Road Trips Trump Pump Prices

Even though gasoline prices are over $3 a gallon, Americans still haven't seemed to be able to curb their driving habits all that much. Perhaps the concept of stewardship needs careful consideration.

Technorati Tags: gas prices, holiday weekend, Memorial Day, AAA, dominion, stewardship

ClimateSaverpc.com

"Google registered “climatesaverpc.com” on Wednesday — could this be Google’s next step in their ambition to save the environment?"

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=581

MS Office 2007 Converter

MS Office 2007 is on the market, as you should be well aware of. You run into problems though if you try to open 2007 documents, spreadsheets and the like with older versions of MS Office, since the new format is compressed, and unless you have MS Office 2007, you are unable to open it.

Here's the good news, however: Microsoft makes a converter available that converts the new format to a readable format, but so far, in order to find it online, you had to know what to look for... Not anymore, since here is what MS calls its converter, and the link you need:

"Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Brief Description

Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007."

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en


Technorati Tags: MS Office 2007, file format converter, MS Office Compatibility Pack

Gmail increases attachment size

I noticed in my Gmail account an announcement that Gmail doubled it's allowable attachment size, from 10 to 20 MB's. This is great for those who send video attachments, or larger rar or zip archives, such as myself.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html

Technorati Tags: gmail, attachments

TypeKey

TypeKey is a free, open system providing you a central identity for posting comments on weblogs and logging into other websites. You can register for free.

http://www.sixapart.com/typekey/


Technorati Tags: blog, weblog, blogging

Google Experimental

Less than what I was expecting, but still something to fiddle with, when I have 3-4 minutes of down time. According to ClickZ, one should be able to sign up at the Experimental site for future searches that include Experimental functionality, but I haven't found such an option.

"Google is always experimenting with new features aimed at improving the search experience. Take them for a spin, and let us know what you think."

http://www.google.com/experimental/


Technorati Tags: google experimental, ClickZ

Search Marketers Seed Social Networks

"Search marketers may be seeding content on social networks, but does that content generate product searches?"

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1004937&src=article1_newsltr

Technorati Tags: social networks, search marketers

Monster Commerce DataPort

We currently manage four eCommerce sites that run on the MC platform. Recently, we acquired the DataPort software to facilitate the exporting of the product list from one online store so that they could be easily uploaded to Google Base.

The exporting went just fine but, upon upload to Google Base, all but a handful of products, of a total of 582, were rejected. A call to MC tech support provided a simple enough answer, although I had already figured it out...It turns out that , if you have variants enabled on any of your products, DataPort exports a price of "0", which means you'll need to manually edit the price in the xml, since Google Base won't accept a product with no price.

With a total of 582 products, only a handful didn't need manually edited, so what could have been a 15 minute job turned into a 2 day workout. After this everything went smoothly. Something to keep in mind if you're looking at DataPort for this feature.

Technorati Tags: Google Base, Monster Commerce, DataPort

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Pipl

Pipl searches the "deep web", which consists of databases that web crawlers don't crawl. Nice...well, this site is rather interesting. Try searching for your own name, and see what it uncovers, or perhaps an ex wife. I found one of my ex wives (exactly where I left her) but the other remains lost in time.

http://www.pipl.com

"There are various reasons why you might need to search for people, you may need to find a lost relative, an old flame, a classmate or a business contact, but if you are using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to search for people - you have probably realized by now that it might work in some cases but in most cases it won't."

Technorati Tags: people search, pipl, search engine
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Yahoo! begins to unroll unlimited email storage

"As promised, we’ve started to roll out unlimited email storage to Yahoo! Mail users worldwide today. When it hits your account, you’ll notice the storage meter has disappeared — meaning, you just don’t have to worry about deleting old messages ever again!

As a reminder, while we wish we could simply flip a switch and “unlimit” everyone at once, we’ll be rolling this out over a few months to facilitate a smooth transition. Thanks for your patience."

http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/05/14/unlimited-storage-its-coming/

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, email, unlimited

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News Clips for Your Site at No Charge

TheNewsRoom is the premier source for news content online. It's all free, fully licensed, and available for you to embed, or mash, onto your website or blog!

When you join, you automatically share in the advertising revenue every time a mashed story is viewed on your site. It's free, but you have to join to participate!

* Build your audience

* Keep them on your site

* Add another source of revenue

* It's all free!

TheNewsroom.com

Technorati Tags: free news sources, cbs, free content
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Promotional Marketers Prefer E-Mail

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004898&src=article1_newsltr

"E-mail is the online tactic of choice for promotional marketers, according to a PROMO magazine survey.

