell you not only what niche to go for, but what topics to write for that niche.”
Rachelle: Do you do keyword research before you write your blog entries?
Chris: “I don't do keyword research for my own blog but I do do a lot of it for clients. The funny thing with my own personal blog is that I want to keep talking to my small but engaged audience. It's not about traffic but people who really want to hear from me and buy my services. I'd rather have 10 people that really want to hear from me than a million that I kind of miss.”
Rachelle: Do you think business blogging is a waste of time?
Chris: “I think corporate blogs can be useful but I have advised companies in the past not to do it. Some businesses are not set up in a way that they can blog, but they do have article sections. If you go to a corporate website it's me, me, me and it's a picture of the chairman - and the chairman's wife has probably selected the color scheme.
"They are not going to be able to blog very well but they will be able to get the benefits of Wordpress content management system. They will get the benefit of having articles and getting links to those articles, but there has to be the right culture to successfully blog and get an audience.
"A lot of businesses look at blogging as a silver bullet but a good company blog is a symptom rather than a cause. I think it's a shame that companies think, 'we need a blog' but don't really get what that means and the commitment that it brings.”
Rachelle: How do you manage comments?
Chris: “I always say that the comments area is like your home and it's your house, your rules. If people are being plain nasty and not adding anything to the conversation then don't publish the post. You aren't deleting it, you're just not letting it go live. Provide a comment policy so you can set out the ground rules and if someone breaks those rules the comment doesn't go live.
"I see comments as being vital because of the engagement aspect.
"If you really take care of what you write then other people's opinions are just other people's opinions. Your reputation will grow from it rather than be damaged.
"Comments can be good for search engine rankings too but I have a feeling that Google downplays the comments section because it attracts so much spam.”
Rachelle: On your blog you said the 'Build it and they will come' theory is crap. Why?
Chris: “Content is King but without an army guarding him he's just a man in a funny hat. You have to have great content because that's the foundation that everything else is based on, but people have to know about that content. You could have the best invention in the world but if you lock it in your cellar who's going to know about it?
"You need good quality traffic and that comes from fellow bloggers. I link to somebody else who's writing about online marketing or blogging and send people who are interested in that subject to them because I get the same in return.
"In terms of converting to regular readers then links from other bloggers is the way to go.”
Rachelle: How do you get other bloggers to link to you?
Chris: “To get on to their radar you have to comment and email them and get some sort of relationship going or use a service like Twitter to get into conversation. It's not self-promotion you're after at this stage, but networking. I think everybody, even if it's just for a week, should comment on as many blogs in their niche as they can. Commenting is great for getting to know other bloggers, it helps your writing, and helps you develop your own thoughts and ideas.
"The main thing is to have content that is linkable, and things like top tens always seem to work well. The other thing I'd say is that formatting is important too, so when you have a picture, bullet points or quotes it makes it more 'skimmable'. Dense blocks of text are off-putting and people won't bother reading it.“
Rachelle Money is a freelance journalist based in Scotland, UK. She graduated from the Scottish School of Journalism in 2005 where she was awarded an internship with two national publications -
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