The magazine found that 72.6% of respondents used e-mail marketing as part of their online efforts. Another 60.8% used e-mail newsletters."

Technorati Tags: newsletters, email, marketing, promotional,

"If you build it, they will come"

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3625821

"While the concept is cosmic, strangely just, and inspirational, it’s also crap. If you build a baseball field in a cornfield, I'm very sorry, but you are going to have to market the hell out of that thing. You can’t just build an inspired online marketing initiative and hope “they’ll come.” I know this seems super obvious, but you’d be amazed at how easy it is to make this mistake."

Technorati Tags: links, content, field of dreams

Uncut E-mail Lists Can Hurt

Cut, slice, divide, segment and conquer.

"Online retailers could improve sales by using segmented e-mail lists, according to an Internet Retailer survey analyzed by Vovici."

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004890&src=article1_newsltr


Have a look at this survey, it might be interesting for you and visit us at Dominion-Design.qupis.com to find more information about online marketing, SEO, open source software and more.


Technorati Tags: e-mail lists, Internt retailer, Vovici, improve online sales, SEO, Dominion Design

Want Dell's Ubuntu PC? Be prepared to wait...

"Dell will not sell Linux PCs in the UK - at least for the time being.

"The PC supplier has said it will sell machines with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed later this month. But Dell has told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK that the systems will only be sold in the US for now. It refused to reveal any timescale for the sale of such systems in the UK."

http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,39166996,00.htm


Technorati Tags: Dell, Ubuntu, Linux, US, UK

Microsoft eyeing deal to buy Yahoo

Report: Web portal seen valued at $50 billion

NEW YORK

Microsoft Corp. has intensified its pursuit of a deal to take over Yahoo Inc., asking the company to re-enter formal talks, the New York Post reported on its Web site on Friday.

While the two companies have held informal deal talks over the years, the latest approach signals a new urgency on Microsoft's part, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18486561/


Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Yahoo, takeover

Female Boomers Use Web Actively

"Female baby boomers spend over 15 hours a week on the Internet, according to a ThirdAge and JWT BOOM survey.

"Over 83% of all female boomers spend some of that time researching or reading about health and wellness, both for themselves and their families.

"Nearly 70% say they would definitely or probably get health information from their friends as well."


http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004880&src=dp1_home


Technorati Tags: female internet users, baby boomers, health research, wellness

Free Keyword Suggestion Tool

Have a look at this free keyword suggestion tool, and try it:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/


Technorati Tags: keyword suggestion tool, webdesign, SEO

Yahoo to shut down Yahoo Photos service, push Flickr

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)

Yahoo Inc. is shutting down Yahoo Photos, its first-generation photo storage site, and asking users to move instead to Yahoo's Web 2.0 photo sharing site, Flickr, a Yahoo official said on Thursday.

In June, tens of millions of registered users of Yahoo Photos will be notified of various options including upgrading to Yahoo's Flickr service or various outside-photo storage sites, according to Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.

Yahoo also will offer consumers the option of loading their photos on competing sites when users are notified next month.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKN0421349320070504


Technorati Tags: yahoo photos, Flickr, photo storage site

Free Web Design Tools From The Big Three: SEO Friendly Or Not?

"Today's article is a follow-up on our earlier review in which I looked at the capabilities and usability of the big three search engines' free site creation tools. The focus was on how easy each software product was for a non-technical person to master. The three tools reviewed were Google's Page Creator, Microsoft's Office Live Basics, and Yahoo's SiteBuilder.

"The original article, Free Web Design Tools From the Big Three: Trash or Treasure? spawned a flurry of questions related to the "SEO friendliness" of the products. Many small businesses don't have coders on staff but still want to take advantage of basic optimization best practices, so certain elements needed to be in place in order for site owners to control their optimization processes."

http://searchengineland.com/070503-131500.php


Technorati Tags: search engines, yahoo, google, microsoft live search, SEO, free webdesign tools

Search Engine Shoot-Out

By Jeff Bertolucci, PC World

"Whether you're searching for text, video, images, news, or local information, you have lots of options beyond Google. We tried dozens of search engines and found some worthy challengers to the king.

Not many brands become verbs, as in "I googled [fill in the blank] last night." Nielsen/NetRatings' January 2007 report found that more than half of all Web queries in the United States in that month went through Google. The second-most-popular engine, Yahoo Search, garnered less than half that amount.

Which led us to wonder: Does Google deserve all that traffic, or is it living off its reputation? Are people using it because they're not aware of other, potentially better search engines? To find out, we pitted Google against its big-name competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search, as well as against smaller challengers such as AlltheWeb, AltaVista, and Ask.com--plus a couple dozen of the specialty search services, including Blogdigger, Picsearch, and TubeSurf."

http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,130979/printable.html


Technorati Tags: google search, yahoo search, Microsoft Live search

The Art Of SEO For Wikipedia

by Stephan Spencer

"Wikipedia's importance as an authority site is undisputed. It's at the point where it seems a bit ridiculous how often Wikipedia shows up in the first page of Google for just about every search imaginable. In many cases these Wikipedia entries are extremely light on content. Oftentimes they are what are known as "stubs," just the very beginnings of an article.

Personally, I think Google is giving too much weight to Wikipedia. Take for instance a search on the word marketing in Google. The top spot has been awarded to the marketing entry on Wikipedia yet it is not the most authoritative or comprehensive source of marketing-related information on the Net by any stretch."

http://searchengineland.com/070503-065513.php



Technorati Tags: wikipedia, google, search results

Introducing Robots-Nocontent for Page Sections

"We recently returned from our annual rendezvous at SES New York and, like always, learned a lot from our webmasters. The 'Robots.txt Summit' generated some healthy discussions and support for adding a tag to parts of a page that do not relate to the main content, such as navigation, menus repeated across the entire site, boilerplate text, or even advertising. We heard what people were asking for so we did a little homework and are now happy to introduce the 'robots-nocontent' tag."

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000444.html


Technorati Tags: Yahoo search, tags, Robots-Nocontent tag

Web 2.0 Sites Draw More Visitors

"Web 2.0 sites accounted for 12% of all US Web activity for the week ended April 7, 2007, according to Hitwise's "State of the Web 2.0: Measuring the Participatory Web" study. That is up 2% compared with the same period two years prior.

Wikipedia is the top educational reference Web site, accounting for over 26% of the visits in a category of 3,272 sites."

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004874&src=dp3_home


Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, wiki, State of Web 2.0 study

Microsoft Adds Streaming to Silverlight

By Reuters

LAS VEGAS

Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, said on Monday it plans to offer a streaming video service that stores and hosts video for its new Silverlight online media platform.

Silverlight, which is now available for download in a test version, is a rival to Adobe Systems Inc.'s dominant Flash player and a new application to deliver video, games and animation through a Web browser.

Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live is one of the first applications announced by Microsoft to take advantage of the company's heavy investments in building a data center infrastructure backbone for its Web services.

The company said it will store and host up to 4 gigabytes of video for Web developers.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2124303,00.asp


Technorati Tags: MIcrosoft, Silverlight, Flash player, video

PHPOpenChat - The free php chat-server-software for your live chat-room or -module

"PHPOpenChat is a high performance php-based chat server software for a live chat-room or -module on every php-based site. The first version has been developed for a live-chat-subproject of the main German education portal (DBS) called "SchulWeb". The PHPOpenChat have had to manage alot of users, around 100-150 concurrent chatters, the most behind firewalls and in front of old computers. Based on this experiences, we developed the version 3 of our free chat-server completely new from scratch.

At this time you can integrate this chat software into postnuke, phpbb, yabbse, etc. as a module."

http://phpopenchat.org/


Technorati Tags: php chat, open source software

Digg Gives Into User Revolt; Are Those DMCA Takedown Notices Even Valid?

"After a grassroots revolt by Digg users, Digg has decided to stop censoring posts about an HD-DVD decryption number used by the industry-backed Advanced Access Content System to protect HD-DVDs. The AACS claims that anyone publishing the number may be violating US laws against circumvention of copy protection. How the story unfolded below, plus more on how the DMCA takedown notices being issued by the AACS to Google don't seem to be valid and certainly aren't like the usual ones fired off for actual copyright theft.

"Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 from Digg founder Kevin Rose is his white flag of surrender to upset Diggers. Rose uses the controversial number as the title of his post and says that Digg will no longer be pulling submissions about the number."

http://searchengineland.com/070502-071132.php


Technorati Tags: web 2.0, digg, resistance

Yahoo vs Google

"You're probably tired of reading about cultural differences between the two search marketing leaders, Google and Yahoo. Does Semel have better hair than Sergey? Does Yahoo really hire people based on softball prowess? If you're actually using the search marketing platforms, or for that matter, interacting with Googlers or Yahoos to accomplish a marketing-related task, none of this matters. Let's run down some of the most impactful real-world differences between the two search marketing platforms, in the wake of Yahoo's Panama rollout and some recent Google AdWords updates."

http://searchengineland.com/070501-135832.php

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Google, Adwords, Search Marketing

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Dell Offers Linux boxes again

"At the end of May, the number two PC maker will begin selling some consumer-focused laptop and desktop models with Ubuntu's new 'Feisty Fawn' version of Linux installed, according to a Dell spokesman. It plans to broadcast the Linux move on its IdeaStorm website, which launched in February to gather feedback directly from customers about what they want."

http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,39166956,00.htm


Technorati Tags: Dell, Ubuntu, Linux

Microsoft eyes Web ad firm 24/7 Real Media: report

NEW YORK (Reuters)
"Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest software maker, is a contender to buy Internet advertising firm 24/7 Real Media Inc. (TFSM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) for as much as $1 billion, the New York Post reported on Tuesday."


Technorati Tags: Microsoft, 24/7 Real Media

The Golden Rule of SEO: Content is King

By Mark Jackson
"If you’ve been around the search marketing block a few times, you’ve heard this statement more times than you can count. I know it sounds redundant, but until more companies do a better job at focusing on their Web site copy, it bears repeating. Well written content is important for three primary reasons:

• Engages the reader
• Increases search engine rankings and traffic
• Promotes the likelihood of quality links from other sites

"Let’s take a brief look at each of the three primary benefits of quality content. Keep in mind that there are obviously other very important reasons (branding, for example) which we won’t have the room to cover here. I’ve chosen the three listed above because at the very least, your Web site needs to draw visitors through search engines, inform them of the amazing benefits you have to offer, and to encourage other webmasters and site content managers to consider your site to be an authority on a given subject. With search, attention to detail, and word of mouth, you have the beginnings of a successful Web presence through copywriting.

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3625720

"If your terminology is relevant and your style is easy to follow, you have achieved the most important, yet often overlooked foundational task of organic search optimization and marketing."

Technorati Tags: SEO, copywriting, content quality, search engine ranking, traffic

Business Crawls onto Web 2.0

Tiny steps toward more public communication.

The buzz around collaborative Web 2.0 technologies keeps going, and it is easy to think that every firm now has a blog, a wiki and an RSS feed.

In fact, a global survey of internal and corporate communications professionals found that more than half use blogs, online video and RSS, or plan to do so in the next 12 months.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004868&src=article1_home


Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, RSS, public communication, business blogs

Google To Merge Personalized Services To "iGoogle" Brand

Today is Google Personalization Day at Google, where reporters and bloggers have been invited to learn more about Google's moves to personalize its services. Our own Greg Sterling is there and will be providing coverage out of the event later. However, some news is already flowing out now.

For one, Google steps up personalized Web search push from Reuters covers how Google will be renaming the personalized Google services as "iGoogle."

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president, said Google is "working to bring all this [Google personalizes services] together" and will be "renaming the product iGoogle."

http://searchengineland.com/070430-174415.php


Technorati Tags: iGoogle, google, personalized homepage, Reuters

iGoogle Gadget Maker

As reported by Google Blogoscoped, Google Personalized Homepage will be rebranded as iGoogle and will let you build your own gadgets using wizards. The gadgets are very simple and are more like containers for things that matter to you: photos, videos, events.

"Once the gadget is created, you can invite other people to view & use the gadget, and make it publicly available for other people to view & use it." So whatever you choose to add to a gadget will be visible to the people you invited.

The wizards let you enter the settings for seven new gadget templates.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-gadget-maker.html


Technorati Tags: iGoogle, google, personalized hompage

Yahoo to Buy Ad Company in Bid to Compete With Google

Yahoo plans to acquire Right Media, a privately held company that runs an advertising marketplace, in part to bolster its position as a seller and broker of ads outside its own sprawling network of Web sites, the companies’ chief executives said yesterday.

Yahoo, which bought a 20 percent stake in Right Media last October, will pay approximately $680 million, in equal parts of stock and cash, for the remaining interest in the company, which is based in New York.

“The acquisition, to us, is a key step toward executing our long-term vision to build the leading advertising and publisher ecosystem both on and off the Yahoo network,” Terry S. Semel, Yahoo’s chief executive, said in an interview. The deal is to be announced today and is expected to close in three months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/technology/30yahoo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


Technorati Tags: yahoo, google, Right Media